Commentary

[in chronological order]

The Cheerful Pessimist by Irwin Stelzer

– Stelzer, Irwin, "The Cheerful Pessimist," Standpoint, February 26, 2020.
On December 30, as the year ended, so did the life of Gertrude Himmelfarb. She was 97. When I last saw her about a month earlier, it was at a small meeting she convened in her apartment in response to a request by a colleague for comments on the manuscript of… More

A Brilliant Life of Ideas, Insight, and Politics

– Johnson, Daniel, "A Brilliant Life of Ideas, Insight, and Politics," The Critic (UK), February 2020.
Excerpt: Gertrude Himmelfarb was born in Brooklyn, the 1920s were already roaring. When she died aged 97 on 30 December, the 2020s were just dawning. Her parents, Max and Bertha, were Jewish immigrants from Russia who spoke Yiddish at home. They were poor yet… More

My Mother Gertrude Himmelfarb by Bill Kristol

– Kristol, Bill, "My Mother, Gertrude Himmelfarb," Commentary, February, 2020.
Excerpt: My parents, Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, moved to Washington from New York in 1987. My father wrote about their move in the New Republic because, needless to say, if you’re an intellectual, you don’t just move from one city to another,… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Politics of Virtue

– "Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Politics of Virtue," The Economist, January 11, 2020.
The Bagehot column of the Economist on Gertrude Himmelfarb: The last of the great Victorian intellectuals died on December 30th. Gertrude Himmelfarb wasn’t a Victorian in the literal sense, either chronologically or geographically: she was born in… More

Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Charen, Mona, "Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb," National Review, January 3, 2020.
Excerpt: When I emailed Mary Ellen Bork that our mutual friend, Gertrude Himmelfarb, a.k.a. Bea Kristol, had passed away at 97, she replied, after expressions of sadness, “Now she and Irving can resume their conversation.” Irving was Irving Kristol,… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Terzian, Philip, "Gertrude Himmelfarb," Washington Examiner, January 2, 2020.
Excerpt: Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died last week in Washington, D.C., at 97, was everywhere described as a “historian of ideas,” which is certainly true. But she was also a philosopher, essayist, and scholar who wrote about the past with one eye… More

Remembering the Eminent Scholar of the Victorians

– Keiper, Adam, "Remembering the Eminent Scholar of the Victorians," The Bulwark, January 2, 2020.
Excerpt: ertrude Himmelfarb, a historian who helped resuscitate the reputation of the Victorians and a public intellectual who shaped neoconservatism, died this week at the age of 97. In a writing career astonishingly long—some seven decades separate her… More

The Last Victorian Sage by Myron Magnet

– Magnet, Myron, "The Last Victorian Sage," City Journal, January 2, 2020.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, our foremost historian of ideas and one of the nation’s greatest historians of any stamp, died Monday at 97. Though a Washingtonian for the last decades of her long and productive life, the Brooklyn-born Himmelfarb was among the last of… More

Telegraph (UK) Obituary

– Telegraph (UK) Obituary, December 31, 2019.
GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB, the American historian, who has died aged 97, was known for her studies of the intellectual history of the Victorian era and as a conservative cultural critic, commenting in astringent terms on virtue, morality and modern values; she was… More

Times (UK) Obituary

– "Gertrude Himmelfarb," The Times, December 31, 2019.
When historians find their work cited in political debate, it is usually to provide an incidental gloss, a brief claim to intellectual backing well buried in a policy speech. The work of Gertrude Himmelfarb, however, a formidable historian of the life and… More

R.I.P. Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Ahmari, Sohrab, "R.I.P. Gertrude Himmelfarb," New York Post, December 31, 2019.
Excerpt: Gertrude Himmelfarb, a giant of 20th-century American letters, died Monday; she was 97. Reviewing her 1968 masterpiece, “Victorian Minds,” in Commentary, the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote: “Doubtless, God could create a better interpreter… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb

– John Podhoretz, "Gertrude Himmelfarb," Commentary, December 31, 2019.
Excerpt: Irving Kristol told this story about his courtship of his wife Bea—they met and they knew and he asked her what she wanted in life and she said she wanted to publish ten books. They married. When I heard Irving relay this story, they were both in… More

