How To Be A Victorian - Hardcover

Goodman, Ruth

4.24

6,839 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670921351 ISBN 13: 9780670921355

Publisher: Viking, 2013

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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.

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About the Author:

Popular Historian Ruth Goodman is an expert in nineteenth-century social and domestic history and has presented a number of BBC television series, including Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm. She spent ten years as a historical advisor to the Royal Shakespeare Company's Globe Theatre and also appeared in the BBC2 programme 'Tales from the Banquet Hall'. She is a regular presenter on The One Show and has co-authored three books, including the Number One Bestseller Victorian Farm.

Review:

Written with such passion that one cannot help but be carried along . . . Will fascinate and inform anyone who is in any way interested in Victorian ways of life -- Dr Ian Mortimer, author of 'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England' A delightful read . . . allows us to see how the Victorians lived from day to day. A triumph -- Judith Flanders, author of 'The Victorian City' Shocking, exciting, wonderful -- Clive Anderson * BBC Radio 4 * Written with such passion that one cannot help but be carried along . . . Will fascinate and inform anyone who is in any way interested in Victorian ways of life -- Dr Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England A delightful read . . . allows us to see how the Victorians lived from day to day. A triumph -- Judith Flanders, author of The Victorian City Shocking, exciting, wonderful -- Clive Anderson * BBC Radio 4 * I absolutely love this book. Exuberant, absorbing ... there's scarcely a detail of Victorian life Ruth has not tried -- A N Wilson * Mail on Sunday * Ruth - a woman who possesses so much elbow grease that she could probably can the overflow to sell on the side * Independent * Goodman's enthusiasm for history is as palpable as her contempt for misty-eyed interpretations of it * Telegraph * Beetonian, compendious * Guardian * Highly readable, often amusing and sometimes shocking, this is popular history at its best * BBC Who Do You Think You Are magazine *

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