The book explores the hotly disputed process by which the census was created and developed and examines how a wide cast of characters, including statisticians, novelists, national and local officials, political and social reformers, and journalists responded to and used the idea of a census.

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Reviews

'Kathrin Levitan's A Cultural History of the British Census is a useful and engaging study about the meaning of the census in British society. In addition to shining new light on an old source and convincingly asserting its importance to British conceptions of themselves, it is also a well-crafted intellectual history that traces ideas about belonging identity in Britain through the transformations of nineteenth-century politics.' Cercles

'If for Lord Macaulay, "figures are like mercenaries: they may be enlisted on both sides", in Levitan the census has found a historian who is even-handed and wide-ranging in her survey of these battlefields.' - Robert Mayhew, TLS

"Provides an original approach, and the result will need to be engaged with by all historians working on modern Britain ... The book is well researched and clearly written, and scholars of literature as well as history will find important material here." - The American Historical Review

About the author

KATHRIN LEVITAN Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, USA.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: A Cultural History of the British Census
Book Subtitle: Envisioning the Multitude in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Kathrin Levitan
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337602
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2011
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-230-11937-6Published: 06 September 2011
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-29824-2Published: 06 September 2011
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-33760-2Published: 14 August 2011
Series ISSN: 2945-6630
Series E-ISSN: 2945-6649
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 272
Topics: Social History, Cultural History, History of Britain and Ireland, Modern History

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book