Inside the Victorian Home PA

by Flanders,Judith

• ISBN13: 9780393327632
• ISBN10: 0393327639
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Our image of how Victorians lived is based on novels and movies, mostly costume dramas of upper-class life, a life of privilege, servants, leisure, country living, and money. That is fantasy. The facts are much more interesting. Most middle-class, professional Victorians lived in small houses in murky industrial cities, and the women performed the most grueling, backbreaking tasks with little or no help. Using a collage of diaries, letters, advice books, magazines, and paintings, Judith Flanders shows how social history is built up out of the tiny domestic details. She also draws domestic details from the writings of familiar personalities of the age: John Ruskin, Mrs. Beeton, Beatrix Potter, Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, and Charles Darwin. Under Flanders's expert guidance the Victorian house opens up in front of the reader to become an exploration of Victorian life. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

A Quick Guide to Books and Authors	p. xiii
Currency	p. xxvii
Introduction: House and Home	p. 3
The Bedroom	p. 37
The Nursery	p. 64
The Kitchen	p. 100
The Scullery	p. 130
The Drawing Room	p. 168
The Parlor	p. 214
The Dining Room	p. 253
The Morning Room	p. 292
The Bathroom and the Lavatory	p. 324
The Sickroom	p. 340
The Street	p. 390
Notes	p. 417
Select Bibliography	p. 451
Picture Credits	p. 475
Index	p. 479
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