Elaine Hadley's Living Liberalism (2010) tackles the subject of "mid-Victorian liberalism" (roughly from the 1860s to 1880s), deconstructing what such a category actually means when applied to those who practiced and espoused it. Her book is makes these 2 major claims:
1) This period of liberalism desired order, predictability, and a certain "formalism" in its processes of cognition appropriate for the liberal subject or individual (Despite calls by major figures of liberalism like Mill or Arnold to eccentricity or "free play," respectively). This kind of cognition was supposed to posess a critical aloofness/disinterestedness from convention and orthodoxy
2) The term "abstract embodiment" describes how liberalism tried to negotiate a "paradox of living one's detachment." (The subject of her book is to find examples of this "abstract embodiment" in text).
Chapter 3 of her book tackles the formalism of the Fortnightly Review.
