At the height of the Gilded Age, America's wealthiest families began to cluster in Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor, and Tuxedo Park. In these idyllic locales they built luxurious summer "cottages" away from the grit and grime of New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The Belle Haven peninsula, in Greenwich, Connecticut, is home to one of the first and most spectacular residence parks in the country. Its development occurred rapidly, and between 1884 and 1894 Belle Haven Park was transformed from scenic pastureland set above the glistening ribbon of Long Island Sound into a bastion of Victorian luxury. Successful American magazine described the Belle Haven of 1902 as "a nonpareil spot, surpassing in beauty, while equaling in elegance, the pet of the fashionable world, Newport, and outshining Tuxedo in brilliance and gaiety." The New York Times, meanwhile, called it "the flower garden of Greenwich, and, indeed, of the whole Connecticut shore." Victorian Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Connecticut focuses on that great flowering of Belle Haven, from 1884 to 1929. The 45-year span began with Robert Law Olmsted's storied firm laying out Belle Haven's graceful, lamp-lit streets, and continued with the Gilded Age's most renowned architects designing masterpieces, in styles ranging from the whimsical Queen Anne to the ponderous Richardsonian Romanesque, for the illustrious movers and shakers of the day - men who raised up the Manhattan skyline, co-founded U.S. Steel, formed Nabisco, ran Standard Oil's domestic business, and mined gold, silver, and iron ore to supply an exploding railroad industry. Victorian Summer features estate biographies - each telling the story of a house, an architect, and a predominant owner. Some of these houses are sadly gone or unrecognizably changed--though preserved here in photographs--but many shine on as brightly as ever. Together the biographies weave a portrait of the Gilded Age and its aftermath, with an emphasis on the architecture, but touching on such events as the Civil War, the industrial boom, and the sinking of the Titanic.

The natural and human history of the Valles Caldera preserve in northern New Mexico and the struggle to transfer the land to the public domain.

In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.

Speculative fiction from the acclaimed bestselling author of Exit, Pursued by a Bear and Star Wars: Ahsoka. Victoria-Margaret is the crown princess of the empire, a direct descendent of Victoria I, the queen who changed the course of history. The imperial tradition of genetically arranged matchmaking will soon guide Margaret into a politically advantageous marriage. But before she does her duty, she'll have one summer of freedom and privacy in a far corner of empire. Posing as a commoner in Toronto, she meets Helena Marcus, daughter of one of the empire's greatest placement geneticists, and August Callaghan, the heir to a powerful shipping firm currently besieged by American pirates. In a summer of high-society debutante balls, politically charged tea parties, and romantic country dances, Margaret, Helena, and August discover they share an extraordinary bond and maybe a one-in-a-million chance to have what they want and to change the world in the process. Set in a near-future world where the British Empire was preserved not by the cost of blood and theft but by the effort of repatriation and promises kept, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a surprising, romantic, and thought-provoking story of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world. ★ "This witty and romantic story is a must-read.”—SLJ, starred review ★ "Compelling and unique—there's nothing else like it."—Booklist, starred review. ★ "[A] powerful and resonant story of compassion, love, and finding a way to fulfill obligations while maintaining one’s identity."—PW, starred review

Vintage guide offered turn-of-the-century seamstresses clear instructions for altering patterns and creating shirt-blouses, skirts, wedding gowns, coats, maternity wear, children's clothing, and other apparel.

This title was first published in 2001. The eminent historian of Victorian Britain, Walter L. Arnstein has, over the course of a career spanning more than 40 years, arguably introduced more students to British history than any other American historian. This collection of essays by some of his former students celebrates Arnstein's inspirational teaching and writing with surveys and analyses of various aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Nineteenth-century topics covered in the volume include early Victorian caricatures and the thin legal lines that they often trod; British Army fashion and its contribution to Royal spectacles; Free Trade Radicals and how they viewed educational reform and moral progress; the persistence of Chartist ideology following the failure of the movement in 1848; Disraeli and Derby's involvement with the Navy's administration; religious periodicals and their influence; the myth of Bismarck as an honest broker of peace and the subsequent collapse of the myth as a later source of enmity in Anglo-German relations; the powerful mystique evoked back in England by the London missionary societies Mongolian; missions; Victorian urban planning and the re-introduction of the market place.

A unique, in-depth view of Victorian London during the record-breaking summer of 1858, when residents both famous and now-forgotten endured “The Great Stink” together While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence. Ashton mines Victorian letters and gossip, diaries, court records, newspapers, and other contemporary sources to uncover historically crucial moments in the lives of three protagonists—Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Disraeli. She also introduces others who gained renown in the headlines of the day, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx, William Thackeray, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. Ashton reveals invisible threads of connection among Londoners at every social level in 1858, bringing the celebrated city and its citizens vibrantly to life.