Moral Imagination
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
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Written over the course of some 45 years, these essays radiate Himmelfarb's enjoyment of their subjects. Well they should, for they are her "appreciations" of "thinkers and writers who are eminently praiseworthy," such as political philosopher Edmund Burke, coiner of the phrase that gives the collection its title, whom Himmelfarb, responding to a student's remark, considers as an apologist (coincidental) for Judaism. And George Eliot and Jane Austen, of whose respective masterpieces Middlemarch and Emma Himmelfarb asks every reader's most urgent questions; namely, why does Dorothea marry Ladislav? and why does Mr. Knightley marry Emma? Discussions of Dickens, Disraeli, and J. S. Mill examine aspects of each that defy the usual characterizations of their social and political orientations. Perhaps the most intriguing article argues that the adventure novelist and politician John Buchan possessed a deeper, more complex social vision than such supposedly jingoist, racist romances as The Thirty-Nine Steps may suggest. Victorian essayist Walter Bagehot and Sir Winston Churchill are among the other subjects of Himmelfarb's enlightening, infectiously enthusiastic scrutiny. Ray Olson
Written over the course of some 45 years, these essays radiate Himmelfarb's enjoyment of their subjects. Well they should, for they are her "appreciations" of "thinkers and writers who are eminently praiseworthy," such as political philosopher Edmund Burke, coiner of the phrase that gives the collection its title, whom Himmelfarb, responding to a student's remark, considers as an apologist (coincidental) for Judaism. And George Eliot and Jane Austen, of whose respective masterpieces Middlemarch and Emma Himmelfarb asks every reader's most urgent questions; namely, why does Dorothea marry Ladislav? and why does Mr. Knightley marry Emma? Discussions of Dickens, Disraeli, and J. S. Mill examine aspects of each that defy the usual characterizations of their social and political orientations. Perhaps the most intriguing article argues that the adventure novelist and politician John Buchan possessed a deeper, more complex social vision than such supposedly jingoist, racist romances as The Thirty-Nine Steps may suggest. Victorian essayist Walter Bagehot and Sir Winston Churchill are among the other subjects of Himmelfarb's enlightening, infectiously enthusiastic scrutiny. Ray Olson
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