- Additional Authors
- Project Muse
- Description
- 1 online resource (pages cm)
- Summary
- "For almost 300 years, an organisation has quietly tried to change almost every aspect of life in Britain. That organisation is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, often known simply as the Royal Society of Arts. It has acted as Britain's private national improvement agency, in every way imaginable - essentially, a society for the improvement of everything and anything. This book is its history. From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Society has tried to change Britain's art, industry, laws, music, environment, education, and even culture. It has sometimes even succeeded. It has been a prize-fund for innovations, a platform for Victorian utilitarian reformers, a convenor of disparate interest groups, and the focal point for social movements. There has never been an organisation quite like it, constantly having to reinvent itself to find something new to improve. The book rewrites many of the old official histories of the Society and updates them to the present day, incorporating over half a century of further research into the periods they covered, along with new insights into the organisation's evolution. The book reveals the hidden and often surprising history of how a few public-spirited people tried to make their country better, offering lessons from their triumphs and their failures for all would-be reformers today"--
- Uniform Title
- Arts and Minds (Online)
- Book collections on Project MUSE.
- Alternative Title
- Arts and Minds (Online)
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Access (note)
- Access restricted to authorized users.
- Source of Description (note)
- Description based on print version record.
- Contents
- Patrons of the Nation -- Exciting an Emulation -- Peculiar Genius -- Jack of All Trades -- The Greatest Beauty for the Greatest Number -- For the Masses, by the Masses -- A System to Force down the General Throat -- An Education for the Whole People -- A Society Against Ugliness -- "Society of Snobs" -- Rise of the Managers -- Furious Brainstorming -- Building a Social Movement?
- OCLC
- ssj0002290813
- Author
Howes, Anton.
- Title
Arts and Minds [electronic resource] : How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation / Anton Howes.
- Imprint
Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2020] (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2015)
- Series
Book collections on Project MUSE.
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
- Note
Description based on print version record.
- Connect to:
- Added Author
Project Muse.
- LCCN
2019026884