Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920

“Offers . . . a clearer insight into the scope and function of philanthropy in political and private life and the impacts that women writers and activists had.” — Edith Wharton Review From the mid-nineteenth century until the rise of the modern welfare state in the early twentieth century, Anglo-American philanthropic giving gained an unprecedented measure of cultural authority as it changed in kind and degree. Civil society took on the responsibility for confronting the adverse e