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A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life
by Ruth Goodman
Ruth Goodman believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling and fanciful guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work celebrates the ordinary lives of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From waking up to the rapping of a "knocker-upper man" on the window pane to lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics, from slipping opium to the little ones to finally retiring to the bedroom for the ideal combination of "love, consideration, control and pleasure," the weird, wonderful, and somewhat gruesome intricacies of Victorian life are vividly rendered here. How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious. 131 illustrations, 8 pages of color
"Starred Review. Goodman's impeccably researched account will raise readers' eyebrows with her adventures… [Her] charming guide ... succeeds in presenting 'a more intimate, personal and physical sort of history.'" - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Goodman skillfully creates a portrait of daily Victorian life with accessible, compelling, and deeply sensory prose… Compulsively readable." - Library Journal
"A lively, expert resource for historical minutiae." - Kirkus
"Exuberant, absorbing." - A. N. Wilson
"A triumph." - Judith Flanders
This information about How to Be a Victorian was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ruth Goodman is a historian of British social and domestic life. She has advised the Royal Shakespeare Company's Globe Theatre and presented a number of BBC television series, including Victorian Farm. She lives in England.
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