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Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum
‘Intriguing, gleefully contentious and – appropriately enough – fizzing with life, Victorians Undone is the most original history book I have read in a long while’ John Preston, Daily Mail
A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians.
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?
What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the most exquisite watercolours the world has ever seen, feel about marrying a woman whose big nose made smart people snigger?
How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular joke, one we still reference today, but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins?
Kathryn Hughes 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 and helps us understand how they lived their lives.
A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians.
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?
What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the most exquisite watercolours the world has ever seen, feel about marrying a woman whose big nose made smart people snigger?
How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular joke, one we still reference today, but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins?
Kathryn Hughes 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 and helps us understand how they lived their lives.
414 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2017
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About the author
Kathryn Hughes
22 books38 followersKathryn Hughes is a British journalist and biographer. She holds a PhD in Victorian History. She is a contributing editor to Prospect magazine as well as a book reviewer and commentator for the Guardian and BBC Radio. Hughes also teaches biographical studies at University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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November 27, 2020Kathryn Hughes' Victorians Undone is a lively and engaging set of five essays, I ought to hesitate before describing her attitude as tongue in cheek given that she says of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Bocca Baciata and his sexual preferences that "To approach the topic of fellatio head-on would have been out of the question" (p.249). More polite and suitable for the breakfast table to suggest maybe that Hughes does not handle the Victorians with the decorum and moral rectitude that they sought so hard to project, she is more interested in that struggle to appear decent and upright in the eyes of others.
I feel there are though two problem areas with the book which leave me a bit uncertain about it and my own enjoyment of it. The first, if I may apologise to delicate readers, is illustrated by the assertion of Rossetti's preference for receiving fellatio (head on or otherwise) and the women (in Rossetti's case) who might be prepared to meet that need however her principal evidence for this is that as a result of mumps Rossetti had a swollen testicle, which had to be periodically drained and eventually one (possibly even both) of his testes were removed, sitting down apparently was too painful for him on account of his swelling so he preferred always to lie down. Personally I have been vaccinated against mumps, and I lack the spatial imagination to feel that a swollen testicle inevitably results in a preference for fellatio This is typical of much of the book, Hughes leaps to bold and arresting conclusions, but on reflection, I felt she runs slightly beyond the springboard of evidence that she herself has put up over the diving pool.
The second issue for me was expressed by her : "As the decades pass & close relatives die, tongues loosen & letters come on to the market, the moral climate changes, so that what once seemed wicked now seems pleasantly titillating, & well worth writing a book about" (p.230) I felt this was too true and that by reading we become voyeurs appearing through the curtains and the keyholes in the hope of being amused by Victorian angst over sexuality, I would probably have felt better if I was not so amused, the last essay though deals with the origin of the phrase (old fashioned I think now and possibly dying out) Sweet FA, which harks back to a Royal Navy joke that the tinned chopped mutton that was being introduced to feed the mariners looked like the remains of "Sweet" Fanny Adams, a girl of eight who was murdered and chopped up in Alton, Hampshire in 1867 (a nephew of the novelist Jane Austen was one of the magistrates at the first hearing of the accused). I don't know, it is hard, I can imagine, to write about certain crimes in a way that is always respectful to the victim and does not offer up gory details as though to titillate and amuse the reader, but the fault lies in me perhaps rather than her writing.
OK, all that aside what we get in this book are five essays, each about seventy pages long, linked on the surface by body parts and under the surface about concerns over sexuality and decorum: the murder of Fanny Adams, Fanny Cornforth's mouth, George Eliot's Hand, Charles Darwin's Beard, and Lady Flora's belly.
Lady Flora was a lady in waiting to the young Queen Victoria, she had a mysterious abdominal swelling, the queen started a rumour that that the woman was pregnant giving rise to a tale fascinating and disturbing by turns and then it all gets political. Such was the decorum at court that a doctor's examination was felt to be a sexual assault, after her last child, Queen Victoria refused to allow any doctor below her waist - after her death it was found that she had a hernia and a prolapsed womb - ah-ha you may cry, hoist by her own petard, sadly reading the essay you may feel she was quite right not to let doctors near her given their impressive lack of skill and knowledge.
Charles Darwin's beard was a bit of a mixed bunch but covered the rise of the beard into mid Victorian male fashion accessory, Darwin wondering if the beard functioned in evolution to attract females before deciding that atypically for animals that among humans the male chooses the female, the best part of this essay for me was a digression on Julia Margaret Cameron and her beard love leading her to plump out the beards of men sitting for her with cotton wool so they looked suitably and impressively hirsute.
George Eliot's hand dealt with her alleged boast that her right hand was larger than her left due to her work in the family dairy. For one early biographer this was a sign that she was fundamentally an every-woman, who made herself through hard work and dedication into a great writer of the age, while for her upwardly mobile family it was a bit embarrassing partly because of the implication that they were too poor to afford hired labour and partly because dairymaids were associated with sexual immorality, this essay shifts backwards and forwards down to the final words considering the evidence for and against, a grand read.
