Product Description

For every frustrated reader of the great nineteenth-century English novels of Austen, Trollope, Dickens, or the Brontës who has ever wondered whether a duke outranked an earl, when to yell "Tally Ho!" at a fox hunt, or how one landed in "debtor's prison," here is a "delightful reader's companion that lights up the literary dark" (The New York Times).

This fascinating, lively guide clarifies the sometimes bizarre maze of rules, regulations, and customs that governed everyday life in Victorian England. Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the "plums" in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life -- both "upstairs" and "downstairs."

An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from "ague" to "wainscoting," the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15794 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780671882365
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
This useful guide to Victorian life enlightens on such subjects as grave robbing, debtors' prison and putrid fever. Illustrations. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This guide to daily life in 19th-centuryEngland is a welcome companion for readers of Austin, the Brontes, Dickens, and Trollope. The first section is a collection of engrossing short chapters on various aspects of British life, including clothing, etiquette, marriage, money, occupations, society, and transportation. For example, customs now lost but very much practiced at the time were primogeniture, which ensured that the great family houses would not be split up, and the avoidance of eating cheese by the middle class, who considered it a food for the poor. The second part of the book is a glossary of commonly used words or phrases that may be unfamiliar to the modern reader; for instance, tar was a colloquial name for a sailor. Although there are many books on the social history of 19th-century Britain (including several companions to Victorian fiction), this volume is useful because of its concise chapters and lengthy glossary. Recommended for general literature collections.
- Caroline Mitchell, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An eccentric collection of brief essays (plus a glossary) that explains not the facts but the fictions of English life, as they were represented by writers such as Hardy, Trollope, Dickens, and Jane Austen. To provide an understanding of the life portrayed in 19th- century English novels, Pool focuses primarily on economic and social issues; the era's money, calendar (holidays, terms, reigns), and measurements; and geography. The ``public world'' of the era, he explains, consisted of titles, forms of address, various ranks in status and the etiquette associated with them, dinner parties, card games, presentations at court, social ``seasons,'' and balls- -from whom to invite to what to wear, to why wax dripping from overhead chandeliers on to guests was perilous. Pool--often sounding like the annotator of a Jane Austen text--explains the country-house visit; the contemporary definition of wealth; ways to protect one's estate--or to lose it; Parliament; the Church; the navy; universities; law, lawyers, and criminals. A section on ``transition'' discusses the roles of horses, coaches, railroads, and the mail, and is followed by essays on country life (hunting, farms, fairs) and on domesticity (marriage, sex, divorce, furniture, lighting, bathing, food--including puddings, oysters, and gruel--and drink, fashion, and servants). Pool winds up with the ``grim world'' of orphans, work, poverty, disease, and death, while a glossary explains names such as Wellington and Westminster, and terms such as ``wet nurse'' and ``whalebone.'' Not history per se but a period piece--a reproduction of the idealizations and stereotypes that appeared in fiction, many of which were well explained in context. Superficial but charming--in effect, a handbook on how to live as if one were a character in a 19th-century English novel. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Book on 19th century Social History
If you love to read historical novels, whether they be the classics of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and Anthony Trollope, or historical romances by such authors as Judith McNaught and Julia Quinn, this is a great book for you. It will also appeal to history buffs, and those with just a passing interest in the social customs and etiquette of bygone days.

Accessible and covering a broad range of topics, it's a reference book that touches on everything from social hierarchy (an Earl outranks the eldest son of a Marquis who outranks the younger son of a Duke, the eldest son of a Duke, however, ranks above an Earl and just below a Marquis), how to name your estate (what is the difference between a hall, a manor and a house?), how to play Faro (you need a machine to deal), manage the servants (especially when they're just not getting the silver bright enough) and walk with a member of the opposite sex (a gentleman, remember, always walks on the side nearest the street).

The book also includes an extensive glossary of terms of the period (just what is a costermonger and a mantua-maker?) It is also filled with literary references and citations from the great British 19th-century authors, including those mentioned above. Don't worry if you haven't read any of the books, the references are used to illustrate points, though this book may inspire you to finally pick up a few of those classics you've always been meaning to read.

My one complaint about this book is that it's just not as thorough as I would have liked. It covers a wide range of topics, and in trying to keep the book readable, it only touches the surface rather than becoming deeply involved in any one topic.

As an overall reference book, it's very good, and is very useful to anyone who might be writing a novel set in this period, or just enjoys reading books set in 19th-century England.

The closest book I am aware of to this book is "The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England" by Kristine Hughes, which follows in the same general reference covering a lot of topics, but without the references to classic novels. Also, the recent "An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England" by Venetia Murray is a collection of accounts of some of the most notorious real people of the era. And for the literary angle, "A Dab of Dickens and a Touch of Twain" by Elliot Engel offers a biographical overview of many of the authors referred to in this book.

Way better than "Everyday Life..."
I picked this book up after reading _Everyday Life In Regency and Victorian England_, which I thought did a decent job of describing the mundane details of English life in the 1800's. Daniel Pool's book is immensely more interesting, detailed, and enjoyable.

_What Jane Austen Ate..._ is divided into two parts: a series of essays on daily life in the 19th century, and an exhaustive glossary of words common to the folk of the period, but not to us. Both parts are engaging and

interesting, suggesting all sorts of interesting ideas for characters, scenes, plots, and schemes (Most people will read this for background on other works, but I read it to ensure historical accuracy in something I'm working on). Pool refers to classical works by Dickens, Austen and Eliot when describing a certain facet of life to help pull it all together.

This book gets 5 stars not because it's the greatest book in the world, but because it's clearly the best of its kind. Readers and writers of 19th century fiction would do well to read it.

Misinformation for the Regency Era
A book which attempts to provide a general background to daily life in 19th century England for readers of 19th century English authors such as Jane Austen (a Regency author) and Charles Dickens (a Victorian author). This book is useful for the beginner to this period but does contains historical misinformation. It is impossible to cover a whole century in a book of this type, and thus the Regency and Victorian periods are not carefully distinguished. My warning for readers of this book is to remember that life in the Regency was often very different to life in Victorian times. For example, Poole categorically states marriage by widower to deceased wife's sister was illegal, actually it was legal in England till 1835. Kristine Hughes and Venetia Murray in their books also confuse the matter. Are they reading each other for reference instead of primary sources? I don't mind a good introductory book to a period, and this could have been one, but I really dislike it when something totally untrue for a period is presented as absolute fact. Marriage to one's sister-in-law was legal in civil law but voidable in ecclesiastical courts if anyone bothered to bring a suit, and many such marriages were made. Until 1835 and Lord Lyndhurst's act. I would double check anything that the author says about the Regency period. This book really tried to do too much to lump the earlier Regency period in with the Victorian period. Over the course of the 19th century many things changed greatly, so if using this book as a guide, remember Jane Austen was a Regency novelist and Charles Dickens a Victorian novelist and laws, social mores and fashions change greatly over a whole century.