An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.

How to Find Out About the Victorian Period: A Guide to Sources of Information focuses on the Victorian period of Great Britain. The book first discusses the study of the Victorian period and general guides to the literature. The use of books, periodical articles, theses, and bibliographies in the study of this period in British history is emphasized. The text underscores the value of Victorian periodicals and newspapers in the study of the Victorian period. Guides to special collections and source materials on this period are discussed. These include guides to collection of books and manuscripts, libraries and their collections, archives and manuscripts, and government publications. The book also presents guides to the study of the Victorian church. These include encyclopedias and dictionaries, biographical works, and theses. Guides on the kind of education, development of science, visual arts, music, and literature of the Victorian period are also described. The text is a fine reference for readers who are interested in British history, particularly the Victorian era.

TRAVEL BACK IN TIME WITH THE BBC'S RUTH GOODMAN We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. But what was it like for a commoner - like you or me? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Catch the omnibus to work and do the laundry in your corset? How to be a Victorian is a radical new approach to history; a journey back in time more personal than anything before, illuminating the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work and play. Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living and this book will show you how. ______________________ 'Goodman skilfully creates a portrait of daily Victorian life with accessible, compelling, and deeply sensory prose' Erin Entrada Kelly 'We're lucky to have such a knowledgeable cicerone as Ruth Goodman . . . Revelatory' Alexandra Kimball 'Goodman's research is impeccable . . . taking the reader through an average day and presenting the oddities of life without condescension' Patricia Hagen

A reluctant lady sleuth finds she's investigating her own family. 1881, Sussex. With a drowned husband—the second love lost—an overbearing family, no longed-for child, and the responsibility of a huge baroque mansion, it's not surprising Lady Helena Whitcombe is overwhelmed. When attractive, mysterious, French physician Armand Fortier disturbs her first weeks of mourning with his theory of murder, Helena's reluctant and ineffective attempts at investigation are hardly life-changing—until the resulting revival in her long-abandoned herbalist studies bring her into confrontation with her past and her family's. Can Lady Helena survive bereavement the second time around? Can she stand up to her six siblings' assumption of the right to control her new life as a widow? And what role will Fortier—who, as a physician, is a most unsuitable companion for an earl's daughter—play in her investigations? Every family has its secrets. The Scott-De Quincy family has more than most.

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.

This collection of essays explores the questions of what counted as knowledge in Victorian Britain, who defined knowledge and the knowledgeable, by what means and by what criteria. During the Victorian period, the structure of knowledge took on a new and recognizably modern form, and the disciplines we now take for granted took shape. The ways in which knowledge was tested also took on a new form, with the rise of written examinations. New institutions of knowledge were created: museums were important at the start of the period, universities had become prominent by the end. Victorians needed to make sense of the sheer scale of new information, to popularize it, and at the same time to exclude ignorance and error - a role carried out by encyclopaedias and popular publications. By studying the Victorian organization of knowledge in its institutional, social, and intellectual settings, these essays contribute to our wider consideration of the complex and much debated concept of knowledge.

Professor Wheeler's widely-acclaimed survey of the nineteenth-century fiction covers both the major writers and their works and encompasses the genres and "minor" fiction of the period. This excellent introduction and reference source has been revised for this second edition to include new material on lesser-known writers and a comprehensively updated bibliography.