Childhood in neo-Victorian fiction for both child and adult readers is an extremely multifaceted and fascinating field. This book argues that neo-Victorian fiction projects multiple, competing visions of childhood and suggests that they can be analysed by means of a typology, the 'childhood scale', which provides different categories along the lines of power relations, and literary possible-worlds theory. The usefulness of both is exemplified by detailed discussions of Philippa Pearce's "Tom's Midnight Garden" (1958), Eva Ibbotson's "Journey to the River Sea" (2001), Sarah Waters' "Fingersmith" (2002) and Dianne Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale" (2006).

First published in 1978, this multi-disciplinary study embraces a wide selection of topics ranging from family intimacy and authoritarianism to the family as a unit for launching social reforms. Subjects treated in the nine essays include the Victorian attitude to childbirth, the role of the nanny, the power of the upper-class paterfamilias, the pattern of family work and fertility, and incest among the Victorian working classes. The book is introduced by a critical survey of the state of family history and the need for new studies. From the essays, the Victorian family emerges as both a refuge from society and a springboard into it, and as an important unit for the study of the repression and exploitation of women and children in Victorian society. This book will be of interest to those studying Victorian history and society.

A rich selection from diaries, letters, advice books, magazines, and paintings creates a rooms-by-room portrait of Victorian life--from childbirth in the master bedroom to separate gender domains in the drawing room and parlor.

This volume of primary source materials documents the nature of the home and the theories and discussions around the concept. It examines the class divisions that become evident with the ostentatious lifestyles of political and society hostesses at the peak, whilst middle-class housing often in suburbia, seemed to have created a separation of home and work, arguably suggesting men and women lived in separate spheres. Working-class interiors, often seen the eyes of middle-class observers, were at the bottom of the hierarchy and often reflected concerns of social inequality and misery. The documents also address the process of purchasing and decorating a home, advice on decoration and home management, the nature of taste and comfort, and the symbolic roles of the home as an anchor in society. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of art history.

A middle class home, circa 1850, of the sort that many people live in today, is the focus of Judith Flanders' book. The Victorian age is both recent and unimaginably distant. In the most prosperous and technologically advanced nation in the world, people carried slops up and down stairs; buried meat in fresh earth to prevent mould forming; wrung sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. This drudgery was routinely performed by the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Running water, stoves, flush lavatories - even lavatory paper - arrived slowly throughout the century; and most were luxuries available only to the prosperous.

Thomson (1834-82) is best known for his poem The City of Dreadful Night and has several thorough biographies written about him. Pawley however, thinks that though all the relevant facts have been wrung from the existing document, some reasonable inference can reveal much more about his tormented emotional life. c. Book News Inc.