A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word.

Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the surprising story of the making of the OED. Philologists, fantasists, crackpots, criminals, career spinsters, suffragists, and Australians: here is a wonder book for word lovers. --Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind's greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.

Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.

The Dictionary People is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.

A spirited history of the English country house in its golden age

For generations, the great palaces of Britain were home to living histories, noble families that had reigned for centuries. But by the end of the nineteenth century, members of elite society found themselves, for the first time, in the company of arrivistes. Their new neighbors--from chorus girls to millionaire greengrocers to guano impresarios--lacked lineage and were unencumbered by the weight of tradition.

In The Power and the Glory, historian Adrian Tinniswood reconstructs life in the country house during its golden age before the Great War, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the earth's population and its stately homes were at their most opulent. But change was on the horizon: the landed classes were being forced to grapple not only with new neighbors, but also with new social norms and expectations.

An exuberant story, The Power and the Glory offers a delicious, captivating, and often scandalous history of the British country house.

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, a descendant of Charles Dickens, reveals the fascinating tale of Christmas traditions during Queen Victoria's reign. In 1843, while Dickens was inventing the Christmas ghost story, a London civil servant commissioned the first Christmas card and Windsor Castle displayed artificial Christmas trees and served turkeys for Christmas dinner. During the next five years, the first recipe for Christmas pudding appeared, Christmas crackers debuted, and a London newspaper showcased Christmas trees to the world. Hawksley explores these customs and more so you can experience the season authentically to period. Feast on Roast Goose with Sage and Onion Stuffing, Brussels Sprouts on Buttered Toast, and Christmas Cake while sipping a Cratchit Christmas Twist or Smoking Bishop Punch. Craft Golden Walnuts, Kissing Bunches, and Pomanders. Play board games such as Balderdash and Pachisi or parlor games including Charades and Snapdragon. Take a Christmas swim or sing Christmastide by Christina Rossetti. Meticulously researched, this festive collection will make your yuletide merry.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Wonderful... [Flanders] shines in her readings of literary novels containing criminal and detective elements, such as Oliver Twist, Mary Barton and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but can be sharp and very funny about the vagaries of melodramatic and sensational plotting. -Wall Street Journal

In this fascinating exploration of murder in the nineteenth century, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction

Murder in Britain in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama and opera--even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and England's new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other--the pioneers of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell.

In this fascinating book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder--both famous and obscure--from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London's East End; Burke and Hare and their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; and Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the dangerous to know, The Invention of Murder is both a gripping tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.

Written by Chris Woodyard, the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, A is for Arsenic is a guide to the the basics of Victorian mourning and death all illustrated by the incomparable Landis Blair. Each entry includes a pen and ink illustration along with 19th century anecdotes ranging from macabre stories to jokes from the Victorian press. (Plus sinister little poems in homage to Edward Gorey.)

A is For Arsenic covers topics including post-mortem photography, embalming, bodysnatching tips, what to wear when in mourning, and how long to mourn for someone who has left you money in their will. The book also debunks several Victorian mourning myths.

There are 26 alphabetical entries-from Arsenic to Zinc, (see below) along with an informative glossary, appendix, and detailed bibliography. Here are the topics: A - Arsenic; B - Bier; C - Crape; D - Death Token; E - Embalming; F - Fisk Burial Case; G - Gates Ajar; H - Hearse; I - Ice Box; J - Jet; K - Keen; L - Lychgate; M - Mute; N - Necropolis; O - Obelisk; P - Post Mortem; Q - Queen Victoria; R - Resurrection Men; S - Shroud; T - Tear Bottle; U - Undertaker; V - Veil; X - Sexton; W - Weepers; Y - Churchyard; Z - Zinc

Appendix: Mourning Etiquette

Glossary

Bibliography

Chris Woodyard, author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, answers your dead-serious questions including:

How long should you mourn for someone who left you money in their will?

Why did body snatchers strip a body before carrying it away?

What was a coffin torpedo?

Were mourning clothes poisonous?

What is inheritance powder?

Who killed off keening?

What is dead water?

An A to Z delight for lovers of the macabre!

A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account--and how they became a cultural sensation

From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.

Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women's lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.

How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge's book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST - The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word.

Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the surprising story of the making of the OED. Philologists, fantasists, crackpots, criminals, career spinsters, suffragists, and Australians: here is a wonder book for word lovers. --Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind's greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.

Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.

The Dictionary People is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.

Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious, the the cheapest time-travel machine you'll find (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an historian who believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own firsthand adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work imagines the Victorians as intrepid survivors (New Republic) of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics to slipping opium to the little ones, Goodman's account of Victorian life makes you feel as if you could pass as a native (The New Yorker).

