SOURCE: Quinn, John F. “Victoria's Virtues.” Review of Politics 58, no. 3 (summer 1996): 636-39.

In the following review, Quinn praises Himmelfarb's The De-Moralization of Society as a valuable, provocative, erudite, and elegantly written work.

Gertrude Himmelfarb has never been the sort to shy away from controversy. In her previous works, she has taken to task social historians, radical feminists, deconstructionists and academics who refuse to use citations. In her latest effort, The De-Moralization of Society, she sets out to accomplish two tasks: to offer an objective account of the attitudes of the Victorians and to consider whether contemporary American and English policymakers could not learn some lessons from them. This decision of Miss Himmelfarb's to compare America and England of the 1990s with England in the 1890s—and her pronounced preference for the latter—insure that this work will receive more popular scrutiny than any of her earlier writings.

Much...