A “delightful reader’s companion” (The New York Times) to the great nineteenth-century British novels of Austen, Dickens, Trollope, the Brontës, and more, this lively guide clarifies the sometimes bizarre maze of rules and customs that governed life in Victorian England. For anyone who has ever wondered whether a duke outranked an earl, when to yell “Tally Ho!” at a fox hunt, or how one landed in “debtor’s prison,” this book serves as an indispensable historical and literary resource. Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the “plums” in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life—both “upstairs” and “downstairs. An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from “ague” to “wainscoting,” the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day.

"A Woman of No Importance" is a play by Oscar Wilde, which became a phenomenon of its time. Like Wilde's other society plays, "A Woman of No Importance" satirizes the English upper-class society. The plot centers around the revelation of Mrs. Arbuthnot's long-concealed secret. As the events develop, the author casts light on the perversions in Victorian upper-class society's morals, hypocritical conventions, and general views and conduct.

A collection of thirty-two foxhunting stories populated by horses, hounds, challenging obstacles, and unforgettable personalities. Accompany Norman Fine to Ireland, England, Canada, and across the United States as he meets, hunts with, and is educated by the foremost Masters, huntsmen, hound breeders, and sporting historians of the last fifty years. Fine's stories, most of them previously published in the U.S. and England, are connected chronologically by new material in which the author explains how he came to meet these larger-than-life characters, what role they played in his development from horseman to foxhunter, and how he came to hunt with their hounds.

In November 1905, the peak of foxhunting season across the Midlands of England and up and down the east coast of North America, two towns in Virginia saw the coming of illustrious and wealthy men. There was to be a contest, a Great Hound Match, between two packs of foxhounds, one English and one American. The English hounds carried, on their great stout forearms and deep chests, the monumental weight of centuries of foxhunting in England and were expected to make their hound dog ancestors proud of their New World conquest. The American hounds were expected to show those stodgy old Brits how it was done over here—with spunk and intuition, individuality, drive, and nerve. This book chronicles this ostentatious match of Britain versus America at the turn of the century.