Background Reading

For serious scholarship, your first stop should be The Victorian Web bibliography; note that there is a section of full-text articles and books and another of original Victorian works.

Throughout that website, the various sub-articles have bibliographies of their own, some of them quite lengthy. Unless you are looking for vague inspiration or something you cannot find through The Victorian Web, use that first. Those people are serious professional historians and the like, and each one of them knows far, far more about this material than I do; their total knowledge is stunning.

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Combined Unannotated (mostly) Bibliography

Note: Unless an entry has a bullet-point remark, I make no claims whatever about any of these texts, which are culled from various sources. Unbulleted notes all come from City of Shadows unless otherwise noted.

• If you are under the impression that I have read all of these texts, you are laboring under a delusion. I have read more of them than are annotated here, but most of these things I have never even seen much less read.

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens’ London. Headline Book Publishing 1987. ISBN: 0-7472-7997-7

Adams, Anthony and Robert Leach. Talent, Wonder and Delight: A Scrapbook of Victorian Entertainment. Blackie and Sons Ltd. 1976. ISBN: 0-216-90051-4

Aldrich, Elizabeth. From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance. Northwestern Univ. Press 1991. ISBN: 0-8101-0913-1

Alpert, Michael. London 1849: A Victorian Murder Story. Pearson Longman, 2004.

August, Andrew. Poor Women's Lives: Gender, Work, and Poverty in Late-Victorian London. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.

Badeau, Adam. Aristocracy in England. Harper and Brothers, 1886. Rare.

Banks, Elizabeth L. Campaigns of Curiosity: Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in Late Victorian London. University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Barstow, Phyllida. The English Country House Party. Sutton Publishing Ltd. 1998. ISBN: 0-7509-1849-7

Blum, Stella. Victorian Fashions & Costume from Harper’s Bazar: 1867-1898. Dover Books 1974. ISBN: 0-486-22990-4

Blyth, Henry. _Hell and Hazard: Or William Crockford versus the Gentleman of England._1969 Henry Regnery Co. ISBN: (none given).

Brinton, D.G. MD. Personal Beauty. Applewood Books 1994 (originally published in 1870) ISBN: 1-55709-226-5

Cantor, Diana. One Hundred Years Ago: The Glorious 1890’s. M&M Books 1990 ISBN: 0-8317-6552-6

Chambers, James. The English House. 1985 W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN: 0-393-02241-2

Clunn, Harold. The Face of London. Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd. 1970. ISBN: 6000-1276-X.

Crichton, Michael. The Great Train Robbery

• Somewhat earlier, but a nice reconstruction of the period

Culbertson, Judi and Tom Randall. Permanent Londoners: An Illustrated, Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of London. 1991 Walker and Co. ISBN: 0-807-7471-7.

Cunnington, Phyllis. English Woman’s Costume in the Nineteenth Century. Dover Books. ISBN:

Cunnington, C. Willett & Phyllis. Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century. Plays, Inc. Boston. ISBN: 0-828-0080-6. Includes men and children's fashions.

Davies, Jennifer. The Victorian Kitchen. BBC Books. ISBN: 0-56-36281-2

Doré, Gustave and Blanchard Jerrold. Doré's London: A Pilgrimage. First published 1872. 1978 reprint, Arno Press. ISBN:0-405-08460-9. Online version of this book can be found at City of Shadows, minus the illustrations.

Eigen, Joel Peter. Unconscious Crime: Mental Absence and Criminal Responsibility in Victorian London. Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 2003.

Fishman, William J. East End 1888. Duckworth, 1988.

• Extremely interesting and useful, by a modern sociologist casting his mind back.

Ford, Colin and Brian Harrison. A Hundred Years Ago: Britain in the 1880s in Words and Photographs. Bloomsbury Books 1994. ISBN: 1-85471-3760

Gernsheim, Alison. Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey. Dover Press 1981. ISBN: 0-486-24205-6

Girouard, Marc. Life in the English Country House. 1980 Penguin Books. ISBN: 0-14-00-5406-5.

Girouard, Marc. The Victorian Country House. Yale Univ. Press 1979 ISBN: 0-300-02390-1

Girouard, Mark. Victorian Pubs. Yale University Press, 1984.

Hills, Prof. Thomas E. The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette. Bluewood Books 1986 (reprint) ISBN: 0-912517-12-3

Holden, Edith. The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady. Bloomsbury Books 1994. ISBN: 1-845471-495-3

Hopkins, Eric. Childhood Transformed: Working-Class Children in 19th Century England. Manchester Univ. Press. ISBN: 0-7190-3867-7

Horn, Pamela. High Society: The English Social Elite 1880-1914. Alan Sutton Ltd. 1992. ISBN: 0-7509-0039-3.

