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ELT: Volume 34:4, 1991 Edward Carpenter Tony Brown, ed. Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism. London: Frank Cass, 1990. vii+ 200 pp. $25.00 EDWARD CARPENTER'S influence was pervasive from the 1880s until, approximately, the First World War. This period saw the publication of many of his major texts: the long Whitmanesque poem Towards Democracy; his writings on love and sex—Love's Coming-of-Age and The Intermediate Sex; Civilization: Its Cause and Cure, which elaborates his Utopian Socialism; From Adam's Peak to Elephanta, focusing on his trip to Ceylon and India, as well as a number of other works. His range was enormous; he addressed the issues of the failure of capitalism, imperialism , Victorian social values and industrialism and he advocated socialism , the rights of women and homosexuals, pastoralism, dress reform, vegetarianism, anti-vivisectionism. His causes, while leading him into certain inconsistencies, rest on a holistic vision of a dynamically "exfoliating" cosmos in which human beings, only a part of the universe, are impelled to create harmony with each other and nature. After the 1914 war, as socialism moved toward more specifically political goals, Carpenter's influence seemed to wane, and interest in his work did not markedly revive until the 1960s when his ideas again seemed germane to contemporary issues. Rowbotham and Weeks's Socialism and the New Life (1977), the reissue of some of Carpenter's books, and the appearance of several critical studies attest to this modest revival. As its title indicates, Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism, edited by Tony Brown, seeks to place Carpenter within the context of the radical thought of his period. Brown's introduction is a model of its kind, providing a brief biographical sketch and a summary of Carpenter's ideas and works as they evolved. Instead of ticking off the conclusions of each of the eight contributors to the volume, Brown integrates their findings into his essay. He is very careful not to exaggerate Carpenter's importance for today: "simplistic claims for the 'relevance' of a man who advocated sexual freedom and 'dropped out' to live a life of self-sufficiency in the country-side with his working-class lover need to be avoided." His focus, and that of several of the essayists, is largely on intellectual history: "a study of Carpenter's life and work throws interesting light on a whole 466 Book Reviews nexus of attitudes and ideas current in radical circles in the last decade of the nineteenth century." In one of this study's most informative essays, "Edward Carpenter: The Uses of Utopia," Keith Nield, also eschewing large claims for his subject—"His was a literary reputation which peaked modestly and decayed fast"—briefly reviews the response to Carpenter by his fellow radicals, historians, and literary critics before detailing the relatively high number of his books sold, in many editions, in English and translation . Nield's task is "to explain [Carpenter's] popularity in his own generation, and, in so doing, perhaps to reveal unexpected dimensions of the labour and progressive movements of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods." In short, not only will the reception of his works contextualize Carpenter, but Carpenter's impact will illuminate his period. Much of the ensuing discussion is directed toward labor history, its neglect by economic historiography, and description of "the great liberal-capitalist consensus of Victorian and Edwardian Britain." One of Nield's most interesting conclusions is that "the form of [Carpenter's] writing—its utopianism, its mysticism, even its 'diffusiveness'—may result from something other than an implied intellectual dereliction or vacuity on his part. It may have much more to do with the power, density, and historical specificity of the cultural hegemony which he and his contemporaries confronted." Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism is strongest, I think, in treating Carpenter's socialism. Besides the Nield article, there are two other essays the lengthy titles of which indicate the subjects: Marie-Françoise Cachin's " 'Non-governmental Society': Edward Carpenter 's Position in the British Socialist Movement" and Martin Wright's "Robert Blatchford, the Clarion Movement and the Crucial Years of British Socialism, 1891-1900." The two essays that concern Carpenter...

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