How did ordinary Englishmen of bygone eras live and work, what did they eat, what did they use for medical treatment, what did they travel in, what did they wear, and how did they entertain themselves? What was it like to cook with coal, drink beer for breakfast, brush their teeth with crushed cuttlefish bone, commute to work in a horse-drawn omnibus, and toil around the house in a corset? This authoritative British historian, drawing on extensive documentary material (diaries, letters, autobiographies, periodicals, and books), explores many aspects of the typical 19th-century daily routine, including nutrition, health care, intimacy, fashion, work, and entertainment. Illustrated with numerous black-and-white and color illustrations, this book presents a vibrant collection of astonishing customs, habits, and details of private English life during the reign of Queen Victoria.
'I want to explore a history of the private, the personal, the material, that celebrates the mundane and allows us to recreate the lives of ordinary people, adults and children, through contact with their daily lives. I intend to understand how our ancestors thought, to learn about their hopes, fears, and speculations. I will consider all aspects of the everyday life of the Victorians and invite you to the places where I wandered in search of traces of that era. In my attempts to understand the past, I have from the very beginning paid much attention to the experimental aspect. I love immersing myself in the study of the things that people made and used in the past and learning firsthand how they worked.' (Ruth Goodman)