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Contemporary Authors Online, 2008
Updated: January 03, 2008
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Born: August 08, 1922 in New York, New York, United States
Nationality: American
Occupation: Cultural historian
WRITINGS:
Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1952,
reprinted, ICS Press (San Francisco, CA), 1993.
Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1959, revised edition, P. Smith
(Gloucester, MA), 1967, reprinted, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1996.
Victorian Minds: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Intellectuals, Knopf (New York, NY), 1968, reprinted, Ivan
R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1995.
On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, Knopf (New York, NY), 1974, reprinted, ICS
Press (San Francisco, CA), 1990.
The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age, Knopf (New York, NY), 1984.
Marriage and Morals among the Victorians, and Other Essays, Knopf (New York, NY), 1986, reprinted as
Marriage and Morals among Victorians: Essays, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2001.
The New History and the Old, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987, revised edition, Belknap
Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.
Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.
On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.
The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.
One Nation, Two Cultures: A Moral Divide, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.
The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, Knopf (New York, NY),
2004.
The Past and the Present: Episodes in Intellectual and Cultural History, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2005.
The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2006.
EDITOR
Lord Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, Free Press (New York, NY), 1948.
Thomas R. Malthus, On Population, Modern Library (New York, NY), 1960.
John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1962.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1975.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1997.
OTHER
Contributor to books, including Art, Politics, and the Will, edited by Quentin Anderson and others, Basic
(New York, NY), 1977; Points of Light: New Approaches to Ending Welfare Dependency, edited by
Tamar Ann Mehuron, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1990; and Work and Welfare, by
Robert M. Solow, edited by Amy Gutmann, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1998. Contributor
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to journals and periodicals including Journal of Contemporary History, Victorian Studies, Journal of
British Studies, Journal of Modern History, American Historical Review, Commentary, Encounter,
American Scholar, New Republic, New York Times, Wilson Quarterly, and Harper's.
Independent scholar, 1950-65; City University of New York, professor of history at Brooklyn College, 1965-
78, distinguished professor of history at Graduate School, 1978-88, professor emerita of history, 1988--.
National Humanities Center, member of board of trustees, 1976--; National Endowment for the Humanities,
council member, 1982--; Library of Congress, council of scholars, 1984--; Woodrow Wilson Center, member
of board of trustees, 1985-96; British Institute of the United States, member of board of directors, 1985--;
Institute for Contemporary Studies, member of board of directors, 1986--; Ethics and Public Policy Center,
associate scholar, 1986--; American Enterprise Institute, council of academic advisers member, 1987--;
National Endowment for the Humanities, Jefferson lecturer, 1991; Library of America, board of advisors,
1992--; American Council of Trustees and Alumni, council of scholars, 1995--; member of Presidential
Advisory Commission on Economic Role of Women. Member of editorial boards of Albion, American
Historical Review, American Scholar, Journal of British Studies, Jewish Social Studies, Reviews in European
History, and This World.
American Association of University Women fellowship, 1951-52; American Philosophical Society fellowship,
1953-54; Guggenheim fellowships, 1955-56, 1957-58; Rockefeller Foundation grants, 1962- 63, 1963-64;
National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellowship, 1968- 69; American Council of Learned Societies
fellowship, 1972-73; Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholarship, 1972-73; Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship,
1976-77; Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, 1980-81; National Humanities Medal, National Endowment for
the Humanities, 2004.
Born August 8, 1922, in New York, NY; daughter of Max (a manufacturer) and Bertha Himmelfarb; married
Irving Kristol (a professor and editor), January 18, 1942; children: William, Elizabeth. Education: Attended
Jewish Theological Seminary, 1939-42; Brooklyn College (now Brooklyn College of the City University of
New York), B.A., 1942; University of Chicago, M.A., 1944, Ph.D., 1950; attended Girton College, Cambridge,
1946-47. Memberships: British Academy (fellow), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Society of
American Historians, American Historical Association, Royal Historical Society (fellow), American
Philosophical Society. Addresses: Office: Department of History, City University of New York, 524
Whitehead Hall, Brooklyn, NY 11210.