In the Victorian and Edwardian eras British explorers sought to become respected geographers and popular public figures, downplaying or reframing their reliance on others for survival. Far from being solitary heroes, these explorers were in reality dependent on the bodies, senses, curiosity, and labor of subaltern people and animals.

In On the Backs of Others Edward Armston-Sheret offers new perspectives on British exploration in this era by focusing on the contributions of the people and animals, ordinarily written out of the mainstream histories, who made these journeys possible. He explores several well-known case studies of enduring popular and academic interest, such as Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke's Nile expeditions (1856-59 and 1860-63); Isabella Bird's travels in North America, Persia, and East Asia (1872-c. 1900); and Captain Robert Falcon Scott's two Antarctic expeditions (1901-4 and 1911-13). Armston-Sheret argues that numerous previously ignored stories show the work and agency of subaltern groups. In rethinking the history of exploration On the Backs of Others offers the first book-length study of the relationship between exploration and empire and their legacies within academic geography.

★Victorian Christmas Scenes Grayscale Coloring Book★

An grayscale coloring book for Victorian era and Christmas lovers

The coloring book includes

• A4
• 66 pages
• blank backsides - no pushing through
• matte Softcover
• Victorian scenes on Christmas
• Christmas trees and decoration
• kids in Victorian dresses
• Victorian ladies and gentlemen
• Victorian dresses and fashion
• Victorian architecture and interior design

This wonderful detailed coloring book is a great gift for all fans of Victorian fashion and Christmas.

This is the first major account of an important part of the life of the naval officer who rose to be the eminent Admiral Sir John Corbett, KCB, (1822-1893) and became Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies and at the Nore. He played significant roles in the expansion and management of the British Empire, and his adventures including in the Opium War are visually captured by the full-colour and black and white illustrations, many from his own skilled paintings.

The work draws on public documents, family papers, contemporary photographs, and the archive of Sir John's paintings which feature the many places where he served all over the globe.

Corbett's informative detailed letters in particular provide an important insight into life in the Victorian navy in many parts of the world, and how senior officers recorded and communicated their experiences.

The work starts with the shipwreck of HMS Wolverene in the Caribbean in 1855 and Corbett's subsequent court martial in Bermuda. It continues with the commissioning of his new command, the paddle steamer HMS Inflexible, in 1856 and his epic voyage towing a gunboat to Hong Kong in record time. The Shropshire-born officer served in China, India, the Mediterranean, North America, Syria, and on the East African coast. His descendant, David Peretz, provides Corbett's vivid detailed account of his time in China, including his involvement in the May/June 1857 actions there.

Nineteenth-century Britain was then the world's most prosperous nation, yet Victorians would bury meat in earth and wring sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. Such drudgery was routine for the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Following the daily life of a middle-class Victorian house from room to room; from childbirth in the master bedroom through the kitchen, scullery, dining room, and parlor, all the way to the sickroom; Judith Flanders draws on diaries, advice books, and other sources to resurrect an age so close in time yet so alien to our own.

During the nineteenth century, local officials sought to deal with their Irish pauper 'problem' by removing these poor migrants back to Ireland under the laws of settlement and removal. Over the course of the century, hundreds of thousands of Irish paupers were forcibly repatriated in this way. Even though the settlement rights of Irish immigrants gradually improved over time, removals were still taking place into the twentieth century.

The system was widely recognised as being cruel and unfair, especially in Ireland where the removal of Irish paupers from Britain garnered considerable political and press attention. Much was made of the illegality of some removals, and of harsh removals involving widowed women, children and the elderly.

This book, which is the first sustained study of repatriation from Britain, demonstrates a persistent theme: the marginal nature of Irish life on the larger island. Drawing on extensive research from newspaper sources and parliamentary papers, it presents an original and richly detailed perspective on Irish immigration, poverty and pauperism in nineteenth-century Britain.

We are a much-lectured people, wrote Robert Spence Watson in 1897. Beginning at mid-century, cities and towns across England used the popular lecture for purposes ranging from serious education to effervescent entertainment and from regional pride to imperial belonging. Over time, the popular lecture became the quintessential embodiment of Victorian knowledge-based culture, which itself ranged from the production of new knowledge in the most elite of learned societies to the consumption of established knowledge in middle-class clubs and the hundreds of humble mechanics' institutions initially founded to provide scientific instruction to workers.

What did the average Victorian talk and think about? How did the knowledge-based culture of lecture and debate enable men and women to demonstrate both civic engagement and cultural competence? How does this knowledge-based culture and its changing expression give us ways to look at Victorian citizenship long before the extension of the franchise? With engaging and accessible prose Anne Rodrick draws from a variety of primary sources to provide fascinating answers to these pertinent questions.