The Historian of Moral Revolution by David Brooks

– Brooks, David, "The Historian of Moral Revolution," The Atlantic, December 31, 2019.
David Brooks writes about Gertrude Himmelfarb: Economists measure economic change and journalists describe political change, but who captures moral change? Who captures the shifts in manners, values, and mores, how each era defines what is admirable and what… More

The Historian as Moralist by Yuval Levin

– Levin, Yuval, "The Historian as Moralist," National Review, December 31, 2019.
The passing of Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died on December 30th at the age of 97, is a loss felt keenly by all who had the good fortune to know her. To family and friends, she was known as Bea Kristol, and embodied character and decency, good humor, and good… More

Anglo-Jewish Attitudes by Asael Abelman

– Abelman, Asael. "Anglo-Jewish Attitudes." Mosaic magazine. July 20, 2017.
Excerpt: The cultural historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has arguably done more than anyone to shape our understanding of Victorian Britain. She has also written books on the 18th-century Enlightenment as well as numerous essays on the formation of 20th-century… More

Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot – Judaism and the Human Future: A Victorian Vision

– Smith, Suzanne. "Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot - Judaism and the Human Future: A Victorian Vision." The Harvard Theological Review103, no. 2. 2010.
Abstract: In reflecting upon the fact that religious language survives long after the practices and the devotion that gave rise to it have departed, Alasdair Maclntyre once observed that what “we” are left with is “a religious language which… More

Study of Himmelfarb’s Career and Life

– Frankel, OZ. "Gertrude Himmelfarb." Jewish Women's Archive: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. March 20, 2009.
Abstract: Gertrude Himmelfarb has dedicated her long and noted career as a historian of ideas to the study of nineteenth-century Britain, an intellectual commitment that has been guided by a profound identification with the moral atmosphere of the Victorian… More

Look back and learn what’s bright and good…

– Feigel, Lara. "Look back and learn what's bright and good..." The Guardian. 2008
Abstract: The roads to modernity is an intelligent history of the Enlightenments in Britain, France and America that masks a contemporary political manifesto. Gertrude Himmelfarb emphasises the importance of the British Enlightenment and the… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb: Brown’s Guru

– Vallely, Paul. "Gertrude Himmelfarb: Brown's guru." The Independent. November 02, 2007.
Abstract: Tony Blair, you will recall, was the chap with the Big Tent. Nothing so crass as that for Gordon Brown. But consider the speech he gave on liberty and the need for a new Bill of Rightsearlier this month. And look at the list of sources he cited:… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb Profile

– "Himmelfarb, Gertrude." Encyclopaedia Judaica, Encyclopedia.com. 2009.
Abstract: HIMMELFARB, GERTRUDE (1922– ), historian of Victorian England. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Max and Bertha (Lerner) Himmelfarb, she received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1942 and also attended the Seminary College of Jewish Studies at the… More

Review: The Roads to Modernity by Gertrude Himmelfarb

– NUECHTERLEIN, JAMES A. Commentary Magazine. 2004.
Abstract: When I was in graduate school in the early 1960’s, a fellow student amused the rest of us by circulating a course description he had run across in the catalog of an obscure Bible college in the South. The course was a standard yearlong… More

‘The Roads to Modernity’: Freedom Philosophers

– McLemee, Scott, "The Roads to Modernity: Freedom Philosophers" New York Times, October 12, 2004.
Abstract: IN 1995, William Kristol published a manifesto-like essay called “The Politics of Liberty, the Sociology of Virtue” — reprinted, the following year, as the final chapter of “The Essential Neoconservative Reader.” It was… More

Can History Do Without Theory?

