Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960

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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 mercys religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural representations and its embodiment. It then looks at large-scale mobilisation of mercy discourses in Ireland, during the French Revolution, in the British empire, and in warfare from the American war of independence to the First World War. This study concludes by examining mercy's place in a twentieth century shaped by total war, atomic bomb, and decolonisation.

Reviews

Gregory has provided his readers with an incredibly researched and powerfully argued book on what remains an elusive concept. It is a book to be savoured slowly, providing a historical space to think about compassion today. * H-Net Reviews *
Taking an impressive sweep across three centuries, Gregory assesses the British culture of mercy in theology and philosophy, fiction, art and social politics. This is a hugely stimulating work that uses the meaning of mercy as a lens for reading significant aspects of British history. * Lizzie Seal, Reader in Criminology, University of Sussex, UK *

Author Bio

James Gregory is Associate Professor of Modern British History at Plymouth University, UK. He is the author of Victorians and Vegetarians (2007), Reformers, Patrons and Philanthropists (2010), Victorians Against the Gallows (2011), The Poetry and the Politics (2014) and Libraries, Books and Collectors of Texts, 16001900 (2018).