Railways and the Victorian Imagination (Hardcover)

Like all Yale University Press books, Freeman's work is quite beautifully illustrated, full of full page colour reproductions of Victorian maps, posters and cartoons.

Where the book falls down is in the interpretative framework it provides to guide us through this visual feast. Freeman has ambitious theoretical aims, telling off another book on the Victorian railways for being a 'mere anthology'. His footnotes are full of references to Marx, Raymond Williams and other philosophers of cultural materialism. Sadly though they do not add up to a clear or comprehensive vision of the Victorian railways. Freeman doesn't want to be a Marxist and so doesn't think that Victorian culture was DETERMINED by the growth of a railway system. Yet he doesn't provide a consistent theory of his own for how changes in transport and communications technology act on culture. The result is a book that is curiously over and under ambitious at once. At one minute, Freeman will be announcing that he will explain how railways changed the concept of spatiality or came to stand for a 'second nature'. At another, he will be content just to list rather inconsequentially the mentions of railways in children's nursery rhymes, without trying to explain the potential importance of those mentions.

Freeman's decision to avoid grinding detail in his text makes for a pleasant read, but also ensures that links for instance between railways and department stores or urban consumption are asserted rather than explained. Freeman is drawn to picturesque illustration- the coffee table book school of argument- rather than rigorous cultural analysis. The link for example between Darwin's theories of natural selection and the development of the railway system is hardly proved by the fact that Darwin once had an unpleasant ride on a train.

Freeman then should perhaps have thought harder about what kinds of evidence are needed for cultural analysis and how they should be linked. Nevertheless, this book is full of wonderful pictures and does contain many provoking ideas not thoroughly worked out. The ride he offers is invigorating enough, for all that he is uncertain about the final destination.

Like all Yale University Press books, Freeman's work is quite beautifully illustrated, full of full page colour reproductions of Victorian maps, posters and cartoons.

Where the book falls down is in the interpretative framework it provides to guide us through this visual feast. Freeman has ambitious theoretical aims, telling off another book on the Victorian railways for being a 'mere anthology'. His footnotes are full of references to Marx, Raymond Williams and other philosophers of cultural materialism. Sadly though they do not add up to a clear or comprehensive vision of the Victorian railways. Freeman doesn't want to be a Marxist and so doesn't think that Victorian culture was DETERMINED by the growth of a railway system. Yet he doesn't provide a consistent theory of his own for how changes in transport and communications technology act on culture. The result is a book that is curiously over and under ambitious at once. At one minute, Freeman will be announcing that he will explain how railways changed the concept of spatiality or came to stand for a 'second nature'. At another, he will be content just to list rather inconsequentially the mentions of railways in children's nursery rhymes, without trying to explain the potential importance of those mentions.

Freeman's decision to avoid grinding detail in his text makes for a pleasant read, but also ensures that links for instance between railways and department stores or urban consumption are asserted rather than explained. Freeman is drawn to picturesque illustration- the coffee table book school of argument- rather than rigorous cultural analysis. The link for example between Darwin's theories of natural selection and the development of the railway system is hardly proved by the fact that Darwin once had an unpleasant ride on a train.

Freeman then should perhaps have thought harder about what kinds of evidence are needed for cultural analysis and how they should be linked. Nevertheless, this book is full of wonderful pictures and does contain many provoking ideas not thoroughly worked out. The ride he offers is invigorating enough, for all that he is uncertain about the final destination.