Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR
A “revelatory” (Wall Street Journal) romp through the intimate details of Victorian life, by an historian who has cheerfully endured them all.
Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious, the “the cheapest time-travel machine you’ll find” (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an … machine you’ll find” (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an historian who believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own firsthand adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work “imagines the Victorians as intrepid survivors” (New Republic) of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics to slipping opium to the little ones, Goodman’s account of Victorian life “makes you feel as if you could pass as a native” (The New Yorker).more
How to Be a Victorian
By ruthgoodman
Ms Goodman presents a wealth of material about life in Victorian Britain and her own experiences living that life style. She made me glad I didn’t in that era
Informative
A great companion to Jane Austin’s novels; it explains many of the social things that happen or are mentioned in them.
A lot of examination and religion on a rather narrow range of info from diaries and journals. Not for me.
Informative and amusing
A great research book for my time travel novel taking place in Victorian England. I was impressed by the amount of detail and accuracy from the author. There’s a good balance of explaining bad and good practices from the time period. Even if I hadn’t been researching for a project, it still would have been interesting to read.
Oh my goodness, I loved this book. As a writer of historical romance set in the 1800s, I was looking for more insight into the era, and this was perfect. Seriously amazing.
Written by a lady who not only knows the history, politics, and social issues of the era, she also happens to do a lot of historical recreation, so she has hands-on knowledge of a lot of the day-to-day things she talks about. For example, in one chapter she talks about clothes, and she goes not only into detail of what the clothes were but how they were made and what they feel like to wear. As an author, it has a lot of really great details that I can use to describe the world my characters are in.
If you’re interested in what life was like in the 1800s this is the perfect book for you. I’ve read quite a few, and this is by far the best. It was both comprehensive in painting a broad picture of the era and going down into detail about the minutia that affected people back then from the perspective of someone who has hands-on experience.
Just awesome!
Though a quick side note: If I had to give any criticism of the book is that there are no footnotes or citations for her information, which I would have liked to see. It’s clear she did a ton of research for it, but there’s nothing listed for the reader’s benefit. She often quotes people from the era, so she’s not speaking off-the-cuff or making things up, but it would have been nice to have those references. Honestly, of all the non-fiction books I’ve read, this one feels the most authentic, well-researched, and accurate as it pulls from real-world sources like journals and letters, so not having the sources cited doesn’t bother me.
An entertaining guide for wannabe Victorians. The author lived like a Victorian and lived to tell.
Ruth Goodman’s guide to Victorian living starts a bit slowly, but she has created a fascinating portrait of life during the reign of Queen Victorian (1837-1901). Her research into everything from the evolution of corsets to the changing height of men’s top hats is painstaking and precise.
As she notes frequently, Goodman has not only researched Victorian life, but she has undertaken to live for prolonged periods of time an entirely Victorian life. In this sense, How to Be a Victorian shares a commonality with A.J. Jacobs’s Year of Living Biblically, yet Goodman’s experiences have a much more authentic feel to them. I don’t recall Jacobs sharing recipes for shampoo and toothpaste. At first, I thought the asides about Goodman’s experiences wearing the various articles of clothing or working different types of farm equipment were off-putting, but I changed my mind pretty quickly, deciding that her anecdotes provided color commentary, if you will, and brought further life to what could have been a very dry topic.
The book is organized like a day: our Victorian wakes up (cold house), dresses (in roughly 14 layers), uses the toilet (a hand dug outhouse, most likely), sees to breakfast, children and chores (wives and mothers only, of course) or work (here she provides glimpses of both factory and agricultural work), dines further (although all but the very wealthiest Victorians lived in constant hunger), and prepares for bed. Within the framework of a single day, Goodman explores gender roles, fashion, technology and transportation, illness and death, and many other topics. The book is also generously illustrated throughout, providing further assistance to the 21st century reader trying to visualize the difference between early-Victorian and late-Victorian stoves, for example.
Anyone with an interest in Victorian England or simply changes in daily life over the past 200 years should find How to Be a Victorian especially interesting.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2015/01/how-to-be-victorian-dawn-to-dusk-guide.html)
Absolutely fascinating! One of my favorite books of all time.