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Daily Life in the Victorian Age
144 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1993
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February 26, 2026
I hate to give this one star but I just couldn’t rate any higher considering the horrible time I had of reading and the fact that I planned to donate it right back to the used bookstore where I bought it most of the time that I was reading. It was so bad I didn’t even read it at home, could have finished maybe in half the time but I wouldn’t torture myself with this at home and it ended up taking 4 days at work to read.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a hard time of reading a book. I’d read a page or so and then have to put it down and do something else, almost falling asleep reading. It was so dry and boring, it felt like reading a school textbook and was as enjoyable.
Some of the pages were hard to read because they had graphics behind them. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea.
Probably the worst part about it aside from the writing is that the text would be broken up by random insertions. You’d be reading about one topic and then you’d flip the page expecting to continue the sentence but it wouldn’t be a continuation; it would be a graphic about something else. So by the time you read that and flipped the page, you forgot where you left off. It was maddening and it kept happening over and over. This was horribly plotted out and should have been organized better. Put the graphics in after the text is over so it doesn’t interrupt for goodness’ sake.
Then, as if the book couldn’t get any worse, they included a picture of a dead kid. Ewww. I had had it at that point.
There were some interesting info:
Victorians as a whole put more emphasis on love than their forebears. They valued love but with practicality, that a couple’s material circumstances should be taken into consideration. For most girls, the chief business of life was to win the right husband. It was a sure badge of respectability for me to be married. This was well facilitated with balls, dances, and weekends in the country. Flirting was encouraged.
It was sad that the most interesting thing I had read for a long time was about barbed wire…
It was cool there was an English squire with the last name as me, with the home of Scotney Castle in Kent.
The painting of the inside of a country house was interesting, with the various jobs the staff would perform.
In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Homesteaders’ Act, in which the federal government agreed to grant 160 acres of public land in the west to settlers who would pay a small fee and agree to a few conditions. It was designed to populate the west with yeoman farmers but it was never an unqualified success, and railroad companies and a minority of large scale bonanza farmers acquired much of the best land. But thousands of smaller settlers did pour in from the East and Europe, especially Ireland, Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. Most survived and some even managed to prosper.
They had plenty to contend with. They often found themselves with the driest land, farthest from any river or creek and nearest railroad. Summers were baking hot, winters bitterly cold, with added hazards of tornadoes, dust storms, prairie fires and even occasional plagues of grasshoppers. Trees were scarce on the Plains so cow and buffalo chips had to be laboriously gathered to use as fuel. Corn and wheat stalks were also used.
Until the mid 1880s, good years on the whole balanced out the bad. But nothing could be taken for granted and there was little relief from sheer hard grind—especially for women who were often expected to help with some of the outdoor farm work on top of the usual domestic tasks.
Homes had to be built from scratch and were frequently primitive, notably in the early years when two kinds of structure were most widely favored: the dug-out and the sod house. The dug-out was carved out of a slope or hillside with makeshift walls constructed around the front and sides. A sod house was built using 12 inch blocks of sod (turf) that had been cut out of the ground and left to dry.
Blinds were kept permanently lowered in the windows of Victorian homes when they suffered a bereavement. In wealthy circles a carriage procession would proceed to the church and cemetery, led by the carriages of the immediate family, followed by distant relatives and friends, with the rear brought up by empty carriages of those unable to attend but still wishing to show their respect. Then came a period of mourning where men wore only black suits and neckties and women wore black dresses of simple materials.
Some attempted to make contact with the departed by using a spiritualist medium.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a hard time of reading a book. I’d read a page or so and then have to put it down and do something else, almost falling asleep reading. It was so dry and boring, it felt like reading a school textbook and was as enjoyable.
Some of the pages were hard to read because they had graphics behind them. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea.
Probably the worst part about it aside from the writing is that the text would be broken up by random insertions. You’d be reading about one topic and then you’d flip the page expecting to continue the sentence but it wouldn’t be a continuation; it would be a graphic about something else. So by the time you read that and flipped the page, you forgot where you left off. It was maddening and it kept happening over and over. This was horribly plotted out and should have been organized better. Put the graphics in after the text is over so it doesn’t interrupt for goodness’ sake.
Then, as if the book couldn’t get any worse, they included a picture of a dead kid. Ewww. I had had it at that point.
There were some interesting info:
Victorians as a whole put more emphasis on love than their forebears. They valued love but with practicality, that a couple’s material circumstances should be taken into consideration. For most girls, the chief business of life was to win the right husband. It was a sure badge of respectability for me to be married. This was well facilitated with balls, dances, and weekends in the country. Flirting was encouraged.
It was sad that the most interesting thing I had read for a long time was about barbed wire…
It was cool there was an English squire with the last name as me, with the home of Scotney Castle in Kent.
The painting of the inside of a country house was interesting, with the various jobs the staff would perform.
In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Homesteaders’ Act, in which the federal government agreed to grant 160 acres of public land in the west to settlers who would pay a small fee and agree to a few conditions. It was designed to populate the west with yeoman farmers but it was never an unqualified success, and railroad companies and a minority of large scale bonanza farmers acquired much of the best land. But thousands of smaller settlers did pour in from the East and Europe, especially Ireland, Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. Most survived and some even managed to prosper.
They had plenty to contend with. They often found themselves with the driest land, farthest from any river or creek and nearest railroad. Summers were baking hot, winters bitterly cold, with added hazards of tornadoes, dust storms, prairie fires and even occasional plagues of grasshoppers. Trees were scarce on the Plains so cow and buffalo chips had to be laboriously gathered to use as fuel. Corn and wheat stalks were also used.
Until the mid 1880s, good years on the whole balanced out the bad. But nothing could be taken for granted and there was little relief from sheer hard grind—especially for women who were often expected to help with some of the outdoor farm work on top of the usual domestic tasks.
Homes had to be built from scratch and were frequently primitive, notably in the early years when two kinds of structure were most widely favored: the dug-out and the sod house. The dug-out was carved out of a slope or hillside with makeshift walls constructed around the front and sides. A sod house was built using 12 inch blocks of sod (turf) that had been cut out of the ground and left to dry.
Blinds were kept permanently lowered in the windows of Victorian homes when they suffered a bereavement. In wealthy circles a carriage procession would proceed to the church and cemetery, led by the carriages of the immediate family, followed by distant relatives and friends, with the rear brought up by empty carriages of those unable to attend but still wishing to show their respect. Then came a period of mourning where men wore only black suits and neckties and women wore black dresses of simple materials.
Some attempted to make contact with the departed by using a spiritualist medium.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review