Getting In Touch With Your Inner Victorian

The Victorian era is one of our favorite periods - a few years ago we even did a Victorian reading challenge* called Our Mutual Read.  Since then, we have seen many more publications that address this era - enough that you could probably immerse yourself in Victoriana, if you are so inclined! (Do you remember those PBS reality shows, Manor House, Colonial House, Frontier House, etc.? We're imagining that kind of scenario.)

Even if you are just a casual reader, the library catalog most likely has something to pique your interest. The Victorian era, encompassing the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837-1901, was a fascinating period. Victorians were interested in science (hello, Darwin); it was the height of England's imperial power; the age of the Industrial Revolution.  Artistically, the era showcased major literary talents such as Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Tennyson; in art, the Pre-Raphaelites; on the stage, Gilbert & Sullivan. It was also the era of Jack the Ripper, appalling child labor conditions, and workhouses.

Below, we've compiled a list of books for you to sample. You can find even more titles, including fiction, by searching the catalog with the keyword "Victorian".


How To Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide toVictorian Life by Ruth Goodman

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders

Crime and Punishment in Victorian London: A Street-Level View of the City's Underworld by Ross Gilfillan

Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840--1870 by Liza Picard [eBook]

Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth by Lee Jackson

Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age by James A. Secord

Did She Kill Him?: A Torrid True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and Murder in Victorian England by Kate Colquhoun

The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj by Anne de Courcy

A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion by Mandy Kirkby [eBook]

Victorian Servants: A Very Peculiar History - With Added Elbow Grease by Fiona Macdonald [eBook]

Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper

To Marry An English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders


Is there an era you'd like to read about?  Let us know in the comments, and we'll try to round-up a list of related books for you!

*If you haven't done a reading challenge before, it can be a great way to discover new titles or work through your TBR pile! Bustle has a few pertinent ones listed, and the blog An Adventure is Reading is also a good source.

Featured Author: Gail Carriger

Q: What do you get when you mix paranormal romance, steampunk, Victorian fashion, adventure action, humor and parasols?

A: The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger.

"Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

"Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

"With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

"Soulless is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking."

-- from the back cover

The Parasol Protectorate series gives readers a clever, cheeky, saucy romp through an alternate Victorian London where airships soar above, vampires are Lords, and army officers are werewolves. Alexia Tarabotti is a heroine well before her time, busy dealing with her own special nature, the restrictions of "proper behavior for a lady", and the challenge of staying fashionably dressed while having extraordinary adventures. Author Gail Carriger is herself something of a fashion statement, known for attending events in authentic 1950s ensembles. Her website is an entertainment all by itself and worth a visit, full of information about Victorian London, links to steampunk sites, and of course fashion advice.

• Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book the First)


• Changeless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book 2)


• Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book 3)


• Heartless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book the Fourth)


• Timeless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book 5)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold on to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad-as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?"
~Jane Eyre's conscience

This was a second reading of Jane Eyre for me, & a much more painstaking one (I confess, when I was younger, I skimmed it). At my first reading, I was not very interested-the most vivid memory I have of the book from my younger years was the death of Helen Burns at Lowood School, which completely creeped me out at the time, & the rest of the book was rather a muddle-Jane loves Rochester, Jane leaves Rochester, yada yada yada. I enjoyed Charlotte Brontë's masterwork much more the second time around. I still don't love it. Brontë-wise, I still like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall best. But I prefer this to Wuthering Heights.

To give it its due, Jane Eyre is well-written. Charlotte Brontë has a wonderful turn of phrase, whether she's vividly describing nature or Jane's rich emotional life (see above, or how about her thoughts on travelling to India as St. John Rivers' "female curate" rather than wife-"...My heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came; and sentiments growing there, fresh and sheltered, which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down"). Charlotte Brontë's writing can get slightly fevered in its intensity & a little verbose, but most of her prose is beautiful to behold.

As you might imagine, the titular character, & all her emotions, principles, & opinions, is the heart of the book. The reader-or at least this reader-can forgive Charlotte Brontë some missteps in plotting, such as the ridiculous gypsy scene, or the pat manner in which our heroine is delivered into the laps of her relatives-of all the manor houses in all the world, she has to walk into the one owned by her cousins!-because Jane is such a well-drawn characterization. Her life runs a course full of ups & downs-& either very up, or very down, which can start to seem a little far-fetched-but Charlotte Brontë never fails to summon a true, thoughtful voice for Jane; & the author, as skilled with the written word as her heroine is artistically, has drawn an unforgettable portrait. I'm not planning any more Brontë reading in the near future (unless I take up The Tenant of Wildfell Hall again), but I have a new appreciation for this tome.

