Customer Reviews

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811-1901

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The title should have been "A Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Victorian England". While there is a wealth of information on Victorian era customs and daily life, there is very little on the Regency period. Even when the book makes general statements these statements are often applicable only to the Victorian era. As a Regency writer myself, I would caution other writers not to rely on this book for Regency period information.

There were great differences between the Regency and Victorian eras, obvious differences such as changes in fashion, or the rapid industrializiation, and more subtle differences such as transformations in public and private behavior.

Recommended for Victorian authors, but for Regency authors you would be better served to seek out a copy of "The Regency Companion" by Laudermilk & Hamlin.

It is impossible to sum up social life and culture for the 19th century, and authors simply should not try. Hughes' book is a good example. It certainly has many pieces of useful information for both writers and scholars--I never knew that the Adelphi Theater was only open from October to April, for example--and Hughes' tracing of certain topics such as indoor lighting or the railways are concise and intriguing.

Unfortunately, she doesn't explain her terms nearly enough, and the quotations from contemp- orary sources seem overused--as though all of those period recipes were simply padding out space. There's an entire paragraph devoted to the etiquette of "cutting" which is completely incomprehensible if you are not first aware of the actual meaning of social cuts. Also, Hughes does not really work within context well; she doesn't seem to understand that etiquette books were not so much used by those in the upper circles, but by those aspiring to move upwards, or that the very reason for a plethora of etiquette books implies that they are needed--in other words, people are *not* following proper etiquette in their daily lives.

The writer of Victorian-based historical novels would do well to have this book on her reference shelf, but the casual reader will do better to read Sally Mitchell's Daily Life in Victorian England. This book would have been much more useful if it had narrowed its topic and explored them in greater depth.

This book could be very useful, but often more as a guide to other sources, rather than as a authority in its own right. The appendices, listing numerous references sources as well as a very useful list of relevant museums should be valuable to anyone starting out to do research. Particularly relevant sources are also collected at the end each chapter.

If this is intended to be a reference source for writers, then they need detailed information laid out in an efficient format. Hughes does this sometimes, and other times seems to wander off into writing an anecdotal social history. I wonder whether it was a good idea to pack 90 years that saw enormous social changes into one book. I think that Hughes has often wasted space including extensive quotes that would have been better paraphrased and condensed, as well as including information of marginal use, such as numerous recipes and a list of the number of servants advertising for jobs in the Times on January 10, 1870.

One might also wonder why 1801-1810 is not covered, especially since there is a writer's guide covering the 18th century. The period isn't completely ignored, but it must be frustrating for anyone wanting information about the turn of the 18th-19th century. Granted, the Regency, strictly speaking, was 1811-1820, but that wasn't the start of the Victorian era either. Many people consider the Regency period to go back to 1800 or even 1780.

The chapters themselves are uneven in quality. The first section, on lighting, is precisely the sort of thing a writer would need: the different types of lighting are carefully described in detail with dates given so that the reader knows precisely what was in use when. Rather than simply saying that gaslights began to be installed in London in 1807, Hughes carefully explains that only certain small areas were lit at first. There are also very useful lists like the terminuses for the stage coaches, papers in circulation, naval insignia, prohibitions to marriage, etc.

On the other hand, Hughes tells us that flush toilets were invented by 1777 and then leaps to the 1860s to talk about Victorian bathrooms. What about the near century in between? Were people installing flush toilets, or were they simply experimental? On a number of occasions, Hughes throws in an interesting quote on some subject, such as the excerpts from The Habits of Good Society, published in 1864 without any indication of whether the information is valid for the entire era or only for the immediate period.

In the chapter on clothing, Hughes wisely tells us that she is not going to attempt to give a history of fashion in one chapter and provides an extensive bibliography. She then takes up the chapter with long quotes from various sources, but this hit or miss information isn't very helpful, and could have been summarized in a few sentences. I think that Hughes would have done better to warn the reader about tricky subjects that may not be covered in a basic history of fashion and need to be researched. Court dress, for example, was codifed, and a writer should not necessarily send a character to court in a fashionable outfit, however fine. I'm not an expert, but I believe that the rules for court dress also changed during this period: an author would need to look this up so that the outfits are appropriate to the specific time. I believe that this is also the period when the special-purpose wedding dress came into fashion. Early in the century, brides were married in their best day dress, cut according to ordinary fashion, not a special design. If she could afford a trousseau, it might be new for the wedding, but it would not be any special color. Veils and the one-use fantasy dress came later.