Based on the analysis of several thousand lectures and debates delivered over more than 50 years, this book digs deeply into what those individuals below the most elite levels thought, heard, debated, and claimed as a badge of cultural competence. By the turn of the 20th century, the popular lecture was competing for attention with new institutions of leisure and of higher education, and the discourse surrounding its place in contemporary England helps illuminate important debates over access to and deployment of knowledge and culture.

The queen of living history (Lucy Worsley) dazzles anglophiles and history lovers alike with this immersive account of how English women sparked a worldwide revolution--from their own kitchens. Wielding the same wit and passion as seen in How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman shows that the hot coal stove provided so much more than morning tea. As Goodman traces the amazing shift from wood to coal in mid-sixteenth century England, a pattern of innovation emerges as the women stoking these fires also stoked new global industries: from better soap to clean smudges to new ingredients for cooking. Laced with irresistibly charming anecdotes of Goodman's own experience managing a coal-fired household, The Domestic Revolution shines a hot light on the power of domestic necessity.

Jackson has crafted a droll, enigmatic ride through the 150-year-old phenomenon of Dickens tourism and its relationship with imagination.--James Riding, Times (UK)

Meticulously researched and engaging . . . A delight for urban historians and fans of Dickens's evocative fiction.--PD Smith, The Guardian

The intriguing history of Dickens's London, showing how tourists have reimagined and reinvented the Dickensian metropolis for more than 150 years

Tourists have sought out the landmarks, streets, and alleys of Charles Dickens's London ever since the death of the world-renowned author. Late Victorians and Edwardians were obsessed with tracking down the locations--dubbed Dickensland--that famously featured in his novels. But his fans were faced with a city that was undergoing rapid redevelopment, where literary shrines were far from sacred. Over the following century, sites connected with Dickens were demolished, relocated, and reimagined.

Lee Jackson traces the fascinating history of Dickensian tourism, exploring both real Victorian London and a fictional city shaped by fandom, tourism, and heritage entrepreneurs. Beginning with the late nineteenth century, Jackson investigates key sites of literary pilgrimage and their relationship with Dickens and his work, revealing hidden, reinvented, and even faked locations. From vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops, Dickensland charts the curious history of an imaginary world.

A study of Indian indentured labor in Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad that explores the history of indenture's normalization.

In this book, historian Jonathan Connolly traces the normalization of indenture from its controversial beginnings to its widespread adoption across the British Empire during the nineteenth century. Initially viewed as a covert revival of slavery, indenture caused a scandal in Britain and India. But over time, economic conflict in the colonies altered public perceptions of indenture, now increasingly viewed as a legitimate form of free labor and a means of preserving the promise of abolition. Connolly explains how the large-scale, state-sponsored migration of Indian subjects to work on sugar plantations across Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad transformed both the notion of post-slavery free labor and the political economy of emancipation.

Excavating legal and public debates and tracing practical applications of the law, Connolly carefully reconstructs how the categories of free and unfree labor were made and remade to suit the interests of capital and empire, showing that emancipation was not simply a triumphal event but, rather, a deeply contested process. In so doing, he advances an original interpretation of how indenture changed the meaning of freedom in a post-abolition world.

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother.
As her reign approached its sixth decade, Queen Victoria's grandchildren numbered over thirty, and to maintain and increase British royal power, she was determined to maneuver them into a series of dynastic marriages with the royal houses of Europe.
Yet for all their apparent obedience, her grandchildren often had plans of their own, fueled by strong wills and romantic hearts. Victoria's matchmaking plans were further complicated by the tumultuous international upheavals of the time: revolution and war were in the air, and kings and queens, princes and princesses were vulnerable targets.
Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Europe from London to Saint Petersburg, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions to enthralling effect. It is at once an intimate portrait of a royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the marriages the Queen arranged. At the heart of it all is Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined Queen Empress the next.

An energetic and exhilarating account of the Victorian entertainment industry, its extraordinary success and enduring impact

The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the nineteenth century's growing industrialized class acquired the funds and the free time to pursue leisure activities, their every whim was satisfied by entrepreneurs building new venues for popular amusement. Contrary to their reputation as dour, buttoned-up prudes, the Victorians reveled in these newly created 'palaces of pleasure'.

In this vivid, captivating book, Lee Jackson charts the rise of well-known institutions such as gin palaces, music halls, seaside resorts and football clubs, as well as the more peculiar attractions of the pleasure garden and international exposition, ranging from parachuting monkeys and human zoos to theme park thrill rides. He explores how vibrant mass entertainment came to dominate leisure time and how the attempts of religious groups and secular improvers to curb 'immorality' in the pub, variety theater and dance hall faltered in the face of commercial success.

The Victorians' unbounded love of leisure created a nationally significant and influential economic force: the modern entertainment industry.