"Sidelights"
Gertrude Himmelfarb is well known as an authority on Victorian England and as a cultural historian whose
interests in the past translate into suggestions for the present. She has "occupied a unique place in the
historical profession and among American scholars," stated a writer in the Encyclopedia of World Biography,
noting that the conservative scholar's "political views and her work [have often been] controversial and
subjected to harsh criticism." "Universally recognized and respected for the depth of her scholarship, her gift
of analysis, and the incisiveness of her argument, she was justly described by another eminent American
historian of Victorian Britain as 'the most eminent American scholar to have written acutely on the history of
Victorian ideas.'"
As a writer, Himmelfarb "is almost as much a critic of historiography as a historian--a critic, too, with a strong
revisionist impulse, an urge to correct (with some asperity) the errors of her predecessors," according to
John Gross in the London Observer. Many of her books focus upon the history of thought in Victorian
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England, a period which she defines as extending from the late eighteenth century (and the life of Edmund
Burke) to the early twentieth century (ending roughly around the time of John Buchan). In these texts she
covers a variety of noteworthy figures, including Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macauley,
Walter Bagehot, and Jeremy Bentham, while also discussing such historical issues as the Reform Act of
1867 and Social Darwinism.
With an emphasis on the many ambiguities in philosophy which were present in the Victorian Age,
Himmelfarb nevertheless manages to unify the whole with what she calls the "moral imagination" of the
Victorians (a phrase that Burke first coined). This is a general term which Gross defined as "a set of
characteristic Victorian convictions--a belief in human dignity, a respect for human complexity, a sense of
common responsibility based on sympathetic insight rather than textbook rules." Himmelfarb feels that
modern critics tend to form a consensus on how history is to be treated based upon whatever school of
criticism is popular at the time, and that this seriously clouds their ability to analyze facts properly. New
Statesman contributor A.S. Byatt phrased the historian's attitude this way: "She deprecates current
intellectual fashions of simplicity and commitment, pointing out that subtleties, complications, and
ambiguities--once the mark of serious thought--are now taken to signify a failure of nerve." This attitude has
drawn both positive and negative reactions from her colleagues and critics.
For example, in a review of Himmelfarb's Victorian Minds: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Intellectuals,
Carleton Miscellany contributor Robert E. Bonner wrote: "The problem is that the intelligent historian here
changes garb rapidly and often becomes a scourge of ideologues past and, by implication, present. The
result is at best misconceived or misdirected history or criticism, and at worst is history in the service of a
particular modern American 'liberal' orthodoxy." On the other hand, Robert A. Nisbet, in Commentary,
observed that Himmelfarb's "knowledge of the century is vast, but it rarely if ever swamps her judgment ...
which remains ... precise and discriminating."
Continuing to break down the walls of pat historical interpretation, the historian brings to our attention in The
Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age not only the subject of England's nineteenth-century
Poor Laws, but also how the very concept of poverty changed over time to include an ever narrower
segment of the population. She shows us, according to Times Literary Supplement reviewer Harold Perkin,
how the awareness of the poverty problem and its relation to ideas about poverty changed over time. Perkin
asserted that the scholar "cuts through the mouldy rags of interpretation which have been piled upon the
poor and their interpreters for generations."
Marriage and Morals among the Victorians, and Other Essays also offers an analysis of the Victorian Age,
this time with an emphasis on the sense of morality of the period. New York Times Book Review contributor
Neil McKendrick felt that Himmelfarb "offers a more sympathetic response than is usual to late Victorian
morality." This book has drawn some negative criticism from reviewers like Rosemary Ashton of the Times
Literary Supplement, who noted: "If one has a complaint, it is that [the idea of a 'precarious' late Victorian
morality] is less argued than assumed, that Himmelfarb spends more time disapproving than approving."
Himmelfarb's criticism of modern historians has unfolded in two volumes of essays, The New History and the
Old and On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society. In both books she attacks
the prevalent acceptance of social history (a science that studies the history of ordinary people and ignores
politics), as well as the recent trends of post-modernist historiography. Her fear here, Los Angeles Times
Book Review contributor Paul Johnson summarized, is that "when traditional history is completely displaced,
what takes over is often not history at all but forms of covert left-wing propaganda." It is not, as Himmelfarb
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herself proclaims, that she objects "to social history as such," but she does dispute "its claims of dominance,
superiority, even 'totality.'"