Fans of Jane Eyre might also consider reading Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which gives a voice to Bertha Mason, "the madwoman in the attic". I see that, more recently, there has also been at least one other book written about another minor character (Adèle: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant) & I have Becoming Jane Eyre by the always amazing Sheila Kohler at home-though it seems this Jane hasn't quite become the cottage industry that Jane Austen & some of her characters have. Yet. Plus, I would also like to recommend, if you aren't put off by its massiveness, Juliet Barker's excellent biography, The Brontës, which is completely fascinating.

If you have been following my Victorian reading challenge foibles this year, thanks for checking in! I only have 100 pages left of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret & a rather sizeable chunk of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives & Daughters to make it through for a last minute finish of my 12-book goal! Check out the blog in January for next year's reading challenges!

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

It's crunch time for my Victorian reading challenge! Way back in January, I swore I would read 12 Victorian books by year's end. Well, as usual, I've waited until last minute & I have just a couple of weeks to read Jane Eyre, Wives & Daughters, & Lady Audley's Secret. Yikes! If only Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter counted (I'm finding that really amusing)...but I have to read more books written during the Victorian era, not faux Victorian zombie lit. At least I have finished Kidnapped.

I always feel the book should be titled Kidnapped!, as though it were a tabloid headline. But really, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel is anything but sensational & lurid. I was excited to realize that Stevenson was a Victorian writer, because I read & re-read Treasure Island as a kid, & I thought Kidnapped would be more of the same. However, while it is in a similar vein to Treasure Island, it's a very different book.

According to the introduction by John Seelye that opened my edition, Kidnapped (written in 1886, three years after T.I.), was the "second of Stevenson's so-called 'boys' books'. Kidnapped...is a carefully constructed fiction, with intentionally strong connections to historical circumstance, namely the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland." Seelye suggests that T.I. was more of a slapdash affair, geographically inaccurate, purely a fantasy. He also refers to Stevenson's criticism of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, set in the same era but with nary of mention of Jacobites, & Stevenson's debt to Sir Walter Scott for his romantic history Waverley, set during the same period. One of the characters in the book refers to the protagonist's journey as a kind of Scots Odyssey. So you can see that, even with clocking in at just over 200 pages, Kidnapped really packs a literary wallop.

Set in 1751, it's the story of the adventures of David Balfour: as the opening page attests, "how he was kidnapped & cast away; his journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart & other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called." & that pretty much sums up the action, right there. I think the novel's title is misleading-the kidnap is actually a small part of the plot, though a vital part. A lot of the novel concerns David's travels, alone & later with Alan Breck (which, in less capable authorial hands, could have degenerated into a kind of 'buddy movie' material).

What I so enjoy about Robert Louis Stevenson is his writing style. David Balfour & Alan Breck Stewart are vividly portrayed characters who quarrel & make up; help each other & betray each other, all while saying "Hoot!" & "Wheesht!". The uneasy camaraderie that develops between these two characters is very realistic. (Ebenezer Balfour is a bit of a hobgoblin, but a real baddie is called for in the narrative.) Everything Stevenson writes about is so detailed & intense, so compelling, that the reader is irresistibly drawn into the action, despite, in my case, knowing nothing about the Jacobites. Stevenson, showing geographic due diligence this time, takes you through a detailed tour of Scotland, from Queen's Ferry to the Isle of Mull & back again; through wood, heather & moor, under less than pleasant conditions (mainly cold & wet). David also meets Cluny Macpherson, another famous Jacobite, hiding out in a kind of wattle & moss treehouse known as "Cluny's Cage" & Stevenson takes you through a bit of the history of clans, or at least which clans don't get along & the fact that the wearing of tartan had been outlawed.

I would highly recommend the entertaining works of Stevenson & I think I will be reading more of his adventure stories in the future. Meanwhile, if you really like Kidnapped, you should consider its 1893 sequel, Catriona, though John Seelye says it is a lesser work. At the end of Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson indicates, however, that "all went well with both [David & Alan Breck], in the limited and human sense of the word 'well'; that whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, & whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves."

