The present text has chronology unashamedly as its starting-point, taking the years 1845 to 1855 as it framework... As should be clear, however, the framework adopted isnot rigid or binding. If history is indeed lived forwards and read backwards, then events in the 1840s may form part of processes of the 1820s or of the 1860s as well as being "now". Each of the three trials presented here demonstrates the importance of such a reach, suggesting that the mid-century slot is simply an excuse for looking at the whole. This, though, is not my aim, and I hope to make something of the very ordinary proposition that these years were not only like all others in which humans live, love and die (and so leave some good stories), but can also be seen as distinctive in themselves and in relation to the "conjuncture" of today ^ien