Review: How to be a Victorian

Title: How to be a Victorian: A dawn-to-dusk guide to Victorian life

Author: Ruth Goodman

Date Completed: 15 April 2016

Daily life is what made me love history. I don't enjoy political shenanigans of who said what to whom. I get lost on battlefields with the who stood where when they fired their gun. I want to know what it was like to live. As Goodman wrote in the epilogue: "It is not just the revolutionary ideas or the actions of the powerful that make the world, it is the cumulative work of everyone."

Ruth Goodman's guide to Victorian life rung all my history-loving bells. In addition to being a historian, the author has personal experience living as a Victorian including a year spent living on a Victorian Farm--using period tools and equipment, wearing period clothes and hairstyles, making period recipes for food and medicine, and much more. She was able to describe how labor in a field adapted to an early, mid-, and late- Victorian corsets. What recipes she liked best for skin and hair care products. The best methods for walking and sitting in various sizes of crinoline (hoops). These personal touches made what we often treat as artifacts and relics come to life.

I also appreciated all the illustrations included from era newspapers, advertisements, cartoons, and pamphlets. I've read several "everyday life" books that have zero visual aids which make envisioning the items more difficult much less their use. Also the inclusion of diary entries and memoir notes from Victorians themselves added another fascinating layer of insight into daily life.

I know the library has a couple more of her books including one on Victorian pharmaceuticals and patent medicine, which I will definitely be checking out. I also learned about a Victorian farming documentary that she contributed to that sounds intriguing as well.