The Observations

Continuing my Victorian reading challenge, I just finished The Observations by Jane Harris. This novel takes place in 1863 Scotland, but was written in 2006. Stylistically, it's a Gothic novel, & the protagonist is one Bessy Buckley.

First off, I would like to say that Bessy makes this novel & it is well worth reading for her alone. Ranging from comic to poignant, Bessy & her story were, for me, the best parts of the book. I should probably explain that the Gothic genre is not one of my favorites-perhaps it's not racy enough for my jaded brain, because the denouement generally disappoints a little. At least, it did with this novel, & another I recently read, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

The story concerns Bessy's arrival at Castle Haivers, where she is hired as a maid for Arabella & James. James is an aspiring politician who bites his nails with alarming gusto; his wife Arabella has an agenda for the new maid. Arabella's marked attentions, unusual habits & strange requests first endear her to Bessy, & then things go awry between them. As the blurb on the inside cover attests, "As is usually the case in isolated Victorian houses, all is not as it seems." And so the Gothic tale builds to an inevitable climax.

But Bessy, from her vocabulary on, is full of enough juice to keep this reader engrossed in the story! I loved her slang-"Flip the scutting devil!" & "Jesus Murphy my heart all but stopped" & "The rest of the house was that silent you could have heard a spider fart" & "she was all prinked up...but you might as well have stuck primroses in a cowpat" are just a couple of examples of her colorful turn of phrase. Her past, revealed in spurts throughout the novel, is the stuff of melodrama, but is not handled in a mawkish fashion. One of the reviews called Bessy a "bawdy, picaresque character"-I can only agree.

I would highly recommend checking out this novel! 405 pages was not enough Bessy, in my opinion.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

"In the ghost story, obligations do not cease with death, & the past is never a closed book. What has been can be again, though often terribly transformed. For a progressive age...the idea of a vindictive past held an especial potential for terror."
~from the introduction by Michael Cox & R.A. Gilbert, written All Souls' Day, 1990

I have to confess that I am not a huge fan of anything in the horror genre (I recently considered writing to a movie theater chain to ask that they only show horror movie previews before horror movies because I dislike them so much). I thought, however, that I could probably stand some Victorian ghost stories. The introduction put me in Victorian perspective: Gothic tales set in the past were on the wane, & modern-day domestic fiction was more prevalent; & the rise of science could not quash the delight in a ghost story-although many stories were now presented with "spurious factuality", such as being in the form of a diary.

I read 5 stories from this collection: "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" by Henry James; "Reality or Delusion?" by Mrs. Henry Wood; "The Body-Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson; "At the End of the Passage" by Rudyard Kipling; & "John Charrington's Wedding" by E. Nesbit. Most of the stories I chose because of I had heard of the writers before in other genres. All were well written. I found "The Body-Snatcher" & "At the End of the Passage" the most gripping-"The Body-Snatcher", in tune with the era's preoccupation with science, had a medical theme as scholarly anatomists learn where the bodies they dissect come from; "At the End of the Passage", though set in India, has very little local color but has the air of an intense fever-dream brought on by heat & loneliness. "John Charrington's Wedding" was the shortest & almost a romance until its disturbing finale. The Master, Henry James, presents a story of sibling affection gone sour-most of the characters are unlikeable, but that's what makes the story work so well. Mrs. Henry Wood's story, beginning with "This is a ghost story. Every word of it is true", is the only story to ask, as in its title, was the ghost sighting real or imagined? "Reality or Delusion?" is probably the most down-to-earth, workmanlike of the stories, our unnamed narrator laying out the tale with the sobriety & eye for detail of a historian.

