What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century EnglandA “delightful reader’s companion” (The New York Times) to the great nineteenth-century British novels of Austen, Dickens, Trollope, the Brontës, and more, this lively guide clarifies the sometimes bizarre maze of rules and customs that governed life in Victorian England. For anyone who has ever wondered whether a duke outranked an earl, when to yell “Tally Ho!” at a fox hunt, or how one landed in “debtor’s prison,” this book serves as an indispensable historical and literary resource. Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the “plums” in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life—both “upstairs” and “downstairs. An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from “ague” to “wainscoting,” the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day. |
Contents
| 13 | |
| 19 | |
| 26 | |
| 33 | |
Esq Gent K C B etc | 44 |
Society | 50 |
The Horse | 142 |
The Railroad | 148 |
Sex | 186 |
Houses with Names | 194 |
The Orphan | 234 |
Apprentices | 240 |
Disease | 246 |
Death and Other Grave Matters | 252 |
| 411 | |
Married Him | 180 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
army Austen balls Barchester Towers baronets barristers Bath became bishop Bleak House borough called Cambridge candles cards carriage century Chancellor Christmas Church of England clothes coach common Court Crawley dance David Copperfield Dickens dining dinner drawing room dress duke earl eldest English Eustace Eustace Diamonds farm farmers fox hunting gentleman gentry girls hand Hardy hired horses household housemaid Jane Austen Jane Austen's Jane Eyre keep kind ladies land living London Lord maid Mansfield Park married meant mid-century Middlemarch night nineteenth-century novels Oliver Twist Oxford parish Parliament party peerage perhaps person Phineas Finn Pickwick poor popular pounds Pride and Prejudice prime minister pudding rank Royal says servants sheep shillings social someone sometimes street term Tess Thames things Trollope usually Vanity Fair Victorian wife women wore workhouse Wuthering Heights young