Customer Reviews

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

I certainly wish that I had this book before I started reading Jane Austen, because it would have answered many of my questions. I had tried to use the dictionary and was not always successful. Daniel Pool's excellent book changed all of that! Have you ever wondered why Fanny Price was so dizzy after drinking NEGUS? What exactly was the difference between a GIG and a CURRICLE? Where in the Order of Precedence did Sir William Lucas fall as a BARONET? It is all here in this thoroughly engaging and delightful book. It is here that I finally learned about the daily life of 19th-century England, and the overall social structure of the time. Jane Austen is not the only author covered: Charles Dickens, George Eliot, The Brontes, Thomas Hardy, and Anthony Trollope are well discussed. The glossery is excellent, and full of terms that I could not find even when I used The Oxford Dictionary. The only area that needed further clarification was the chapter about Entails and Protecting The Estate. I never quite understood how Miss Ann De Bourgh was able to inherit her father's estate upon his death, since "A girl should not inherit because if she remained single the line could die out and if she married the estate would pass in possession to someone outside the family." (see pg. 90 hardcover edition) Apart from that, I still feel comfortable giving this book 5 stars, and would advise anyone who loves 19th-century English Literature to add it to their collection. It is a great reference guide of the period.

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.

WHAT JANE AUSTEN ATE AND CHARLES DICKENS KNEW: FROM FOX HUNTING TO WHIST -- THE FACTS OF DAILY LIFE IN 19TH-CENTURY ENGLAND by Daniel Pool is a very enjoyable read about the hundreds of details of daily life that informed the novels from Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy. It was more engaging than I thought it would be, and now that I know it better, I will keep it handy for when I read any works by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and William Thackeray. Pool uses examples from novels as the rule (with occasional actual events as illustrative material) so that those familiar with these works can see what these events meant to the author and original readers of such novels as Mansfield Park, The Eustace Diamonds, Oliver Twist, Vanity Fair, Jude the Obscure and Middlemarch.

The book is divided into two parts: the first of 255 pages, is the basic text, divided into sections by topic (such as "Public Life," "Private Life" and "The Grim World"), which is the section you can sit down to read, and then say to your significant other, "Wow! Did you know that there were more than 200 offenses in early 19th century Britain punishable by death, including stealing from a shop?" and, "Women alternated which side they rode side-saddle on to avoid developing an overly enhanced buttock!" The last 135 pages of the book comprise a glossary of terms like "ague" and "ha-ha" (which I looked up while reading Mansfield Park recently-- it is a sunken fence used as an invisible landscaping device).

The first section (the text sections) is easy and interesting to read, and I loved having examples from Austen and Middlemarch used, because I've read most of Austen and that one George Eliot novel. The best thing, I think, about the book is that it provides a wonderful context for 19th-century British fiction and makes me want to read Hardy, Trollope, and even Dickens, in whom I have not had much interest before. Also, I enjoyed learning the origins of terms common in our language and culture, like what "the bar" originally was in the structure of English law, and that the term "pub" comes from "public house." I also found some of the class strictures fascinating, such as how it was considered absurd to have footmen who were not the same height, and how a host and hostess would have to line all their guests up for dinner and pair them off according to rank. This, obviously, was a minefield of possible offenses and social disasters for those doing the pairings!

The fault I have with the book is minor, and that is that because it is written, it seems, primarily as a reference book, even the text sections can be a little repetitive, mentioning some fact in several places because it is relevant in more than one context. Also, it just kind of, bang!, starts with a section on money and, bang!, ends with a section on funerals, with no transitional or ending text, aside from a brief, spearate introduction by the author at the beginning. I think some might fault the author for trying to cover an entire century (think of the differences in culture and daily routine from 1901 and 1999), but I felt this was not a weakness: with the use of the novels' range in publication, he is able to make distinctions and give a gloss of the history and culture of the century that is useful for the his purposes.

But I definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes the above-mentioned authors and novels or to anyone who would like to read them. I think this is a worthwhile companion, and, again, it makes me even more interested in reading the fiction of the time.

If you've read everything by Austen, lots of Trollope and Dickens, you'll enjoy this survey of 19th century English society. I found much in this book that filled in the missing pieces of my understanding of the unwritten rules of this era.

The book is divided into two parts: the first has more lengthy explanations of various aspects of Victorian society--marriage, the military, class, money, law, parliament, etc. Diagrams of class rank and period illustrations are helpful. Quotes from some of the most famous novels of the time are used to illustrate the explanations. There are brief histories of the monarchs interspersed throughout, as well as some medieval history that explains how many of the customs came to be. The second half is a dictionary of commom terms you'll come across in novels from the period.

