There is more to the Victorian era than respectability, economic success and the grudging solution of the practical social problems they encountered. The politicians, generals and commercial classes have been well covered in popular history books, but there were also thinkers of radical and unsettling ideas who had a real influence at the time. Many were women, many from the middle and working classes, and almost all outside the power structure. They were by no means all fringe ideas either in 1840, Queen Victoria herself attended a séance, for example. The book is a biography focussed history of some of these challenging ideas and the men and women who promoted them. It looks at radical thinkers and movers, the people who stepped outside of the social norm and propelled the Victorians towards the modern day. AUTHOR: James Hobson has taught and written about History as teacher for twenty-five years. His first book was The Dark Days of Georgian Britain, a history of the Regency period. His other Pen and Sword books are about the English Civil war. His new book extends his interest in radicalism and protest into the Victorian era. 40 b/w illustrations