I am still, slowly but surely working my way through "Our Mutual Read", the Victorian reading challenge I started in January. My goal was Level 3: to read 12 books, at least 6 written during 1837 - 1901; the other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction. Rashly, I also thought I might do the Period Film Mini-Challenge (watch at least 6 films that take place between 1837 - 1901) & the Short Story Mini-Challenge (read 12 short stories written or taking place between 1837 - 1901). Here's how I've done so far:

Level 3: 12 Books
-Death at the Priory: Sex, Love, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick
-The Clumsiest People in Europe, or: Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World, edited and with an Introduction by Todd Pruzan
-The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon by Brian Thompson
-Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill
-The Second Mrs. Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero (from Representative English Plays edited by J.S.P. Tatlock & R.G. Martin)

Period Film Mini-Challenge: 6 Films
-Return to Cranford
-The Mill on the Floss (1997 version with Emily Watson)
-Alice: A Look into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & at the Curious Relationship between Alice Liddell & Lewis Carroll
-Around the World in 80 Days

Short Story Mini-Challenge: 12 Short Stories
-Victorian Love Stories: An Oxford Anthology (4 stories)
-The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (6 stories)
-The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (5 stories)
-The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

Well, it looks like I certainly have my work cut out for me! At least my Short Story Mini-Challenge is more than complete. (I can always aim for Level 2 [8 books] if the going gets rough.) Here are the next books I hope to read: Lectures on Art by John Ruskin; Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; The Warden by Anthony Trollope; The Observations by Jane Harris; The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale; The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler; & Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Wondering About Alice

I have never been a fan of Lewis Carroll's oeuvre. OK, "The Jabberwocky" is a fun read. But Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has always put me off. Maybe it was the the fact that I find the original illustrations by John Tenniel disturbing, maybe it was the story that I just wasn't getting. However, with the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film coming out on DVD in June, I am gearing up to suffer through it, because I love Tim Burton.

I have to admit that my first attempt to ready myself for Alice was not successful, but I went at it somewhat backwards by watching Alice Through the Looking Glass. Silly me, I didn't realize this was from a different story! I was simply taken with the cast, which features some of my favorite English actors-Kate Beckinsale, Ian Holm, Penelope Wilton, Siân Phillips, Geoffrey Palmer, Steve Coogan, Greg Wise, Ian Richardson. However, I found the movie both tedious & incomprehensible. I just don't care about Alice, I thought.

However, I had a breakthrough this weekend with Alice, subtitled "A Look into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & at the Curious Relationship between Alice Liddell & Lewis Carroll". This is also a DVD, 80 minutes about everything Alice (& charmingly including footage from the 1903 fragment and the 1915 film of Alice in Wonderland). There is footage of Alice Liddell Hargreaves, aged 80, visiting New York City for the first time with her son Caryl during the centennial celebrations of Lewis Carroll's birth. There are archival photos by Carroll of Alice & many of his other 'child-friends', of which Alice was neither the first or the last; background information about Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), including his interests in mathematics, logic, & subverting the traditional Victorian moral tale for children, all of which show up in his books; & an explanation of Carroll's place in the Victorian canon & how the Alice phenomenon came about (& continues today). Also, everyone knows Alice Liddell was the inspiration for Alice, but did you know that Carroll based the White Rabbit on himself & that the Red Queen may be based on the Liddells' governess?

Hopefully, this background material which I found so eye-opening will make sitting through Alice in Wonderland much more pleasurable. The cast is even better than Alice Through the Looking Glass, anyway.

Nightingales

Wow! Has it really been February since my last Victorian read? Well, this latest one was a doozy. Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill is a book I picked up at random-I read last fall (& enjoyed) another of her books, We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals-which turned out to also be the right period! I guess I should have known the Crimean War was during Victoria's reign, but I'm not very knowledgeable about military history.

Nightingales was an engaging read. Not to be too much of a spoiler, but 3/4 of the action occurs before Florence Nightingale is 40 years old-though she lived to be 90, she spent 30 years as a near-recluse, suffering from what was probably chronic brucellosis. Gillian Gill wants her biography to be the biography of the Nightingale family, so there's a significant amount about her family history & her immediate family in the beginning of the book. Her immediately family-father WEN, mother Fanny, & sister Parthe-did play a large part in forming Florence's unique character. Florence Nightingale was a study in contradictions-passionate yet able to cut friends ruthlessly out of her life for a single infraction; energetic & hardworking for her cause, yet sickly & prone to depression;& as 'the Lady of the Lamp', she tirelessly toured hospital wars & charmed her patients, but then chose to remove herself from social life entirely in later years. Her story seems very Victorian in that, in many ways, her life's work almost didn't happen as circumstance, social conditions & family thwarted her at almost every turn. Nightingale should have married, taken care of her parents & plain, invalid sister, & lived out a quiet life in comfort. But she didn't, as we know.

