The Diary Of A Victorian Squire

Owen Chadwick paints a detailed cameo of nineteenth-century English rural life, in the extraordinary battle of wills between squire and parson in a Norfolk village.

An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.

The first full-scale study of the drawings and paintings of the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

John Thomas Brooks led the life of a country squire, managing his estates, raising a family, serving the county as High Sheriff and on the Ampthill Board of Guardians and socialising with his peer group in the county. These activities are all recorded in his diary together with his particular passion - gardening.

First published in 1995. The essays in this volume demonstrate how Victorian women took up various positions along a continuum that ranged from the desire of Shelley’s creature for the power and acceptance it associated with the house to the rejection of Brontë’s heroine of the immobility and powerlessness she ultimately experienced there. More specifically the essays in this volume explore the nature of the Victorian woman’s domestic relations by centring in one activity that most informed her place in what was often the father’s house: housekeeping. The essays in this edition determine how writers, especially novelists, both male and female, used housekeeping to construct, reconstruct, represent, and inscribe the female self and condition. This title will be of interest to students of history and literature.

Writing during periods of dramatic social change, Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell were both attracted to the idea of radical societal transformation at the same time that their writings express nostalgia for a traditional, paternalistic ruling class. The author shows how this tension is played out especially through the characters of servants in short fiction and novels such as Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Helen and Gaskell's North and South and Cranford. Servant characters, the author contends, enable these writers to give voice to the contradictions inherent in the popular paternalistic philosophy of their times because the situation of domestic servitude itself embodies such inconsistencies. Servants, whose labor was essential to the economic and social function of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society, made up the largest category of workers in England by the nineteenth century and yet were expected to be socially invisible. At the same time, they lived in the same houses as their masters and mistresses and were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. Both Edgeworth and Gaskell created servant characters who challenge the social hierarchy, thus exposing the potential for dehumanization and corruption inherent in the paternalistic philosophy. the author's study opens up important avenues for future scholars of women's fiction in the nineteenth century.

This is an insightful and enlightening look at the life and works of the internationally renowned English garden designer. Rosemary Verey was the last of the great English garden legends. Although she embraced gardening late in life, she quickly achieved international renown. She was the acknowledged apostle of the "English style," the "must have" adviser to the rich and famous - including Prince Charles and Elton John - and a wildly popular lecturer. She was a natural teacher who encouraged her fans to believe that they were fully capable of creating beautiful gardens while validating their quest for a native vernacular, She also re-introduced the English to their own gardening traditions. A demanding taskmaster and a relentless perfectionist, Rosemary Verey, in her life as in her work, was the very personification of the English garden style.

The real lives of women in Britain's country houses.

Through a detailed history of the asylum at Ticehurst in Sussex, Charlotte MacKenzie explores the consumer revolution which stimulated the proliferation of madhouses in Britain during the nineteenth century.