On Looking into the Abyss crystallizes the author's argument for a return to "the Enlightenment principles
[of] reason, truth, justice, morality, reality." Emphasizing the traditional concepts of morality and virtue,
Himmelfarb takes to task post-modernist and deconstructionist historians, whose work she deplores as not
only inaccurate but potentially harmful to the future of the discipline. "Himmelfarb rejects the postmodernists
and their claim to being taken seriously," declared David Kirkwood in Society. "She rejects them not only
because of their obscurantism, their propensity for dealing with dissent by McCarthy-ite tactics, but mainly
for their denial of moral reality and, hence, moral responsibility. ... Historians have the moral obligation not
to impose their values upon their subjects--reading history backwards. But the past must be judged, and
historians must make moral judgments, if the present generation is to learn from history."
As controversial as its predecessor, On Looking into the Abyss drew most of its praise from conservative
essayists, who have consistently applauded Himmelfarb's viewpoint. "Fortunate he who, peering
apprehensively into the dread Abyss, finds beside him, peering too and holding his hand, the intrepid,
benign, and reassuring figure of Professor Himmelfarb," wrote Colin Welch in the National Review.
"Reviewing these present splendid essays, I could start by testifying to their formidable erudition and wide
range; to the prodigious mastery of areas of dark knowledge which many of us don't have or wish we didn't;
to their polemic power and capacity to make clear what is obscure or complex; and so on. But when all is
said and done, it is [Himmelfarb's] own character that, like the emperor's head on the Thaler, gives these
essays much of their value."
Perhaps one of Himmelfarb's most influential books is The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian
Virtues to Modern Values. First published in 1995, the book demonstrates that by use of the Poor Law and
other methods to shame the indigent, Victorian England controlled not only the number of persons applying
for government relief, but also saw reductions in crime and illegitimate births. She further argues that the
absence of morality today--and the substitution of a non-judgmental set of individual "values"--has led to a
de-moralization and its attendant ills of crime, welfare dependency, and single-parent families. Again the
critical response to the book depended upon the reviewer's political leanings.
"It is a delicate matter how a tract for the times gets read," maintained David Bromwich in the New Republic.
"So often, its reception will depend on the partialities of the spirit in which it is read. A hardening of antipathy
toward the poor, and toward every effort of social amelioration: these are traits of American life in the 1990s
that many sharers of the mood would like to sweeten with the name of virtue. And, less from its explicit
argument than from a certain shading of style and the ease of the past-and-present structure, I cannot help
wondering whether the effect of this pleasant and informative book will not be to act as a great simplifier."
Conversely, National Review contributor Christie Davies called The De-Moralization of Society "an excellent,
detailed, and insightful account of the creation, maintenance, and (in our time) decline of the Victorian
virtues of work, thrift, self-reliance, self-respect, neighborliness, and patriotism." Davies added: "Gertrude
Himmelfarb's latest study of the Victorians is, like all her work in this field, a delight to read--clear, erudite,
sensible, logical, and creative. ... Professor Himmelfarb's is also a moral text, for it not only dissects and
praises the morality of Victorian Britain, but also shows in great statistical detail how far present-day Britain
and America fall short of the Victorian ideal. It points the way to a possible renewal of society to cure our
current demoralization."
In her One Nation, Two Cultures: A Moral Divide, Himmelfarb elaborates on her assessment of the moral
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state of modern American society. One Nation, Two Cultures "exhibits the same felicity of expression,
sobriety, and intelligence as her previous works," applauded Edward S. Shapiro, who wrote in World & I:
"Himmelfarb's ultimate goal has not been merely to dissect the intellectual and moral premises underlying
Anglo-American culture of the past two centuries. Rather, she has sought to refute the various
historiographical theories preaching determinism, whether derived from economic, psychological, or
sociological premises. For her, the motivating forces in history have been the choices made by individuals,
particularly statesmen and intellectuals, and these have frequently involved moral questions regarding
values and behavior."
