Introduction
George Malcolm Young (29 April 1882 in Greenhithe, Kent – 18 November 1959 in Goring, Oxfordshire) was an English historian, most famous for his long essay on Victorian times in England, Portrait of an Age (1936).
Biography
Young was educated at St Paul's School and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1905 he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. From 1908 to 1920 he was employed as a civil servant, initially with the Board of Education and from 1917 with the Ministry of Reconstruction. For many years he was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum.
Portrait of an Age was an expanded version of the 89-page conclusion to Early Victorian England, a two-volume collection which Young had edited in 1934. Simon Schama has described it as "An immortal classic, the greatest long essay ever written."
Works
- Gibbon, 1932
- (ed.) Early Victorian England, 1830-1865. 2 vols, 1934.
- Charles I and Cromwell: An Essay, 1935
- Portrait of an Age, 1936
- Daylight and Champaign: essays, 1937
- The Government of Britain, 1941
- Burke, 1943
- Today and Yesterday: Collected Essays and Addresses, 1948
- Last Essays, 1950
- Stanley Baldwin, 1952
- Mr Gladstone
- Rights and Duties in the Modern State
- Scott and History
- The Good Society