How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

by Ruth Goodman

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, wonderful, and somewhat gruesome intricacies of Victorian life are vividly rendered here. How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious.

• ISBN10: 0871404850
• ISBN13: 9780871404855
• Publish Date: 4 November 2014 (first published 27 June 2013)
• Publish Status: Inactive
• Out of Print: 9 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: WW Norton & Co
• Imprint: Liveright Publishing Corporation
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Goodman steps back in time with a Mary Roach-esque enthusiasm, and I enjoyed the time travel. It’s one of the rare books that sheds the biases of looking back at the past. I greatly appreciate the fresh perspective— good and bad— on what I thought I knew about the Victorian era.

[wyvernfriend]

Excellent look at victorian life from rising in the morning to going to bed with a lot of citations.