Horn, Pamela. Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters of Country-house Society, 1830-1918. Sutton Publishing 1997. iSBN: 0-7509-1431-9

Hughes, Kristin. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England. Writer’s Digest Books 1998 ISBN: 08-9879-812-4

Hughes, M.V. A London Girl of the 1880's. 1978 reprint, Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN: 0-19-28143-2.

Hughes, M.V. A London Home of the 1890's. 1978 reprint, Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN: 0-19-281257-2.

Humphreys, Robert. Sin, Organized Charity, and the Poor Law in Victorian England. St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Joyce, Simon. Capital Offenses: Geographies of Class and Crime in Victorian London. University of Virginia Press, 2003.

Kirby, Chester. The English Country Gentleman. James Clark & Co., Ltd. (no date or ISBN given).

Kirwan, Daniel Joseph. Palace and Hovel: Phases of London Life. Abelard-Schuman, Ltd. 1963. Reprint from 1870 text.

Kobayashi, Tsukasa. Sherlock Holmes’s London. Chronicle Books 1984 ISBN: 0-87701-380-2

Lasdun, Susan. Victorians at Home. Viking Press, New York 1981. ISBN: 0-670-74600-2

Leapman, Michael, Editor. The Book of London: The Evolution of a Great City. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN: 1-55584-370-0

Lejeune, Anthony. The Gentlemen's Clubs of London. Dorset Press. 0-88029-02-4.

Leslie, Anita. The Marlborough House Set. Dell Publishing 1972, ISBN: 440-05211-575

Lewis, Lesley. The Private Life of a Country House. Sutton Publishing 1997. ISBN: 0-7509-1678-8

MacColl, Gail and Carol McD. Wallace. To Marry and English Lord: Or, How Anglomania Got Started. Workman Publishing 1989. ISBN: 0-89480-939-3

McCutcheon, Marc. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800’s. Writer’s Digest Books 1993 ISBN: 0-89879-541-9

Manning, Rev. Samuel, and Rev. S.G. Green. England 100 Years Ago: The charm of Victorian England illustrated. Excalibur Books 1985 (reprint from 1885). ISBN: 0-671-80802-8

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-043241-8

Metcalf, Priscilla. Victorian London. Praeger Publishers, New York 1972.

Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Greenwood Publishing Group 1996 ISBN:03-1329-4674

Morrison, Arthur. A Child of the Jago. Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1996.

Morrison, Arthur. Tales of Mean Streets. Academy Chicago Publishers, 1997.

Nead, Lynda. Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London. Yale University Press, 2000.

Nicholson, Shirley. A Victorian Household. Sutton Publishing, 1998.

Owen, David Edward. The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889: The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation. Harvard University Press, 1982.

Palmer, Alan. The East End: Four Centuries of London Life. Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. 1989 Lyceum Books. ISBN: 0-925065-16-1.

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist – the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England. Simon and Schuster. 1993 ISBN: 0-671-79337-3.

• Much touted on a great many Victorian websites.

Rackham, Oliver. The History of the Countryside. J.M. Dent 1986, ISBN: 0-460-86091-7

Reader, W.J. Life in Victorian England. Capricorn Books 1964 ISBN: 399-50144-4

Sala, George Augustus. London up to Date. Adam & Charles Black, London. 1894. Rare.

Schroeder, Joseph J., Editor. The Wonderful World of Ladies’ Fashion: 1850- 1920. Digest Books, Inc. 1971 ISBN: 0-695-80221-6

Service, Alastair. London 1900. 1979 Granada Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 0-258-97094-4.

Shelley, Henry. C. Inns and Taverns of Old London. L.C. Page & Co. 1909.

Tuckley, Henry. Under the Queen: Present Day Life in England. Cranston & Stowe, New York, 1891. Primary source of everyday life in England from an American's point of view. Detailed. Rare.

Weinreb, Ben, and Christopher Hibbert, Editors. The London Encyclopaedia. Adler & Adler Publishers. ISBN: 0-917561-07-4. Hard to find in the United States, but more than worth the search.

• Not so hard to find, really, as it's been reissued: The London Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive Book on London Ever Published

White, Jerry. Rothschild Buildings. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

Young, Michael and Peter Wilmott. Family and Kinship in East London. University of California Press, 1992.

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 22 Dec 2004