The most recommended books about the Edwardian era

This is a fascinating biography of Agatha Christie, who emerges as truly exceptional.

She is the daughter of wealthy Edwardian parents, destined for a good marriage, but all that changes when the family's money is lost. Agatha dares to become a nurse in World War I – it's grueling work. She trains as a pharmacist, where she learns all about the poisons she would use in her books. She marries a dashing pilot who betrays her with another woman.

Despite the sadness and difficulties she encounters, Agatha makes her name as the 'Queen of Crime,’' the most famous crime writer in the world. Whether you read Christie or not, you'll find this story of a woman's life throughout the upheavals of the twentieth century compelling.

This is a brilliantly written fast-paced time travel adventure, mystery, and romance, all rolled into one. Conway’s descriptive writing style brings the characters and settings of 1912 and present-day vividly to life. The history field trip scene reminded me so much of my own university field trip to a local cemetery that I wondered if we’d been on the same course. However, this story is set in Birmingham rather than Liverpool, but the similarities were uncanny.

The author has really done his research too, but where a less skilled author might inform the reader through info-dumping, Conway conveys the sights, sounds, and historical details of Edwardian Moseley through action and dialogue. You feel as though you have travelled back in time with Rachel and Danny and are experiencing the story with them. There are so many twists and turns and unexpected reveals that you can’t help but keep reading. But… show more.

I read E.M. Forster's long-suppressed novel, Maurice, in college. It was the tale of an aristocratic university student in Edwardian England — the titular Maurice — who falls in love with a poor gamekeeper named Alec. Although Maurice and Alec ended up with each other at the end of the first book, I always questioned how their relationship could survive in repressive England. Alec is a modern sequel that attempts to answer just that.

As a working-class man, Alec enjoys some personal freedom in a society that thinks and expects very little of him. Yet maintaining a secretive gay relationship proves even more complicated when a world war interferes.

Written in an explicitly honest voice, this is probably the book about being gay and British that Forster could never have imagined writing.

Catherine Marshall’s masterpiece Christy is revered for a reason. This Edwardian-era coming-of-age story about a young teacher in an impoverished Appalachia village is not only a romantic page-turner, but also theologically rich, psychologically astute, and honest about the effects of poverty, violence, and social injustice. I’ve read Christy multiple times and continue to find it engaging and thought-provoking.

If you’re like me and a fan of Downton Abbey, then you’ll appreciate the well-researched Edwardian period details found in this charming story, as well as the sweet romance. Julia Foster is not your usual governess, having a remarkable backstory of her own, but the way she cares for the widowed William and his children is heart-warming and will captivate your heart. 

This book taught me so much I didn’t know about the women working in theatre in Edwardian Britain, particularly behind the scenes. They were by and large the antidote to the (male) actor-managers who ruled the roost over the West End at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. They were responsible for introducing Ibsen in his original form to cautious London audiences, and for creating something called the Actress’ Franchise League, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a broadly-researched book and very easy to read. 

This great book gives a comprehensive and amusing overview of English society in the Edwardian period and the battle between what the author calls the Established Order and New Ideas, as reflected in the theatre and women’s role in society in particular. There is a very funny description of the role of the Censor, an employee of the Lord Chamberlain called the Examiner of Plays, an ex-bank manager who made his own rules according to his own whim and was accountable to nobody. The book also covers topics such as the popularity of ‘theosophy’ and the occult; and the prevailing hypocrisy of the Old Order as epitomised in the attitude of the monarch, King Edward VII, who tolerated ‘irregular’ behaviour so long as it was discreet, and condemned public immorality while indulging in affairs left right and centre.

Known as the First Lady of interior decoration, de Wolfe (1865-1950) excelled in a predominantly male profession which she is credited with inventing. Her book which, is still thought of as a decorator’s bible, was first published in 1913. It’s a compilation of several of her chatty magazine articles so even though her clientele was elite the strong doses of common sense, wit, and sophistication in her voice have mass appeal. Described as an ornamental minimalist she upturned the oppressiveness of the Victorian and Edwardian sensibility by avoiding clutter, dark colors, and heavy draperies in favor of sparsely furnished, naturally lit rooms (which she considered to be optimistic) that seamlessly aligned themselves with their natural surroundings. In that sense, she was one of the first decorators to acknowledge nature and to emphasize the importance of incorporating garden and exterior views into interior planning.

I was a teenager the first time I picked up this book. Romance novels weren’t my thing, and considering this one was heavily marketed as such, I nearly overlooked it. But once I got past the swooning, steamy promotional packaging, I realized there was quite more to it. In some ways it planted the seed in my younger self for the storyteller I would eventually become. It tells the story of a woman who has lost hope for her mess of a life, only to be given the rare opportunity to experience past-life-regression and alternate versions of herself in several previous lifetimes. Readers are swept through the centuries in richly told settings as we watch her experience the loves, losses, and lessons that have all led to the circumstances of her current, present-day life. 

Pick up E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View and cue a Puccini aria. British author Forster wrote a lavishly romantic novel with a transgressive theme. Heroine Lucy Honeychurch struggles against her straitlaced Victorian background until a trip to Florence loosens her inhibitions. Does she marry her fiance, the arrogant Cecil Vyse or the Bohemian socialist George Emerson? Although the ending may be obvious, it is the vicarious trip through early 20th-century Tuscany—complete with a kiss in a field of violets—that is the delight.