Many pages-at least 5 chapters-are devoted to Nightingale's time in Crimea, which was actually just 21 months. These wartime experiences are the heart of the book, & Gill reaches to try & include Nightingale's family in this part of her story, but not very successfully. Her wrangles with the military, politicians, & other women sent to nurse (since nursing wasn't a profession yet, people's definitions of it varied greatly) are eye-openers. Alcohol is considered medicinal, some of the nurses are religious sisters bent on saving souls rather than healing bodies, & hygiene is not considered at all until Nightingale's arrival-soldiers lie in their own filth, covered by stinking linen & teeming with lice, in their hospital beds, before she takes over.

Nightingales' flaws lie in Gill's writing style. I found her style down to earth & engaging at times (she refers to Nightingale as 'Flo' for most of the book), but at other times choppy & confusing, as she introduces characters & plotlines in one section & then explains them fully 5 or 10 pages later, bouncing back & forth on the timeline she knows by heart but which the casual reader does not.

Despite its flaws, I would recommend this book as an introduction to the life of Florence Nightingale. It is witty, informative & you will not be bored!

The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon

Georgina Weldon was born on the 18th birthday of the then Princess Victoria & her parents liked to believe that that fact made their baby's birthday auspicious--that little Georgina was destined for great things. Georgina agreed whole-heartedly with this assessment & spent her whole life scheming & planning for fame & fortune--& doing the wrong thing with every step she took.

Instead of making a good marriage that would ensure good marriages for her younger siblings, Georgina chose to marry a penniless soldier. She had a reasonably good voice but despite no voice training, she was sure stardom was in her future--kind of the Paris Hilton of the Victorian age, without the pedigree. Her affection for music led to a calamitous involvement with the composer Gounod & an ill-fated 'musical orphanage' in which children plucked off the streets were subjected to a health regimen of cold morning baths & no shoes, & taught to sing. Georgina took up with the villainous Angele & Anarcharsis Menier, who over the years encouraged her, but also swindled her. They were just a few of her poorly chosen cronies.

Georgina blundered through life, seeking fame but finding notoriety, picking up & discarding people & causes, always the center of her own universe. Brian Thompson's The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon presents her foibles with verve & humor, chronicling her affairs, her litigious nature (25 cases in court in one year), her two stays in prison, & her fight against being committed to a mental institution by her own husband in a way that will make you shake your head in disbelief & yet admire this Victorian eccentric's tenacity as she muddles through it all.

The Mill on the Floss

When I was compiling authors for my Victorian reading list, I have to say that George Eliot (the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) was one name I was not excited to see. I struggled through Middlemarch in high school & did not really have any plans to take in any more Eliot in my lifetime.

I thought, though, that for the Period Film Mini-Challenge, I could probably sit through a George Eliot movie. I had always heard much talk of The Mill on the Floss, & I had an idea it was probably her best or at least best-known book. I found a copy of a 1997 film of it starring Emily Watson, an actress I really like, & I decided to check it out.

Well, the other night I watched it. Emily Watson was really good as Maggie Tulliver, the heroine, but even I, unfamiliar with the book as I am, was lukewarm about the production-like last year's hour-and-a-half Jane Austen adaptations on PBS, the story seemed severely truncated, & it kind of felt like you were hitting high points in the narrative & the characters were very loosely sketched. (I have since read a review on Amazon that the 1978 version fills in the gaps a lot better, though that production itself is stagey rather than cinematic.) The deus ex machina ending was so abrupt & disturbing that I had to look at the ending in the book to see if it was accurate (it wasn't exactly the same, but it was close).

All in all, quite a bleak tale, with no redemption in sight, reminding me of another Victorian writer, Thomas Hardy. The Masterpiece Theater host, Russell Baker, indicated that this was a thinly veiled autobiography, as George Eliot's life had many similarities with Maggie's-though she was close to her brother in childhood, he would not speak to her for the 25 years she lived with a married man, George Henry Lewes.

Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World

One of the first gems I unearthed for my Victorian reading challenge was The Clumsiest People in Europe, or: Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World, edited and with an Introduction by Todd Pruzan. Apparently, Todd Pruzan found a volume of one of Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer's travel guides gathering dust in a used book store, took it home to amuse his friends, & was hooked.

