How to be a Victorian
Ruth Goodman
TRAVEL BACK IN TIME WITH THE BBC'S RUTH GOODMAN
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? Catch the omnibus to work and do the laundry in your corset?
How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a radical new approach to history; a journey back in time more personal than anything before. Moving through the rhythm of the day, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work and play. Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living and Ruth will show you how.
If you liked A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England or 1000 Years of Annoying the French, you will love this book.
*****
'Goodman skilfully creates a portrait of daily Victorian life with accessible, compelling, and deeply sensory prose' Erin Entrada Kelly
'We're lucky to have such a knowledgeable cicerone as Ruth Goodman . . . Revelatory' Alexandra Kimball
'Goodman's research is impeccable . . . taking the reader through an average day and presenting the oddities of life without condescension' Patricia Hagen
Product Details
About Ruth Goodman
Reviews for How to be a Victorian
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