– Gordon, David. "Can History Do Without Theory?" Review of The New History And The Old: Critical Essays And Reappraisals, by Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Mises Review 10, No. 2. Summer 2004.
Abstract: Gertrude Himmelfarb is an intellectual historian of great distinction. She has specialized in British nineteenth-century history; and her book on Lord Acton, her study of nineteenth-century thought on poverty, and her collection Victorian… More

Gertrude Himmelfarb — National Endowment for the Humanities

– Caroline, Kim. "Gertrude Himmelfarb." National Endowment for the Humanities. 2004.
Abstract: As one of the leading scholars of Victorian studies, Gertrude Himmelfarb has tried to dispel stereotypes about the Victorian world. “It’s not quite a respectable word yet,” she says. “It’s now used as an epithet, as a… More

Review: Gertrude Himmelfarb on The Victorians and Ourselves

– Beum, Robert. "Gertrude Himmelfarb on The Victorians and Ourselves." The Sewanee Review 105, no. 2. 1997.
Abstract: Gertrude Himmelfarb probably knows more about Victorian England than anyone alive. She knows the era’s many defamers no less intimately and has faced them all along as a scholarly magician pulling dumbfounding facts and logical chains out of… More

Recent Writings on Economic and Social Freedom

– Richardson, Charles. "Recent Writings on Economic and Social Freedom." Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform 3, no. 4. 1996.
Read more on Jstor: Recent Writings on Economic and Social Freedom

Review: Victoria’s Virtues

– Quinn, John F. "Victoria's Virtues." The Review of Politics 58, no. 3. 1996.
Abstract: Gertrude Himmelfarb has never been the sort to shy away from controversy. In her previous works, she has taken to task social historians, radical feminists, deconstructionists and academics who refuse to use citations. In her latest effort, The… More

Review: Family Virtues

– Jacobs, Alan. "Family Virtues." The American Scholar 64, no. 4. 1995.
Abstract: Some years ago the popular historian Barbara Tuchman published A Distant Mirror, a book that claims that in the struggles of the fourteenth century we can discern the out- lines of our own time’s conflicts. In The De- Moralization of Society a… More

Review: Himmelfarb, Mill, and the Dodges of Liberty

– Fromm, Harold. "Himmelfarb, Mill, and the Dodges of Liberty." The Hudson Review 47, no. 3. 1994.
Abstract: What happens to our passion for literature when any “text” qualifies as literature, when theory is elevated above poetry and the critic above the poet, and when literature, interpretation, and theory alike are said to be indeterminate… More

Review: A Victorian Mind

– Malchow, H. L. "A Victorian Mind: Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty, and the Moral Imagination." Victorian Studies 35, no. 3. 1992.
Abstract: THE PUBLICATION OF POVERTY AND COMPASSION: THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF THE Late Victorians is the culmination of a major endeavor in intellectual history- one that has spanned the 1980s, and is, to use a Germanism of which Beatrice Webb was fond,… More

Review: Nervous Rapprochements

– Fromm, Harold. "Nervous Rapprochements." The Hudson Review 41, no. 2. 1988.
Abstract: THAT HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS HAS DONE UP Gertrude Himmelfarb’s new collection in noteworthy style-elegant dust jacket, handsome binding, heavyweight antique-white paper, attractive typefaces, and at a relatively low price for a university… More

Review: Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians by Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Turner, Frank M. The American Historical Review 92, no. 3. 1987.
Abstract: Gertrude Himmelfarb has become that rarest of entities, a historian who thinks before she writes whose prose demands that her reader rethink long- cherished positions. Like the Victorian intellectuals whose works she has illuminated for over three… More

The “Dependence of License upon Faith”: Miss Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Second Reform Act

– Smith, F. B. "The "Dependence of License upon Faith": Miss Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Second Reform Act." Journal of British Studies 9, no. 1. 1969.
Abstract: When Miss Himmelfarb published “The Politics of Democracy: the English Reform Act of 1867” in this journal in November 1966,1 she drew one courteous protest, the substance of which, on W. E. Gladstone as “Utilitarian,” she… More

Review: Victorian Minds by Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Gordon, Scott. Victorian Studies 12, no. 3. 1969.
Abstract: MOST OF THE CHAPTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE reprintings of essays originally published elsewhere – the earliest in 1949 and the latest in 1966. Some of them are scholarly papers based on research in depth, some are essays written for popular… More

Review: On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill by Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. "The American Revolution in the Political Theory of Lord Acton." The Journal of Modern History 21, no. 4. 1949.
Abstract: Among the great number of recent writings on Mill, this book is distinguished by its originality, and even where there is disagreement, one is refreshed by an encounter with an informed and provocative and politically relevant argument. Read more on… More