Today's Business Math: A Text-Workbook

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An Easy to Read and Interesting Reference

Fun and Interesting

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

Cute but glib--and wrong!

that's what they meant

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England
Daniel Pool
Manufacturer: Touchstone
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Everyday Life in the 1800s: A Guide for Writers, Students & Historians (Writer's Guides to Everyday Life)

An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England

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Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England

Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels

ASIN: 0671882368

Book Description

For every frustrated reader of the great nineteenth-century English novels of Austen, Trollope, Dickens, or the Brontës 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," here is a "delightful reader's companion that lights up the literary dark" (The New York Times).

This fascinating, lively guide clarifies the sometimes bizarre maze of rules, regulations, and customs that governed everyday life in Victorian England. 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.

Customer Reviews:

An Easy to Read and Interesting Reference.......2007-09-30

If you read Regency or Victorian literature this is a reference you will want close at hand. Both Interesting and fun to read, the author says he wanted to "answer some of the questions that nag any half-curious reader of the great nineteenth-century English novels." He does just that. This book is meant as an overview, or introduction, to the period not an in-depth reference. You will not find lengthy discussions of what Jane Austen might have eaten, but there are several sections on foods and dinner parties.

The book includes a large glossary of terms peculiar to the period. I have found it handy when I've come across an unfamiliar word in a novel and didn't want to stop reading and go research it.

While I feel the book does cover both the Regency and Victorian era fairly well, I believe it can be criticized for spanning too great of a period. Imagine a book attempting to give insight into the entire twentieth century, a period that would include the Wright Brothers and the moon landings and corsets and miniskirts, and many more contrasts. The nineteenth century had many similar contrasts making it difficult to write a single volume cover the entire period.

I recommend two other books for anyone reading Victorian literature, Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England and To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace

Recommendation: Anyone starting down the road of enjoying Regency or Victorian literature should find this a handy reference.

Kyle Pratt

Fun and Interesting.......2007-06-11

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England, by Daniel Pool, is a nice book that is full of fun facts and answers to questions that come about from the reading of some of the great English writers. The book needs to be taken for what it is... entertainment, rather than relied upon as a historical textbook of any kind. I find the book an interesting diversion occasionally, and fun for picking up a bit of the Victorian period. Enjoy. Three stars.

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.......2007-05-13

That's a perfect book. If you want to know anything interesting about the 19th century in England, you should read it.I teach English as the second language and it's sometimes too difficult to draw students' attention through the whole lesson. There are many interesting and unknown things, that help students to imagine this time in England. On the other hand, the book is written by clear and easy English so I could not stop reading till I finished.

Cute but glib--and wrong!.......2007-03-30

This is an error-ridden, foolish little book that is just fine for casual consumption but is a terrible place for anyone serious about history to try to learn anything. I write Victorian-set novels, and I really think that books like these are a major problem with my genre as they fool would-be writers into believing that they actually have actually done "research."

*sighs*

Read through George Eliot, Trollope, Austen, Dickens, the Eyres, and Thackeray. Then read articles from popular newspapers and real histories of the period. And then collect fashion plate images and discriptions. Buy copies of Mrs. Beeton and Mayhew. THEN you will have done some research about the 19th c.

that's what they meant.......2007-03-16

i am a dickens, austen, bronte, hardy, wharton, etc. reader. this book relates the conditions of the times and the reasons things were done as they were. eye-opening, fun to read, very informative. even a glossary at the end of the book.

Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Sophie Gilmartin
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521560942

Book Description

This study addresses the question of why ideas of ancestry and kinship were so important in nineteenth-century society, and particularly in the Victorian novel. Sophie Gilmartin discusses what makes people believe that they are part of a certain region, race or nation, and what part is played by superstitious belief, invented traditions and fictions. Gilmartin's study shows that ideas of ancestry and kinship, and the narratives inspired by or invented around them, were of profound significance in the construction of Victorian identity.

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

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Another gem.
an excellent, if outdated, book
A Former Student's Opinion
This is just icky
Gibraltor

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)
Sandra M. Gilbert , and Susan Gubar
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Women Writers | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0300084587

Book Description

This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual.

