Customer Reviews

Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840--1870

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3 star:		(1)
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I stumbled on Liza Picard's books quite by chance. After looking at the publishing date in some of the books it is apparent some of them have been around for several years. I am now recommending them to anyone and everyone and I am so glad I stumbled across the first one I read on a rainy afternoon, lonely and far away from home. I have now read them all.

As soon as you start to read the book it becomes apparent that the author is passionate about her subject and wants the reader to enjoy the reading experience as much as she has in the writing of it. Liza Picard presents an enthralling picture of how life in London in the Victorian era was really lived. The Victorian era covers a large span in years and was a time when the world was changing more quickly than at any period in its history. A magical, mystical period in the history of a great City.

Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law and qualified as a barrister but did not practice. Quite where she gleaned all this information from I am not sure. That it was a labour of love is obvious to anyone who reads her books and I for one am grateful.

This is an in depth look at how London became a modern city through the early Victorian transition. The insight starts with the key to any city the revision of the sewage system to eliminate the health problems and the odor that permeated much of the city from cesspits. As fascinating is the role of women, which differs depending on social class; unlike romance novels, the author furbishes a powerful look at the growing factory and municipal working class, those below the poverty line, and the servant class too. In these cases diaries and the writings of chroniclers like Jane Carlyle and Thomas Mayhew provide insight. This is a terrific look at three decades of transformation of one of the world's greatest cities. Readers who enjoyed the recently issued LONDON'S THAMES: THE RIVER THAT SHAPED A CITY AND ITS HISTORY as well as the author's previous captivating London historicals (see ELIZABETH'S LONDON and RESTORATION LONDON) will appreciate this deep look at the historical era of transformation of an urban center that never slept in the middle of the nineteenth century and still does not.

Harriet Klausner

Liza Pickard is a barrister with a mighty pen. She has authored several books about London. These Include: Life in

Elizabethan London: Restoration London; Dr. Johnson's London

and now this fourth book in the series.

Picard has done her homework: her reading of first person diaries and sources; periodical articles from the age. She includes

excellent secondary sources giving the reader an accurate view of

life when Victoria reigned the British Empire. The little Queen

ruled for 64 years from 1837 to her death in 1901.

Picard's chapters deal with such topics as:

daily life for the poor, middle class and wealthy;

the smells and the sights of London;

male and female fashions;

church life and the judicial system of Victorian England;

Amusements from opera strolling in the park to riding a horse

on Rotten Row.

Household appliances and the chores of childrearing;

Disease and Death traditions. Medicine made progress.

the growth of the railroads and road construction;

the Great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851;

Education expanding its opportunities through Ragged Schools

and church schools.

There are many other topics but you get the idea. The book is

not thrilling but it is essential to a student of English history or literature who wants to sample life for the average

Londoner living from 1840-1870.

I've been reading about the Victorians for a number of years. I tend to consume subjects, reading book and book, until I've satisfied my curiosity. Picard's Victorian London is the best written of them all and answered my most pressing questions concerning the Victorians. Her order is logical and her descriptions memorable. I had previously read a lot of descriptions of the Crystal Pavilion but only Picard's book walked me through the exhibition. The book also helped me realize I no longer wish for a time machine to transport me back to a simpler time. I think the Thames is just lovely now and it sounds as if it was rather nasty 150 years ago. I highly recommend the book.

This book is nice for what it is--a survey of Victorians and their city by a nonexpert who nevertheless did very thorough research. If you are not very familiar with the Victorian age, I recommend this book strongly.

Because of the title, I was hoping for an in-depth analysis of LONDON, above all. I wanted descriptions of neighborhoods, of shopping districts, photographs of streetfronts, details of every district, its flavor, and the changes it underwent. The book is nearly useless in that regard.

If you not are wanting compact information about the historical London but rather rather a general book about Victorian attitudes, amusements, and pasttimes with a little dash of infrastructural information, this is a great read. It is a shame that the book's title and blurb do not reflect the content.

Quick note: The author was thrown off my pictures of servant girls in fancy dresses. Early photography studios kept a stock of nice clothes on hand, and so what a lower-middle to low class person is wearing in a photography studio picture shouldn't be thought to be representative of what they actually owned.