His introduction details his find & the research he did on Mrs. Mortimer, who, though quite famous in her time, is unknown to us today. Besides the multi-volumed travel guide (titles included The Countries of Europe Described, 1849), Mrs. Mortimer was well known in Victorian times as the author of The Peep of the Day; or, a Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind is Capable of Receiving, which, as Pruzan explains, is “a Bible primer aimed at four-year-olds that now seems bizarrely and characteristically sadistic.” The Peep of the Day features helpful & caring instruction such as “If you were not to eat some food for a few days, your little body would be very sick, your breath would stop, and you would grow cold, and you would soon be dead.”

Pruzan's introduction sets the stage for Mrs. Mortimer's "bad temper", then offers up selections of her travel guides--the listing for each country starts with a brief historical background written by Pruzan, then features Mrs. Mortimer's thoughts on different topics, including customs and appearance, character, dress, schools, cottages, food, children, the poor people, religion, government, amusements, mountains, slaves, and the forests. Then she usually discusses a couple of the country’s major cities before moving on. Sometimes she compares the habits of one country to another-Hindoostan [India] to China, Brazil to Peru.

Mrs. Mortimer believes in calling a spade a spade (frequently & forthrightly). Here's a list of some of her pet peeves:

• drinking (On Russian food: "I wish they loved no other drink except kwas [a wholesome drink of barleymeal] and tea; but they love brandy too well, and drink it, not in little cups, but in large tumblers...")
  
• religions other than her own Evangelical Christianity (On Roman Catholicism: “The religion they teach is called the Roman Catholic religion, but it is a very bad kind.”)


• bad character traits—including idleness, cruelty, covetousness, treachery, deceitfulness, cowardliness, wickedness, not keeping the Sabbath holy


• untidiness (On Italy: “The houses are very dirty, especially the staircase and the doorway; but the Italians think more of painting their ceilings and placing statues in their halls than of keeping their houses clean. The English think a clean house is better than a pretty one.”)


• bad eating habits (On Swedish food: "In England meat is boiled or roasted, but in Sweden meat is often only smoked. You would not like smoked salmon or smoked reindeer flesh.”)


• children who are not trained up to behave well (On French children: "Children of five or six years old often dine with company, when they ought to be alone with their papa and mamma, or else in the nursery.")
  

It's interesting to realize that Mrs. Mortimer felt perfectly suited to write a travel guide, considering she had been out of England twice in her life--she visited Brussels & Paris as a child, and Edinburgh (‘the most beautiful city in the world’) as an adult. She also sees nothing amiss in devoting 60 pages to Madagascar, 14 pages to Greenland, and 6 sentences to New York City.

Some of the most interesting passages give us a real sense of the how the world has changed in the past 150 years or so--Mrs. Mortimer is writing in a time when Australia was considered an island, not a continent and before explorers had found the pharaohs' treasures in the pyramids. She has a section on slavery in the 30 states 0f America--a practice which she abhors, but, as she she also points out "[t]here are no slaves in the Northern states, but there are many blacks there; and perhaps you think they are kindly treated as they are not slaves. Far from it."

Most of her observations are arbitrary and rude: “Nothing useful is well done in Sweden.” On Spanish: “It is true their language is the finest in Europe, but there are very few wise books written in it.” However, one of the points Todd Pruzan makes, as he describes beginning "to feel unsettled by [Mrs. Mortimer's] vicious, country-by-country savaging of the entire world", is that we can be reminded today how easy it is to fall into long-standing stereotypes: “Still, the apparent conventional wisdom of the 1850s—that the “merry” Irish are “fond of drinking”, that the Chinese “are quiet, and orderly, and industrious”… --are still ugly, horrifying, disturbingly familiar. How many centuries have these offensive clichés existed, anyway?”

Death at the Priory: Sex, Love, and Murder in Victorian England

Last night I whipped through Death at the Priory: Sex, Love, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick (only 190 pages, not including Notes & Index). Wow! As a mystery, it did not disappoint. It's a retelling of a famous Victorian murder, the poisoning of Charles Bravo, which remains unsolved to this day.

Part One, 'The Strange Death of a Rising Young Barrister', outlined the events leading up to the crime & the crime itself. Part One also introduced us to our cast of characters/suspects--Charles' wife Florence; her companion, Mrs. Cox; her ex-lover, Dr. Gully; & the recently dismissed stableman, George Griffiths. This is no dry recapitulation of the story--as blurbs by Elizabeth George & Kate Atkinson attest, James Ruddick's gives us an account "as compelling as any fictional thriller".