Customer Reviews:

Another gem........2007-01-01

Could this have been titled "The Misreading of 19th Century Female Novelists"? "The Madwoman" is not an easy read: it's an academic effort and a superb effort at that. But the casual bronteelioteyre fan will be lulled into a sense of familiarity -- "yes, I remember reading that" -- only to discover too late that he / she has completely missed the point of all those famous 19th century novels, at least from the perspective of these two clever, insightful, witty women who somehow came together to write perhaps the definitive feminist view of 19th century female novelists. Taking just one example out of hundreds: after reading their discussion of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey," I re-read the novel and couldn't stop laughing at this parody. Even more entertaining was the fact that so many critics panned "Northanger" when it came out, misreading that it was a parody of the entire genre of the romantic (with a small "r") novel of that era.

an excellent, if outdated, book.......2002-02-25

As a former student of Prof. Gubar, I can attest to the importance of this book within feminist literary circles: Gilbert and Gubar, Inc. created a piece of scholarship that transformed the way students of literature read literature. The book's place among feminist literary criticism today attests to the importance of their mission--were it not for Gilbert and Gubar, someone else, perhaps today, would be performing this kind of work. The fact remains, however, that the proliferation of feminist critique, whether from Robyn Wiegman or Lauren Berlant, makes this text an essential primer for feminist criticism, but not as compelling as the works it tacitly bore.

A Former Student's Opinion.......2001-09-28

As a former student of Susan Gubar, I would have to recommend this book to anyone interested in a deeper understading of the novels covered and also finding a different perspective to the traditional critical approaches. As a groundbreaking work, this collection critically looks at and analyzes many different aspects approaching the anxiety of female authorship. This work is truly interesting, and to all of the naysayers, I can vouch that the authors are have a very compelling and informed perspective. The second edition proves that it is a work that will be around for a very long time and that the work will not fall into obscurity, for it is a inspired work of literary criticism. I would recommend this to anyone who seeks a deeper look into the popular women novelists.

This is just icky.......2001-05-25

I apply a very simple standard to literary criticism: Read the critique then reread the original. If the critique improves my appreciation and understanding of the original, then I have spent my time wisely. This book fails that test.

Gilbert & Gubar seem to have little appreciation for the artistry of literary criticism. They seem incapable of writing concise, insightful sentences. They seem to have little appreciation for the rhythms and patterns of English; their sentences read approximately the same way a lopsided trash-can rolls down a hill. There's a lot of noise but not much is actually accomplished. This book cries out for a patient and caring First Year english instructor with a red pen.

Individual chapters seem to have promise, quickly drained by the authors inability to focus, summarise, analyse and bring their subject to life. Their analysis of the Bronte's had the astonishing effect of reducing my interest in these enthralling authors and their works. The Authors insight into the nineteenth century gothic is at best weak. They make much of minor issues and ignore broader themes linking their chosen authors and works.

At its best, reading literary criticism is an electrifying experience, one that inspires you to reach for the nearest great book and savor it as you would fine wine and great food. In the case of the Madwoman in the Attic, it inspires you to regard the library with weariness and a heavy heart. Simply stated, this is book is as tired as Kathy Lee's latest CD and equally awash in mawkish sentiment. I recommend any book by another, better critics - Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, Cleanth Brooks, T. S. Eliot.

Gibraltor.......2000-12-20

This is a great re-structuring view of Women artists in the Victorian era. Once you've read this, everything looks different and it makes you want to re-visit novels like Jane Eyre and Middlemarch and Sense and Sensibility just to see how much they have changed. Madwomen is a work of creativity as much as criticism. It changes you. Once you have read this, you find yourself in a whole different ocean.

Aestheticism and Sexual Parody 18401940 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Aestheticism and Sexual Parody 18401940 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Dennis Denisoff
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Parodies | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Aestheticism and Sexual Parody adds a new and important dimension to the concept of parody as a combative strategy by which sexually marginalized groups undermine the status quo. From W. S. Gilbert's drama, and Vernon Lee and Christopher Isherwood's prose to George Du Maurier's cartoons and Max Beerbohm's caricatures, Dennis Denisoff explores the interactions of late nineteenth and twentieth century parody and aestheticism with the texts of canonical authors such as Alfred Tennyson, Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne, and Oscar Wilde.

Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 18801920 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 18801920 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Pamela Thurschwell
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Channeling | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521801680

Book Description

Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. She argues that as new technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Making unexpected connections between, for instance, speaking on the telephone and speaking to the dead, she examines how psychical research is reflected in the work of Henry James, George DuMaurier and Oscar Wilde among others.

Download Description

In this book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siËcle. Thurschwell argues that technologies such as the telegraph and the telephone annihilated distances that separated bodies and minds from each other. As these new technologies began suffusing the public imagination from the mid nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Talking to the dead and talking on the phone both held out the promise of previously unimaginable contact between people: both seemed to involve 'magical thinking'. Thurschwell looks at the ways in which psychical research, the scientific study of the occult, is reflected in the writings of such authors as Henry James, George du Maurier and Oscar Wilde, and in the foundations of psychoanalysis. This study offers new and provocative interpretations of fin-de-siËcle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history.

Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Nicola Bown
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Criticism | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This study of the Victorian fascination with fairies reveals their significance in Victorian art and literature. Nicola Bown explores what the fairy meant to the Victorians, and why they were so captivated by a figure which nowadays seems trivial and childish. She argues that fairies were a fantasy that allowed the Victorians to escape from their worries about science, technology and the effects of progress. The fairyland they dreamed about was a reconfiguration of their own world, and the fairies who inhabited it were like themselves.

Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Women Writers | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521641020

Book Description

This collection of essays focuses attention on a number of Victorian women writers popular in their own time but forgotten or neglected by literary history, from Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Yonge to Mary Ward, Marie Corelli, "Ouida" and E. Nesbit. Particular emphasis is given to writings concerned with "the woman question." Discussions of marriage, matriarchy and divorce, satire, suffragette writing, writing for children, and links between literature and art illuminate the complex cultural and literary roles, and the engaging contributions, of Victorian women writers.

Aristocracies of Fiction: The Idea of Aristocracy in Late-Nineteenth-Century and Early-Twentieth-Century Literary Culture (Contributions to the Study of World Literature)

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Aristocracies of Fiction: The Idea of Aristocracy in Late-Nineteenth-Century and Early-Twentieth-Century Literary Culture (Contributions to the Study of World Literature)
Len Platt
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

From 1890 to 1920, the British aristocracy faded in historical importance. The culture of that period often presented aristocratic characters and typically sought to conserve aristocratic values. The fall of the aristocracy triggered astonishing literary responses. In literary works, aristocrats were transformed into warrior heroes, Scotland Yard detectives, swashbucklers, diseased degenerates, and Gothic monsters. This book explores the centrality of aristocracy to late Victorian and early-20th-century literary culture. Included are discussions of such writers as Marie Corelli, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, H.G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf. The volume looks at major canonical authors as well as some forgotten figures from popular literary culture. In doing so, it establishes links between different types of literature of this period and challenges some important standard views on such topics as Shaw's socialism and Woolf's commitment to the common reader. A significant new addition to historical approaches to literature, this volume raises central questions about cultural processes and the nature of cultural value.

Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

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Definately worth the money!

Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Paula M. Krebs
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This book looks at the ways Victorian ideas about gender and race supported British imperialism at the turn of the century. It examines the Boer War of 1899-1902 through the war writings of literary figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Olive Schreiner, H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, and also through newspapers, propaganda, and other forms of public debate in print. Paula M. Krebs' analysis of the part played by ideas about gender and race in public discourse makes a significant new contribution to the study of British imperialism.

Customer Reviews:

Definately worth the money!.......1999-03-25

I am not really a person of literature but this book I thought was really worth the time and money.

Dickens And Empire: Discourses Of Class, Race And Colonialism In The Works Of Charles Dickens (Nineteenth Century)

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Dickens And Empire: Discourses Of Class, Race And Colonialism In The Works Of Charles Dickens (Nineteenth Century)
Grace Moore
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0754634124

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