This is a book full of wonderful details which can be hard to find elsewhere. What did Victorians brush their teeth with? What did it actually feel like to wear a corset? What was the best way to empty a chamber pot?
The book is structured as a day in the life and covers a range of areas – health, food, household work, clothing, sex. It gives an insight into the author’s own experience of living like a Victorian and is an ideal book for historical novelists, written with first-hand knowledge and real enthusiasm.
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,…
A novel for anyone who has ever wondered about the fate of Mrs Charles Dickens – Catherine Hogarth – and the appalling treatment she received at the hands of Britain’s most famous Victorian writer.
It’s a hugely enjoyable read, as we follow the fictional Dorothea Gibson coming to terms with the life she once shared with the ‘One and Only’ Alfred Gibson. It’s a story of fame and betrayal, the relationship between sisters, and what happens when a very public man re writes his own personal narrative.
This dazzling debut novel brings the spirit of Catherine Dickens--the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens--to life in the form of Dorothea “Dodo” Gibson, a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow of her husband, Alfred, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world.
Girl in a Blue Dress opens on the day of Alfred’s funeral. Dorothea is not among the throngs in attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. Her mourning must take place within the walls of her modest apartment, a parting gift from Alfred as he ushered her out of their shared home…
Nelly Ternan was a young Victorian actress who spent 13 years as the (largely) secret companion of Charles Dickens. While his family knew about her, she was excluded from his official biography, and it’s only in recent years that Nelly has been examined with any understanding or sympathy.
The Invisible Woman is a hefty biography but written in a very accessible style. You can feel the author’s fascination for her subject, as well as her determination to restore some truth and dignity to Nelly’s life.
Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens’s marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record.
In this remarkable work of biography and scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen rescues Nelly from the shadows of history, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place, but also providing a compelling…
The female private detective has been a staple of popular culture for 150 years, from Victorian lady sleuths to ‘busy-body spinsters’ and gun-toting modern PIs. But what about the real-life women behind the fictional tales – what crimes did they solve, and where are their stories?
In Private Inquiries, Caitlin Davies traces the history of the UK’s female investigators from the 1850s to the present day. Women like Victorian inquiry agent Antonia Moser, the first woman to open her own agency; and Liverpool sleuth Zena Scott-Archer, the first woman president of the World Association of Detectives. Caitlin also follows in the footsteps of her subjects, training to become a PI, and meeting modern investigators to find out the reality behind the fictional image.