Hughes does give us some information relating specifically to the middle class and the poor, which is good, but she often describes customs, particularly mourning customs, which can only have applied to the wealthiest, without much indication of the shift in customs as one moves down the social scale. She does include a useful list of mourning fabrics, though oddly enough, it does not include paramatta, which is mentioned several times in the text.

I'd love to see a second, greatly revised edition. Meanwhile, I think that writers interested in the Regency Era would be better served by Jennifer Kloester's Georgette Heyer's Regency World, as well as various companions to Jane Austen's writings.

While interesting and entertaining, this should not be considered a definitive guide to daily life in Regency and Victorian England. Kristine Hughes does a good job of giving the reader examples of historical writings on subjects such as etiquette and dress. Nevertheless, these few anacdotal resources do not constitute authoritative evidence that this is actually how people behaved in their everyday life. Just as a modern etiquette book reflects an idealized view of modern life rather than an accurate picture of how we really live, these original sources do not necessarily reflect the real lifestyles of the times. So long as you keep this caveat in mind, you will find this a very entertaining and readable book. The scope is extensive - everything from household appliances to travel to the various social institutions. There are many topics that will peak your interest, but consider this to be just the starting point for your research.

I am very much interested in the Regency and I thought this book will be a quick reference guide. Most of the book is Victorian. You may find snippets of Regency here and there, but as a good reference guide, it is most certainly not! For good reference, get "What Jane Austen ate..." Most Disappointing!

I bought this expecting it would offer some additional insights to my `academic hobby' of Victorian Domestic Science. No such luck; Hughes' book didn't tell me a thing.

It _did_ contain a number of things that differed from several other period sources, though. It also frequently ignores the class issue, leaving the hapless reader to (usually incorrectly) assume that various things didn't...vary much from the lower to upper classes. As other reviewers have noted out, the time span is a bit confused; Victorianism did not die out in 1901 but the book rarely even ventures to the last years of the 1800s, and while I don't know much of the Regency period, it seems incomplete there as well. No room is left for comparative analysis, and at times one is left wondering if X changed at all over ninety years.

And while this seems petty, I simply did not enjoy the writing style. It is not sufficiently well-organized to be a pure reference work, and not sufficiently well-written to be an enjoyable read. Persons looking for the latter should probably look for the aforementioned "What Jane Austen ate, etc" title, and persons looking for the former are well advised to spend their money adding to their collections of reprints or original texts from their period of interest.

Whereas other reviewers were turned off by this book's inadequacies, I found it to be a good starting point for someone interested in the nineteenth century. Though by no means is it a definitive guide, its introduction to the era through categorized chapters makes for an interesting and informative read.

I've found the bibliographies in each chapter to be very useful, since they provide leads on other works that would've taken me much longer to track down.

With chapters on military, food, home life, business, and other topics, this book does a decent job of detailing the ins-and-outs of the upper- and middle-class Victorian lifestyle.

This is an enjoyable, easy-to-read book to read alongside your historicals. It brings some light to various things like currency, fashion, and food; but knitpickers beware: everything is in broad terms. There isn't a lot of specific detail and the pictures are only somewhat helpful, serving mainly to decorate the book and not necessarily educate.

For writers, this would definitely help flesh out the book, but if you want specifics, you have to dig a little deeper and do more research.

I gave this book 4 stars because it is great as a starting point. I found it helpful as a starting point for researching, but going deeper into the book, I found I needed more detail. It does save time because you do learn to focus, and general information is right at your fingertips.

Very poorly organized and researched. Subject matter was presented disjointed and incomplete. Too many passages were simply exerpted from other sources and pasted in wherever the author felt like it, and jumped about with no logical flow. I feel Daniel Poole's book What Jane Austin ate and Charles Dickens Knew was a much superior work. In fact I bought this book hoping to supplement what I had read in Daniel Pool's book, but it gave me no new insights.

This book is especially slanted towards the Victorian era but does contain some Regency info that is helpful when wanting general information without indepth research. I would recommend backing up any facts with another source though. Some facts weren't dated so it was difficult to ascertain if they pertained to the Regency or Victorian era. All in all an enjoyable dive into history and helpful as simple research for history buffs or writers of light fiction.