The Younger Pitt: Volume I, The Years of Acclaim

The Younger Pitt #1

by John Ehrman

Ten years of work have gone into the writing of John Ehrman's powerful biography of the younger William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury in England during the supremely important period of political transition, parliamentary reform, and war against France that marked the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth. With incisive scholarship, this authoritative life recounts the story of how a great Prime Minister rescued his country from the brink of bankruptcy and helped set it on the path to a century of greatness.

More than fifty years have passed since the last full-scale biography of the second William Pitt based upon original sources was undertaken. Since then the Namier revolution in the field of political history and other work which has been under way on the study of the late eighteenth-century government, have enlarged our knowledge of Pitt's times and made necessary a fresh interpretation of his life and achievements. John Ehrman throws new light on the complex political power structure of the period, when the two-party system had not yet crystallized and individual Members of Parliament, with their shifting loyalties and diverse interests, were a real factor to be reckoned with. He shows engrossingly the working of a notable ministry in one of the great periods of British expansion, and the effects of an intense public life on a highly unusual public character.

A precocious youth, the younger Pitt was born in 1759 and educated at Cambridge. The present volume describes his auspicious origins and traces his meteoric career--Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, Prime Minister at twenty-four--to an apex of success. These were the years of acclaim. Walter Bagehot has written that one of the most important things about the young Minister was that 'he came to power with a fresh mind. . . . An old man of the world has no great objects, no telling enthusiasm, no large proposals, no noble reforms.' Pitt took office at the end of the American Revolution, when Britain's finances seemed precarious and its morale was shaken. It is a measure of his achievement that when Gibbon visited England in 1787 after a lapse of four years, he 'rejoyced in the apparent increase of wealth and prosperity which might be fairly divided between the spirit of the nation and the wisdom of the Minister.'

The next volume, after describing Pitt's first great reverse in foreign affairs, the Ochakov crisis with Russia, will move to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars: the conduct of the war itself, and the troubles at home. It will show the young Minister of a successful peacetime decade grappling, at a turning point in history, with one of the most prolonged crises that his country had ever known.

Brilliantly detailed and consistently engrossing, the biography re-creates the great Prime Minister's career against the intricate political, social, and economic background of his era.

Genres: History, Biography

710 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

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The son of a businessman, John Patrick William Ehrman was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1947. Though a specialist in British history in the late-17th and 18th centuries, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office and wrote two of the volumes of the official history of Britain in the Second World War. After publishing a volume on the Royal Navy in the war of William III, he turned his attention to writing a multi-volume biography of William Pitt the Younger, a project that would occupy the next four decades of his life.

Ehrman was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1970 and served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1971 until 1985 and as a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts from 1976 until 1994. He was the head of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust from 1989 until 1994, and he served twice as vice-president of the Navy Records Society.

Reviews

[Windsor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very decent book. Not on Pitt, however, but more on his times. This book makes more sense to be structured that way because of how public a figure Pitt is. Drags for about the first 1/3 of the book, very enjoyable after :)

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Pitt the Younger was a precocious politician who became prime minister as the tender age of twenty-four. For the next eighteen years he presided over Britain's recovery from the loss of the American colonies and addressed the growing challenge posed by the French Revolution. John Ehrman's book, the first of a three-volume biography of Pitt, offers an description of Pitt's youth and his early years as prime minister, culminating in his successful management of the Regency Crisis in 1788-9. Yet it offers much more than just an account of his life. To adequately explain his subject's actions and policies, Ehrman also provides a thorough examination of politics and government in late 18th century Britain. The level of detail is impressive, demonstrating Ehrman's thorough understanding of the personalities Pitt dealt with and the problems he faced as prime minister. Though there is little of Pitt's personal life in these pages, this is more reflective of his lack of one rather than any omission on the author's part. The result can be exhausting, but it is unlikely to be surpassed as a comprehensive examination of Pitt's life and times, and it indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand this critical figure.