"The character of this work, so far as it consists of extracts from the writings of others, will be seen from the following letter from one who is well known in the literary world, and who himself maintained a discussion with Mr. Spencer, carried on on both sides with great brilliancy and power: "Dear Sir: I beg to thank you for your courtesy in forwarding to me the series of papers in the Boston Investigator, which I should have acknowledged much sooner but for the fact that it was sent to the publishers whilst I was away from home and about the country. The extracts you have so carefully prepared seem to me to have been made with great accuracy and intelligence, and I think they should be satisfactory to Mr. Spencer, as they are to myself". Interspersed with and following the extracts here referred to, the author has made criticisms of his own, which, it is hoped, will at least be found worthy of thoughtful consideration"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

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The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) was a colossus of the Victorian age. His works ranked alongside those of Darwin and Marx in the development of disciplines as wide ranging as sociology, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and psychology. In this acclaimed study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years and now available in paperback, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man that dispels the plethora of misinformation surrounding Spencer and shines new light on the broader cultural history of the nineteenth century. In this major study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man. Using archival material and contemporary printed sources, Francis creates a fascinating portrait of a human being whose philosophical and scientific system was a unique attempt to explain modern life in all its biological, psychological and sociological forms. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life fills what is perhaps the last big biographical gap in Victorian history. An exceptional work of scholarship it not only dispels the plethora of misinformation surrounding Spencer but shines new light on the broader cultural history of the nineteenth century. Elegantly written, provocative and rich in insight it will be required reading for all students of the period.

This volume attempts to give a short account of Herbert Spencer's life, an appreciation of his characteristics, and a statement of some of the services he rendered to science. Prominence has been given to his Autobiography, to his Principles of Biology, and to his position as a cosmic evolutionist; but little has been said of his psychology and sociology, which require another volume, or of his ethics and politics, or of his agnosticism-the whetstone of so many critics. Our appreciation of Spencer's services is therefore partial, but it may not for that reason fail in its chief aim, that of illustrating the working of one of the most scientific minds that ever lived, -whose excess of science was almost unscientific.-