Kathryn Hughes, author, historian, critic UK, Catland, Victorians Undone, The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton, George Eliot, The Last Victorian, The Victorian Governess

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Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum

A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body.

Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left?

Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors?

Who knew Queen Victoria had a personal hygiene problem as a young woman and the crisis that followed led to a hurried commitment to marry Albert?

How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular saying – ‘Sweet FA’ – that we still use today but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins?
 
Victorians Undone follows a thickened index finger or deep baritone voice into the realms of social history, medical discourse, aesthetic practise and religious observance – its language is one of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, an implacably turned back. The result is an eye-opening, deeply intelligent, groundbreaking account that brings the Victorians back to life.

PRAISE FOR VICTORIANS UNDONE

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR • A BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR
 
‘A page-turner … brilliant all the way through. One of the best books I’ve read in ages’
– Lucy Worsley, Sunday Express

‘Refreshingly unusual … brilliant’
– Sunday Times

‘Victorians Undone is the most original history book I have read in a long while’
– Daily Mail

‘A dazzling experiment in life writing’  
– Guardian

‘It is not often I read a book and think “Wow! Every historian of Victorian Britain should read this”. This is historical storytelling at its very best’
– BBC History Magazine

‘A work of formidable scholarship’
– Financial Times

– ‘History so alive you can smell its reek’ 
– Telegraph

‘No one remotely interested in books should miss it’
– Sunday Times

‘I can’t think of a recent social history I’ve enjoyed more’
– The Big Issue

‘It is rich and scholarly, something fascinating to be discovered on every page’
– Observer

‘Sex certainly rears its many heads, but so does every other aspect of Victorian life, from farming techniques to court etiquette, dentistry to oil painting’
– The Times

Sometimes a book just bowls you over with how good it is… I sighed with pleasure as I turned the pages … a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.’
– Washington Post

Kathryn Hughes, author, historian, critic UK, Catland, Victorians Undone, The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton, George Eliot, The Last Victorian, The Victorian GovernessLively, iconoclastic and consistently riveting, this is popular history in the best sense.’
― Wall Street Journal