First published in 1967 Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age presents a collection of ‘documents’, textual and pictorial, and human, illustrating and describing what the author calls, one of the most vigorous, vital, fertile periods in the history of the modern world. The material has been arranged in eight main chapters most of which have subdivisions. The first chapter has for its subject The Great Exhibition of 1851, and this is followed by life and labour, a series of picturesquely detailed description of London and the great industrial regions. Young England is concerned with the juvenile workers in factory and workshop. Next, we have the longest chapter in the book Queen Victoria's sisters containing number of documents describing the life of women in domestic service, the London dress factories and workshops, pit- banks and brickfields and in agriculture. Closely connected with this is home sweet home and then the chapter on the sanitary idea. Workers Unite! echoes Karl Marx but it has to do with the British working men who founded the modern trade union and cooperative movements. The last chapter talks about prostitutes and her clients and various environments in which the trade was carried on. This is an essential read for students of British history.

First published in 1995. The essays in this volume demonstrate how Victorian women took up various positions along a continuum that ranged from the desire of Shelley’s creature for the power and acceptance it associated with the house to the rejection of Brontë’s heroine of the immobility and powerlessness she ultimately experienced there. More specifically the essays in this volume explore the nature of the Victorian woman’s domestic relations by centring in one activity that most informed her place in what was often the father’s house: housekeeping. The essays in this edition determine how writers, especially novelists, both male and female, used housekeeping to construct, reconstruct, represent, and inscribe the female self and condition. This title will be of interest to students of history and literature.

First published in 1972, this book contains a collection of ten essays that document the feminine stereotypes that women fought against, and only partially erased, a hundred years ago. In an introductory essay, Martha Vicinus describes the perfect Victorian lady, showing that the ideal was a combination of sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption and worship of the family hearth. Indeed, this model in some form was the ideal of all classes as the perfect lady’s only functions were marriage and procreation. The text offers a valuable insight into Victorian culture and society.

A unique, in-depth view of Victorian London during the record-breaking summer of 1858, when residents both famous and now-forgotten endured “The Great Stink” together While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence. Ashton mines Victorian letters and gossip, diaries, court records, newspapers, and other contemporary sources to uncover historically crucial moments in the lives of three protagonists—Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Disraeli. She also introduces others who gained renown in the headlines of the day, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx, William Thackeray, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. Ashton reveals invisible threads of connection among Londoners at every social level in 1858, bringing the celebrated city and its citizens vibrantly to life.