Unlike many of her previous works, in One Nation, Two Cultures Himmelfarb does not focus on the Victorian
era, "though her warm regard for Victorian civic virtue permeates it," noted a Booklist reviewer. Instead,
Himmelfarb devotes her text to describing and contrasting what she sees as two distinct segments of the
American population, the "dominant" group, whose values and behavior have sprung forth from the liberal
trends set in the 1960s, and the minority group, which is comprised of the remaining twenty-five percent (or
thereabouts) and holds more definitive, traditional attitudes. One Nation, Two Cultures is, according to Terry
Teachout in National Review, "a concise, clear-eyed look at the culture war and what it really means." As
Paul Johnson highlighted in Commentary, Himmelfarb addresses "the moral consequence of capitalism, the
diseases of democracy, civil society, the family and its enemies, the problems of legislating morality, religion
as a political institution, and, especially, America's two cultures--the one hedonistic, the other puritanical--
and the 'ethics gap' between them."
The manners of the dominant group have, in Himmelfarb's opinion, led America into a state filled with
ailments stemming from moral decline. Although not without optimism in her book, she delineates Americas
woes, evidenced, as Shapiro related, by "declining educational standards and ... increasing sexual
promiscuity, abortions, divorce, crime, drug usage ... welfare dependency .... [and] illegitimacy." A
Publishers Weekly reviewer maintained that One Nation, Two Cultures is "substantive" and "well-
articulated," and Himmelfarb's "arguments are forceful and sophisticated, but dovetail cleanly with
contemporary rightist rhetoric." As Shapiro remarked: "She writes in the great tradition of republican
moralists, who recognized that a republic was dependent on, more than anything else, the moral content of
the lives of its citizens."
"Himmelfarb's pithy, provocative book celebrates the minority and its ethos as a promising remedy for the
many 'diseases' afflicting the country," commented New Leader contributor Tamar Jacoby, who wrote: "In a
way this is an appealing vision, not only because it is pleasingly schematic ... but more important because it
suggests an easy answer to our moral quandaries. Traditional values are all we need, it implies, and the
backbone to live by them. Unfortunately, skilled as she is in marshaling both statistics and moral arguments,
in the end Himmelfarb does not persuade. On the contrary, the more she makes her case, the more unduly
hopeful it seems and the more dauntingly the moral challenges posed by modernists loom in contrast."
Jacoby continued: "Yet, overly simple and certain as her thesis may be, she remains an unusually thoughtful
guide to reviving and encouraging a moral sensibility today. It is almost as if her book were good in spite of
itself, or in spite of what she perceives to be its central, saving message."
What Himmelfarb argues is "a division between two cultures," Shapiro maintained, "is an exaggeration." For
Shapiro, Himmelfarb's arguments are just "the latest, and certainly not the last, chapter in the perennial
struggle between indulgence and restraint that has characterized human nature as well as American
history." Teachout acknowledged that what Himmelfarb asserts is not novel, but maintained that her style of
presentation makes One Nation, Two Cultures stand apart from other works. Teachout lauded: "Once or
twice in a generation--if that often--a very wise person writes a very pithy book that compresses everything
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that needs to be said about a given topic into the briefest of compasses. ... One Nation, Two Cultures is
such a book." Likewise, Paul Johnson commented in Commentary: "Of all those who write about the moral
condition of America, Gertrude Himmelfarb is the best--partly because she is a historian, able to dip into
deep reserves of knowledge to bring up parallels and precedents; partly because she has a strong taste for
hard evidence and makes impressive use of statistics; partly because she is cool-headed and refuses to
become hysterical about the awfulness of things and finally because she writes well and succinctly."
In The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, Himmelfarb studies the
unique characteristics of each. New Criterion contributor Keith Windschuttle wrote that this volume "can be
read as a provocative and persuasive revision not only of the intellectual era that made the modern world,
but also of the concepts that still largely determine how we think about human affairs today. In particular, it
explains the source of the fundamental division that, despite several predictions of its imminent demise, still
doggedly grips Western political life: that between the left and the right. From the outset, each side had its
own philosophical assumptions and its own view of the human condition."
The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling is a collection of a dozen old (with many
revised) and new essays, written over more than four decades on mostly British figures, such as Edmund
Burke, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot,
John Buchan, the Knox family, Michael Oakeshott, Winston Churchill, and Lionel Trilling. Himmelfarb praises
Dickens for his portrayal of his characters as individuals. She writes: "What other reformers tried to do with
legislation, he did by a supreme act of moral imagination." Weekly Standard contributor David Gelernter
wrote: "Jane Austen managed things differently in Emma, where 'the moral lesson emerges slowly,
tentatively, lightened with humor and irony.' But Austen and Dickens both evinced 'moral imagination' by
confronting the public with moral problems in unexpected guises, against unexpected backdrops--which
made old problems seem new. The same holds for most of the others on the list."
