Foreword : Sir Brian Harrison / Keith Thomas -- Preface / Bruce Kinzer, Molly Baer Kramer, and Richard Trainor -- Introduction / Bruce Kinzer -- Instruments of reform : political parties, pressure groups, and their interrelationship in Modern Britain / Martin Ceadel -- Seeing like a surveyor : imagining rural reform in the early nineteenth-century UK / Joanna Innes -- J.S. Mill and protestant nonconformity / Bruce Kinzer -- Another look at Victorian university reform : the case of Exeter College Oxford / Richard Trainor -- Inexhaustible vicissitudes : the DNB, OUP and the ODNB, from Sir Leslie Stephen to Sir Brian Harrison / David Cannadine -- Britain in the 1880s : the industrial remuneration conference of 1885 / Lawrence Goldman -- J.B. Mays and juvenile delinquency / Ross McKibbin -- Pressure from within : internecine conflict in the English animal protection movement, 1950-1975 / Molly Baer Kramer -- Ladies in a Lords' House: Women in the House of Lords Since 1958 / Duncan Sutherland -- 'An evil document' : the reform of professional footballers' contracts in England and Wales / Alex May -- Why did Wales stay in the union in the early 20th century? / Alvin Jackson -- The publications of Brian Harrison.

"The essays in this volume, taken together, span the era of British history from 1780 to the present that has engrossed the attention of Brian Harrison in a career of more than fifty years. In keeping with his diverse interests, they vary widely in subject matter. Yet each contributes, in some fashion, to an appreciation of the complexities of reform in modern Britain. Throughout his career Harrison has demonstrated an unwavering interest in social movements and pressure groups. He has analysed the organisation of reform movements and their bases of support; explored the aspirations and beliefs motivating individuals to start or join such movements; and examined the ideas and ideals shaping their conception of human improvement. No one has done more to show that the significance of a reform movement's triumphs and disappointments can be grasped only in relation to the forces amassed to resist its claims. The essays gathered here, on the Harrisonian theme of reform and its complexities, form an acknowledgment of the massive mark their honouree has made on the study of modern British history. They are preceded by a Foreword composed by Keith Thomas and an editorial Introduction tracing the course of Harrison's scholarship and connecting that scholarship to the substance of the essays. The volume encompasses both wide-ranging analytical investigations and telling case studies. All have new things to say on the subject of reform and its complexities in modern Britain."-- Provided by publisher.