How to be a Victorian

by Ruth Goodman

How To Be a Victorian - travel back in time with the BBC's Ruth Goodman

Step into the skin of your ancestors . . .

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? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Catch the omnibus to work and do the laundry in your corset?

Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living . . .

How To Be A Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a radical new approach to history; a journey back in time more intimate, personal and physical than anything before. It is one told from the inside out - how our forebears interacted with the practicalities of their world - and it is a history of those things that make up the day-to-day reality of life, matters so small and seemingly mundane that people scarcely mention them in their diaries or letters. Moving through the rhythm of the day, from waking up to the sound of a knocker-upper man poking a stick at your window, to retiring for nocturnal activities, when the door finally closes on twenty four hours of life, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work and play.

If you liked A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England or If Walls Could Talk, you will love this book.

Ruth Goodman is an independent scholar and historian, specialising in social and domestic history. She works with a wide range of museums and other academic institutions exploring the past of ordinary people and their activities. She has presented a number of BBC 2 television series, including Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm and Wartime Farm. In each of these programs, she spent a year recreating life from a different period. As well as her involvement with the Farm series, Ruth makes frequent appearances on The One Show and Coast.

• ISBN10: 0670921351
• ISBN13: 9780670921355
• Publish Date: 27 June 2013
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 12 November 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Viking
• 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.