W. E. Gladstone and the reconstruction of bronze age geography

Abstract

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), four times Prime Minister, was also the most prolific Victorian commentator on the Homeric corpus. In 1858 Gladstone published a three-volume collection of Homeric studies, including a curious cartographic reconstruction of the mental world of Homer as revealed in his epic poetry. Over a forty-five year period, Gladstone continued to publish in this area, in the interest primarily of elevating British education and culture. His interest in Bronze Age geography, a subordinate part of his general effort, is nevertheless of interest in its own right and, in his attempt to reconstruct Homer's mental map of the world, an early example of mental mapping.