Part Two, 'Who Killed Charles Bravo?', is where Ruddick's research kicks in. There have been numerous studies of Bravo's murder, including one by Agatha Christie, but Ruddick remains unconvinced by their solutions. Instead of relying on the traditional evidence, Ruddick's research takes him as far afield as Jamaica to piece together his own original conclusion. His investigation certainly is meticulous--he leaves no stone unturned, including visiting the Priory, the Bravos' house (now an apartment house), to act out some sequences from the night Charles Bravo was poisoned.

I really enjoyed this book, though I'm not sure I agree with Ruddick's solution. It was a quick read & a gripping story. If you enjoy a recreated Victorian mystery story, you consider also Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed.

Our Mutual Read: Return to Cranford

So, although I have a bunch of Victorian books at home, I haven't yet started my reading. Instead, I'm going to cheat & talk about my impressions of last night's Return to Cranford on PBS. It's based on Elizabeth Gaskell's book--which we don't have at the library, but you can read online using Google Books or download a free E-book from Girlebooks (Girlebooks also features an interesting review of the book)--so at least I'm beginning to immerse myself in the right period.

I really enjoyed the 2007 production of Cranford. It was just delightful to watch this story play out, & a cast including Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Eileen Atkins & Francesca Annis is nothing to sneeze at--& that was just the female talent! However, last night's Return to Cranford felt a little flat to me. I found myself wondering if this sequel was actually based on the book, or if the writers were trying to recapture the magic by extrapolating from existing plotlines--not very successfully, in my opinion. It was great to watch the pantheon of British stars working their magic on the screen, but I just didn't feel the connection with story. Also, hopefully not giving too much away, the ride on the train scene was really cute, but I couldn't imagine Elizabeth Gaskell (or any Victorian writer) writing it. I'll be checking out Part 2 next week, but not with quite the same level of excitement.

I've got Cranford on my list of reads now, but if anyone out there has already read the book, can you tell me if Return to Cranford is part of Gaskell's original stories? Also, if you watched the show last night, what did you think of it?

Our Mutual Read

You may have noticed the picture (& link, if you click on it) for Our Mutual Read in the sidebar on the right. I am taking a reading challenge this year & reading Victorian literature! I haven't decided which level I'll be doing:

-Level 1: 4 books, at least 2 written during 1837 - 1901. The other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction.

-Level 2: 8 books, at least 4 written during 1837 - 1901. The other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction.

-Level 3: 12 books, at least 6 written during 1837 - 1901. The other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction.

However, at this point I think I've amassed enough potential titles to do level 3 twice. Here are some of the titles I'm considering (I'm hoping plays are acceptable):

Fiction

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Warden by Anthony Trollope (first book of The Chronicles of Barsetshire)

Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

Father Brown Mystery Stories by G.K. Chesterton

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth

The Observations by Jane Harris

Affinity by Sarah Waters

Jack Maggs by Peter Carey

The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray


Plays

The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

Lady Audley's Secret by C. H. Hazlewood (adapted from the book by Mary Elizabeth Braddon)

(Oddly enough, my interest in both these plays was piqued by frequent mention in Agatha Christie novels.)

Non-Fiction

The Clumsiest People in Europe, or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World by Todd Pruzan and Favell Lee Mortimer

Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick

The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves, and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian by Brian Thompson

Lectures on Art by John Ruskin

Victorian London: The Life of a City, 1840-1870 by Liza Picard

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

Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves edited by Jack Zipes

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

London 1849: A Victorian Murder Story by Michael Alpert

I'm also interested in in the 2 mini-challenges:

-Period Film Mini-Challenge -- watch at least 6 films that take place between 1837 - 1901 (they don't necessarily have to be based on a book) and post a review. (With my love of Merchant-Ivory productions & the new movie Young Victoria out, this is a natural for me.)

-Short Story Mini-Challenge -- read 12 short stories written or taking place between 1837 - 1901 and post a review. (I find the library system has The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories, The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, & Victorian Love Stories: An Oxford Anthology.)

Well, I'd better start reading! I notice my reading will be skewed towards mysteries--I 'm hoping reading a genre I normally read will encourage me to complete this reading challenge (unlike last year's). I'll be posting off & on on my progress & on some of the books I've read. Stay tuned!