A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "erudite and scholarly and brimming with quotations--qualities
that will appeal more to those who reside in academe than in Spoon River." Gelernter wrote: "The single
most important thing about The Moral Imagination is the challenge it poses to its readers. To make sense of
this book, you must have your brain turned on every step of the way. Your first problem is to figure out what
the title means. (Burke introduced the phrase 'moral imagination.') The author isn't so much interested in
novel or imaginative ethical systems as in thinkers who present moral realities in original ways."
Further Readings
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
BOOKS
Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.
PERIODICALS
America, April 24, 2006, Peter Heinegg, review of The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel
Trilling, p. 23.
Booklist, October 1, 1999, review of One Nation, Two Cultures: A Moral Divide, p. 311; August, 2004,
Brendan Driscoll, review of The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments,
p. 1876; February 15, 2006, Ray Olson, review of The Moral Imagination, p. 21.
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Carleton Miscellany, fall, 1968, Robert E. Bonner, review of Victorian Minds: Essays on Nineteenth-
Century Intellectuals.
Commentary, November, 1968, Robert A. Nisbet, review of Victorian Minds; January, 2000, Paul
Johnson, review of One Nation, Two Cultures, p. 66; May, 2006, Michael J. Lewis, review of The Moral
Imagination, p. 69.
First Things, March, 2006, Joseph Bottum, review of The Moral Imagination, p. 40.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2004, review of The Roads to Modernity, p. 526; January 15, 2006, review of
The Moral Imagination, p. 71.
Library Journal, July, 2004, Jim Doyle, review of The Roads to Modernity, p. 97.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 27, 1987, Paul Johnson, review of The New History and the
Old.
Nation, September 20, 2004, Linda Colley, review of The Roads to Modernity, p. 37.
National Review, April 18, 1994, Colin Welch, review of On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on
Culture and Society, p. 48; April 3, 1995, Christie Davies, review of The De-Moralization of Society: From
Victorian Virtues to Modern Values, p. 63; November 22, 1999, Terry Teachout, review of One Nation,
Two Cultures, p. 51.
New Criterion, March, 2005, Keith Windschuttle, review of The Roads to Modernity, p. 64; April, 2006,
Roger Kimball, review of The Moral Imagination, p. 80.
New Leader, December 13, 1999, Tamar Jacoby, review of One Nation, Two Cultures, p. 6.
New Republic, May 15, 1995, David Bromwich, review of The De-Moralization of Society, p. 28.
New Statesman, December 6, 1968, A.S. Byatt, review of Victorian Minds.
New York Times Book Review, March 23, 1986, Neil McKendrick, review of Marriage and Morals among
the Victorians, and Other Essays; October 24, 2004, Scott McLemee, review of The Roads to Modernity.
Observer (London, England), October 6, 1968, John Gross, review of Victorian Minds.
Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1999, review of One Nation, Two Cultures, p. 67; May 31, 2004, review
of The Roads to Modernity, p. 61; December 5, 2005, review of The Moral Imagination, p. 39.
Society, November-December, 1994, David Kirkwood, review of On Looking into the Abyss, pp. 78, 83.
Times Literary Supplement, May 25, 1984, Harold Perkin, review of The Idea of Poverty: England in the
Early Industrial Age; July 25, 1986, Rosemary Ashton, review of Marriage and Morals among the
Victorians, and Other Essays; June 16, 2006, Kathryn Sutherland, review of The Moral Imagination, p.
30.
Weekly Standard, November 29, 2004, Diana Schaub, review of The Roads to Modernity, p. 31; June 5,
2006, David Gelernter, review of The Moral Imagination.
World & I, May, 2000, Edward S. Shapiro, review of One Nation, Two Cultures, pp. 275-279.
ONLINE
Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, http://www.ashbrook.org/ (February 3, 2007), biography.*
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2014 Gale, Cengage Learning.
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Source Citation
"Gertrude Himmelfarb." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Biography
in Context. Web. 29 July 2014.
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