Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England

Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England

"[Flanders] knows what we want to know and is thoroughly engaging, undidactic company."--Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe Nineteenth-century Britain was then the world's most prosperous nation, yet Victorians would bury meat in earth and wring sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. Such drudgery was routine for the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Following the daily life of a middle-class Victorian house from room to room; from childbirth in the master bedroom through the kitchen, scullery, dining room, and parlor, all the way to the sickroom; Judith Flanders draws on diaries, advice books, and other sources to resurrect an age so close in time yet so alien to our own. 100 illustrations, 32 pages of color. "So fascinating that it yields at least one surprise--and often many more than that--on each page." Judith Flanders is the author of A Circle of Sisters , which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. She lives in London.