Literature for the People

₦36,500.00

Daniel and Alexander arrived in London in the 1830s at a crucial moment of social change. These two idealistic brothers, working-class sons of a Scottish crofter, went on to set up a publishing house that spread radical ideas on equality, science and education across the world. They also brought authors like Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy and Charles Kingsley, and poets like Matthew Arnold and Christina Rossetti, to a mass audience. No longer would books be just for the upper classes.

In Literature for the People Sarah Harkness brings to life these two warm-hearted men. Daniel was driven by the knowledge that he was living on borrowed time, his body ravaged by tuberculosis. Alexander took on responsibility for the company as well as Daniel’s family and turned a small business into an international powerhouse. He cultivated the literary greats of the time, weathered controversy and tragedy, and fostered a dynasty that would include future prime minister Harold Macmillan.

3 in stock

Sarah Harkness worked in corporate finance for twenty years, latterly as a partner at Arthur Andersen. She spent three years as Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield and is now a trustee of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and chairs the audit committees of Orthopaedic Research UK and Oriel College, Oxford. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Sheffield University and an Honorary Fellowship at Mansfield College.

Her first book was a biography of Victorian artist and writer Nelly Erichsen. In October 2021 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Biography at the University of Buckingham, studying under Professor Jane Ridley. Her 40,000 word dissertation covered five crucial years in the career of Alexander Macmillan. In 2021 she won the Tony Lothian Prize, awarded by The Biographers’ Club for the best proposal for an uncommissioned biography.