The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life
Cambridge University Press, 5/7/2007
EAN 9780521037280, ISBN10: 052103728X
Paperback, 476 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.7 cm
Language: English
This book offers a highly engaging history of the world's most famous secret society, the Cambridge 'Apostles', based upon the lives, careers and correspondence of the 255 Apostles elected to the Cambridge Conversazione Society between 1820 and 1914. It examines the way in which the Apostles recruited their membership, the Society's discussions and its intellectual preoccupations. From its pages emerge such figures as F. D. Maurice, John Sterling, John Mitchell Kemble, Richard Trench, Fenton Hort, James Clerk Maxwell, Henry Sidgwick, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes. The careers of these and many other leading Apostles are traced, through parliament, government, letters, and in public school and university reform. The book also makes an important contribution in discussing the role of liberalism, imagination and friendship at the intersection of the life of learning and public life. This is a major contribution to the intellectual and social history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to the history of the University of Cambridge. It demonstrates in impressive depth just how and why the Apostles forged original themes in modern intellectual life.
List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
the Apostles and intellectual and professional life
1. The Cambridge Conversazione Society and the formation of friendship
2. The social background, education and careers of the Cambridge Apostles
3. The Apostles and the great world
parliament, government, the civil service and the law
4. The Apostles and the great world
journalism, letters and clubs
5. The Apostles and learning
the public schools
6. The Apostles and learning
the universities
7. The Apostles, religion and the crisis of belief
Conclusion
Appendix
the Cambridge Apostles
a biographical directory
Bibliography
Index.