ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the stubborn view that Gladstone's mature liberalism was shaped principally by one obdurate old man's desire to hold on to power, whilst possessing no discernable motivating philosophy. Essays on the lives of notable individual Liberals were amongst the earliest publications in British liberal historiography and Gladstone attracted the earliest and most widespread attention, in both Britain and Europe. The linguistic turn, with its attendant privileging of discourse-constructed identity, has also laid its mark on Gladstonian studies and has fundamentally challenged many of the previously accepted frames of references common to studies of Gladstonian liberalism. Gladstone studies have also been influenced by a growing interest in the visual and material culture of the Victorian period. Equally important insights have been gained by looking at Gladstone as an agent of ideological and doctrinal transmission within his wider social and cultural framework.
