Victorian politics and the linguistic turn

This article subjects a variety of works on nineteenth century politics to critical analysis, focusing on recent work in biography, popular politics, and on those works that have shown an interest in post-structuralist approaches. Mostly it examines texts produced between 1993 and about 1997 with a view to sensing an historiographical work, it brings the work of some of its adherents - perhaps especially James Vernon - under critical scrutiny and concludes that a price has been paid for the attempt at constructing a 'cultural politics'. In particular the article expresses alarm at the apparent incoherence and sub-literacy of some post-structural statements.