The House of Commons, 1820–1832 7 Volume Set

These volumes contain biographies of the 1367 Members of the House of Commons from 1820 to 1832, surveys of elections and politics in the 383 constituencies of Great Britain and Ireland over the same period and an introduction which analyses and sets them in context. The result of more than twenty years' work in archives and libraries throughout Britain, Ireland and abroad, they constitute the most comprehensive survey of British and Irish politics during the period. Encompassing four Parliaments and general elections in 1820, 1826, 1830 and 1831, they cover the Queen Caroline affair, agricultural distress, the Whig campaign for economies and legal reforms, debates on financial and commercial policy, the emergence of liberal Toryism, colonial slavery, repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. The period ends with the passage of the first Reform Act, a watershed in the representative history of Britain.

Table of Contents:
Volumes 1-7 of the History of Parliament.

About the Author :
David Fisher was a contributor to the History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790–1820 and wrote numerous articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Review :
'A new History of Parliament publication is a remarkable event in its own right. This 28-volume chronicle of Westminster, covering 17,000 MP biographies stretching back to 1386, has rightly been described by historian David Cannadine as 'the most detailed, authoritative and comprehensive account' of any legislature in the world.' Tristram Hunt, The Guardian 'All of this is serious history with formidable scholarship at its best. … [The volumes] provide a mass of information about not just the political system of a crucial period of parliamentary history, but the culture and values of local society. As a source for historians working in this period they are invaluable …' Total Politics '[The volumes] provide an unparalleled reference work for all those interested in the United Kingdom's social, economic, political and cultural development. Above all, they offer new and intriguing insights into the origins of modern representative democracy.' The House Magazine 'This is a quite astonishing assembly of greater, lesser and intermediate facts, operational procedures, men and the measures they … disputed and memorably enacted. The world at the eve of Reform has been re-created for us, a cathedral of political history.' Tribune 'Biographies of the 1367 MPs who sat in the Commons in these years, and histories of the country's 383 constituencies, fathom the reality behind the polemics of Cobbett and the satire of Dickens and Thomas Love Peacock. These … volumes are crammed with comédie humaine and the parliamentary puppetry that seems, as Blake said, something other than human life.' London Review of Books