While the editing of this book leaves a little to be desired, it is an enjoyable read and a decent reference. Serious anglophiles will find it very basic, but the avid novel reader who's history is only "so-so" will find it invaluable.

Covering so much territory, haphazardly, there are bound to be some interesting tidbits (even some whole entries), and the author does better with objects supporting often vague claims with a few facts and figures than with people and activities where he says they might have done this, or might have gone here or there. Who knows. The two main stoppers for me were, first, it's incredibly repetitious. Separated as though new but within two (that's 2) pages are:
".. all the land in each generation was left to the eldest son.."
"The idea was for the estate...to pass to one person..."
"... necessitated that the land go to one child..."
"... the logical heir, then, was the eldest son."
"... was usually a deed giving the land to the eldest sonÉ"
"So now the problem... solved by leaving it to the eldest son."
- that's aside from several literary examples of someone leaving land to his eldest son; good grief.
The other stopper is "part two" of the book, a glossary with some interesting entries, but padded out to 135 (not a typo) pages. An example of the fluff: "ale- What was the difference between beer and ale? Sometimes the term 'beer' included ale. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes ale was supposed to be stronger than beer, other times not." The mucked up repeating and a fair amount of similarly worthless fluff, despte some interesting sections, rates only two stars, and you'll do much better with a way more interesting, better researched, more thorough, better presented book by Norrie Epstein (Friendly Dickens) or the dense but even more rewarding book by Robin Gilmour (The Victorian Period).

It was a great book, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys 19th century England, history in general, or 19th century English authors.

The book is composed of two parts. The first is a topical overview of all aspects of everyday life and society in 1800s England. What did they eat? How did they farm? How did they keep clean? Who had a higher social standing? What did the poor and the orphans do? All of these questions and many more are answered in an easy-to-read and entertaining way. The second part of the book is a glossary of terms which might be unfamiliar to the reader of 2006. When is Lady-Day? What's a costermonger? What exactly is a pelisse? This second section would be particularly useful if one needed to look up an unfamiliar term while reading Dickens or Austen or any of the many other 19th century writers.

Oh, what a wonderful, living, time machine of a book. The subject is "daily life in 19th century England." More directly, the book is addressed to anyone who ever read a book by Dickens, Austen, or one of the Bronte sisters, and found themselves struggling along as best they could to grasp the importance of whist, calling cards, and the different types of carriages.

I would think that if you're a fan of Victorian literature, you'll love this book, but honestly, I'm not a fan of Victorian literature, and I enjoyed it intensely. We live in a rapidly-changing, diverse, multicultural society now, and while this certainly has its strong points, there seems to be some pleasure in reminding ourselves of the vitality and strength of English society at the height of its 19th century influence. Somewhere underneath our current world, we subconsciously sense a shared heritage here worth remembering (and this has nothing to do with bloodlines; I'm Czech by blood, but still feel the power of a world I care about stirring back to life in this book.)

It is -- for lack of a better word -- fun -- to read through these various explanations and to see this forgotten world coming back together. How do I make change, what are shillings and pence again? How do you play the card game, "whist?" What terms of address are people of different social ranks supposed to use with each other? Why are the English eating pudding all the time in these novels? What's the difference between a brougham and a curricle? When am I supposed to leave my calling card, and to whom? And what are all these dances that Elizabeth and Darcy are doing?

Victorian literature allows readers to swim in this cultural landscape but never really explains it. One just has to try to pick it all up by osmosis. That's actually a perfectly good way to learn about a culture, but for those of us who like a little more straightforward explanation, this book fits the bill.

It's as though you took the Time Machine back to 1835, made your way along as best you could for a while, and finally someone sits you down and says, "OK, THIS is how all this works. Use THIS spoon, and don't call Mr. So-and-so that, it's rude, etc. . . " The light bulb finally goes on in your head, and you feel much better.

If the book simply explained all this stuff without being vivid and fun, I wouldn't give it five stars. But it's written with a lively humor and contagious affection. I raced through it, and I think most other interested readers would as well.

OK, so maybe you can live quite nicely without ever learning about the Order of Precedence, rules for being presented at Court or the difference between a Hogshead and a dram.

If you're like me, however, you love the novels of Regency and Victorian England. I couldn't get enough of Jane Austin with her cool and witty observations on the marriage game, the passionate writings of Charlotte Bronte that seemed to reflect her own inner demons, the bucolic romances of George Eliot or Thomas Hardy's tragi-comic portrayals of men's and women's conflicts within an indifferent society.

These novelists' contemporaries understood the nuances of the society in which they placed their characters, but the modern American reader will not. For this reason, "What Jane Austin Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" is an indispensible reference book. The cultural literacy it provides can only enhance your reading of England's 19th Century literary greats.