Victorian People:  A Reassessment of Persons and Themes 1851-1867 by Asa Briggs is a 313-page softcover published by The University of Chicago Press, first published in 1955, this copy published in 1972.  The cover has a small closed tear along the bottom of the cover.  Inside, the pages are clean and unmarked and the binding is sound but may be dry due to age.

Book Summary

This new edition of Asa Brigg's celebrated Victorian People has been completely reillustrated by the author and Ruari McLean.  The text is now handsomely complemented by thirty-eight illustrations culled from Victorian sources, only two of which were in the old edition.

The new illustrations capture the many faces, scenes, and moods of the high Victorian period.  They include fashion plates, wood engravings from Harper's, cartoons from Punch, and contemporary engravings and illustrations from the Illustrated London News and from the works of Trollope and Thakeray.

Asa Briggs views the period which opened with the Great Exhibition of 1851 and closed in 1867 with the second Reform Bill as the golden age of Victorian England, the height of the queen's reign, an age with a splendid unity of its own.  With penetration and wit the author explores this unity through a study of the thought and character of selected men of varied backgrounds and occupations.

Among the men studied are such well-known figures as John Arthur Roebuck, Anthony Trollope, Walter Bagehot, Samuel Smiles, Thomas Hughes, Robert Applegarth, John Bright, Robert Lowe, and Benjamin Disraeli.