Spanning over 2 centuries, James Gregory's Mercy and British Culture, 1760 -1960 provides a wide-reaching yet detailed overview of the concept of mercy in British cultural history. While there are many histories of justice and punishment, mercy has been a neglected element despite recognition as an important feature of the 18th-century criminal code.Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 looks first at mercy's religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural repres...

In the first detailed study of its kind, James Gregory's book takes a historical approach to mercy by focusing on widespread and varied discussions about the quality, virtue or feeling of mercy in the British world during Victoria's reign. Gregory covers an impressive range of themes from the gendered discourses of 'emotional' appeal surrounding Queen Victoria to the exercise and withholding of royal mercy in the wake of colonial rebellion throughout the British empire. Against the backdro...

By the time that Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the list of crimes liable to attract the death penalty had effectively been reduced to murder. Yet, despite this, the gallows remained a source of controversy in Victorian Britain and there was a growing unease in liberal quarters surrounding the question of capital punishment. Unease was expressed in various forms, including efforts at outright abolition. Focusing in part on the activities of the Society for the Abolition of Cap...

In the isolated coal mining town of Sulphur Creek in the late 1800s, young Sammy Murphy’s world is a blend of shadowy tunnels and unspoken secrets. Born into solitude and pushed into reclusion, Sammy’s quiet life starkly contrasts with the booming industry that surrounds him. But as he searches for connection in an era of ruthless expansion, he finds himself at odds with forces far greater than he imagined.Enter Barry Bacon, an ambitious industrialist who fancies himself a peer to ...

Under one cover, Dr. James R. Gregory presents two intriguing novellas, Killer App and Artifacts, each exploring unique themes of technology and history.Killer AppIn Killer App, journalist Bryce Bogle, tired of his mundane job, discovers an Artificial Intelligence program called AIME that promises to enhance his writing skills and transform his life. Utilizing AIME, he quickly gained recognition for his articles on artifi...

Zephyr's War is a gripping tale of ambition, temptation, and the precarious nature of wealth's pursuit.Zep Zephyr cultivated sunflowers in the shadow of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, yearning for a life beyond the fields. Determined to escape his humble beginnings, Zep flees his family farm and sets his sights on New York City, driven by a burning desire to amass wealth. As he delves into finance, Zep discovers the tantalizing promise of riches throug...

The nineteenth century was a time of 'movements' - political, social, moral reform causes - which drew on the energies of men and women across Britain. This book studies radical reform at the margins of early Victorian society, focusing on decades of particular social, political and technological ferment: when foreign and British promoters of extravagant technologically assisted utopias could attract many hundreds of supporters of limited means, persuaded to escape grim conditions by emigr...

William Hague has written the life of William Wilberforce who was both a staunch conservative and a tireless campaigner against the slave trade.Hague shows how Wilberforce, after his agonising conversion to evangelical Christianity, was able to lead a powerful tide of opinion, as MP for Hull, against the slave trade, a process which was to take up to half a century to be fully realised. Indeed, he succeeded in rallying to his cause the support in the Commons Debates of some the fin...

With a foreword by Eric Metaxas, best-selling author of Bonhoeffer and Amazing Grace.The enthralling biography of the woman writer who helped end the slave trade, changed Britain’s upper classes, and taught a nation how to read.The history-changing reforms of Hannah More affected every level of 18th-Century British society through her keen intellect, literary achievements, collaborative spirit, strong Christian principles, and colorful personality. A woman...

A brilliant writer, outstanding orator, and charismatic politician, Thomas D'Arcy McGee is best known for his prominent role in Irish-Canadian politics, his inspirational speeches in support of Canadian Confederation, and his assassination by an Irish revolutionary who accused him of betraying his earlier Irish nationalist principles. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the first volume in a two-part biography, explores the development of those principles in Ireland and the United States. David Wilson fo...

The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century familyThey were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing e...

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain’s largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica’s vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.Thistlewood’s diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slav...