Were it not for the availability of Judith Flanders' "Inside the Victorian Home", Ms. Picard's treatment of the subject period would definitely be worth the read. But compared to "Inside", this book is neither as well written nor as comprehensive in its treatment of the day-to-day lives of our Victorian forebears.

I couldn't resist the description nor peeps inside this book, and it paid me back for its purchase fourfold. This is a wonderful summary of the lives of Victorians of the lower and middle classes. Picard divides the book into chapters about each aspect of the Victorian life, and, most tellingly, she begins with a chapter about smell, as the manured- and horse-urined streets and the stink of the polluted Thames along with the scents of rarely-washed bodies would have been the thing that struck a modern person most about the era. Then she visits the home, the businesses, the hospitals, the taverns, the social gathering places, and tells of the people, from the mudlarks who risked their lives gathering valuables from the river to be able to eat to the homeowners and the professionals. While certainly not an exhaustive study, it is easy to read without being simplistic, helping you to envision the era. Highly recommended!

There are a lot of "Everyday Life in [pick your time and place]" books out there and some of them are excellent for supplying the reader with an overview of the social history of some past era. This is one of the best of the genre that I have seen in some time. Picard has already done similar volumes for London under Elizabeth I, the later Stewarts, and the mid-18th century, so she knows what she wants to accomplish and how to go about it. The 19th century in Britain was a time of tremendous change -- several cycles of major change, in fact -- just like the 20th century in the U.S., hence her decision to limit herself to a single generation at the beginning of Victoria's reign. She also limits herself to life in one of the world's great capitals; the rural poor appear not at all, but their lives were mostly dull and repetitive in any case. She tackles the broader subject through twenty-three topical chapters, from "Smells," "Streets," and "Food," to "Women," "Death," and (that centerpiece of the century) "The Great Exhibition." This approach also makes it easy to pick the book up, read a chapter or two, and put it down again -- and you should think about what you've read and compare it to life here and now. Each chapter draws from the writings of a very large number of witnesses, including journalists, academics, diarists, and foreign visitors. (The bibliographic notes run to almost forty pages and provide an excellent checklist for further reading.) Picard treats the Victorians as people much like ourselves. That is, they aren't foolish or ignorant or quaint; they did the best they could (usually) with what they knew and understood about the world. One hopes writers two centuries from now will take an equally humane view of the primitive life of the early 21st century. Her style doesn't lack humor, however, especially when quoting some contemporary critic of English society. A highly recommended book.

This is such a good book that one wishes it were longer. The author lovingly takes the reader on a tour of Europe's liveliest city in the middle of the 19th century, from the sewers on up. She goes into the daily lives of common people rather than rehashing politics and personalities. Be sure to catch her warm book on Elizabethan London.

This is a nonfiction work, so at first I found the author's conversational tone and penchant for self-disclosure very distracting. I'm trying to learn about Victorian London - do I need to know that the author is a feminist who sports stiletto heels? However, as the book progressed I grew accustomed to her style and even came to like it.

This book covers all aspects of London in the years 1840-1870, in the same vein as "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" but even more comprehensive. It describes the streets and sewers of London, the city's terrible pollution and the efforts that were made to contain it, industry and trade, the homes and lifestyles of members of different social classes, forms of entertainment, the penal system, religion, mourning dress, and more. An entire (very interesting and edifying) chapter is devoted to The Great Exhibition and The Crystal Palace. There are many fascinating tidbits that emerge during the course of this book which give the reader a real sense of the time period: for example, it really becomes clear that children were not revered in the way they are now, often being sold to "baby farmers," sent into the workforce at an early age, or left to fend for themselves on the streets. The degree of thievery that existed was also eye-opening: laundry would be stolen while hanging out to dry; pedestrians would be mugged, dragged into an alley and stripped of all of their clothes and belongings; even wallets hidden in the inner pockets of a jacket could be filched, so skilled were the thieves. It always has been a source of amazement to me that members of the middle class (not upper class) kept servants: as the author points out, middle class people often would employ a cook, housemaid, nursemaid and footboy. Plus, the middle class worked very agreeable hours, like 10am-4pm. How did this work, and what happened? I found the descriptions of male and female dress very interesting. Also, the book really emphasizes the city's terrible stench.

There's a lot to learn from this work; I could go on and on. One more example will have to suffice: who knew that the Victorians loved the word "monster," using it to describe things that were large or impressive?