Sarah Cornforth's mouth deals with the pre-Raphaelite painter Rossetti and his models, the degrees of prostitution in Victorian England and how to make money out of Art.
Fanny Adams is a murder story, the man accused of the crime is thoroughly explored - a sad tale in itself of madness and alcohol.
I enjoyed too the introduction which dug through Victorian Britain throwing up odd facts - like that Gladstone had lost part of a finger in a gun accident but that painters and photographers were careful to hide the fact, or that poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were mixed race, and that Charlotte Bronte spoke with a Northern Irish accent .
A wide ranging and probing look at some Victorian lives, a great companion piece to those Victorian novels in which we read more of the surface decorum rather than of boozing clerks and male anxieties over beard length.
I feel there are though two problem areas with the book which leave me a bit uncertain about it and my own enjoyment of it. The first, if I may apologise to delicate readers, is illustrated by the assertion of Rossetti's preference for receiving fellatio (head on or otherwise) and the women (in Rossetti's case) who might be prepared to meet that need however her principal evidence for this is that as a result of mumps Rossetti had a swollen testicle, which had to be periodically drained and eventually one (possibly even both) of his testes were removed, sitting down apparently was too painful for him on account of his swelling so he preferred always to lie down. Personally I have been vaccinated against mumps, and I lack the spatial imagination to feel that a swollen testicle inevitably results in a preference for fellatio This is typical of much of the book, Hughes leaps to bold and arresting conclusions, but on reflection, I felt she runs slightly beyond the springboard of evidence that she herself has put up over the diving pool.
The second issue for me was expressed by her : "As the decades pass & close relatives die, tongues loosen & letters come on to the market, the moral climate changes, so that what once seemed wicked now seems pleasantly titillating, & well worth writing a book about" (p.230) I felt this was too true and that by reading we become voyeurs appearing through the curtains and the keyholes in the hope of being amused by Victorian angst over sexuality, I would probably have felt better if I was not so amused, the last essay though deals with the origin of the phrase (old fashioned I think now and possibly dying out) Sweet FA, which harks back to a Royal Navy joke that the tinned chopped mutton that was being introduced to feed the mariners looked like the remains of "Sweet" Fanny Adams, a girl of eight who was murdered and chopped up in Alton, Hampshire in 1867 (a nephew of the novelist Jane Austen was one of the magistrates at the first hearing of the accused). I don't know, it is hard, I can imagine, to write about certain crimes in a way that is always respectful to the victim and does not offer up gory details as though to titillate and amuse the reader, but the fault lies in me perhaps rather than her writing.
OK, all that aside what we get in this book are five essays, each about seventy pages long, linked on the surface by body parts and under the surface about concerns over sexuality and decorum: the murder of Fanny Adams, Fanny Cornforth's mouth, George Eliot's Hand, Charles Darwin's Beard, and Lady Flora's belly.
Lady Flora was a lady in waiting to the young Queen Victoria, she had a mysterious abdominal swelling, the queen started a rumour that that the woman was pregnant giving rise to a tale fascinating and disturbing by turns and then it all gets political. Such was the decorum at court that a doctor's examination was felt to be a sexual assault, after her last child, Queen Victoria refused to allow any doctor below her waist - after her death it was found that she had a hernia and a prolapsed womb - ah-ha you may cry, hoist by her own petard, sadly reading the essay you may feel she was quite right not to let doctors near her given their impressive lack of skill and knowledge.
Charles Darwin's beard was a bit of a mixed bunch but covered the rise of the beard into mid Victorian male fashion accessory, Darwin wondering if the beard functioned in evolution to attract females before deciding that atypically for animals that among humans the male chooses the female, the best part of this essay for me was a digression on Julia Margaret Cameron and her beard love leading her to plump out the beards of men sitting for her with cotton wool so they looked suitably and impressively hirsute.
George Eliot's hand dealt with her alleged boast that her right hand was larger than her left due to her work in the family dairy. For one early biographer this was a sign that she was fundamentally an every-woman, who made herself through hard work and dedication into a great writer of the age, while for her upwardly mobile family it was a bit embarrassing partly because of the implication that they were too poor to afford hired labour and partly because dairymaids were associated with sexual immorality, this essay shifts backwards and forwards down to the final words considering the evidence for and against, a grand read.
Sarah Cornforth's mouth deals with the pre-Raphaelite painter Rossetti and his models, the degrees of prostitution in Victorian England and how to make money out of Art.
Fanny Adams is a murder story, the man accused of the crime is thoroughly explored - a sad tale in itself of madness and alcohol.
I enjoyed too the introduction which dug through Victorian Britain throwing up odd facts - like that Gladstone had lost part of a finger in a gun accident but that painters and photographers were careful to hide the fact, or that poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were mixed race, and that Charlotte Bronte spoke with a Northern Irish accent .
A wide ranging and probing look at some Victorian lives, a great companion piece to those Victorian novels in which we read more of the surface decorum rather than of boozing clerks and male anxieties over beard length.
July 22, 2017
I started this book with enthusiasm, thinking I'd get what was promised in its introduction: an account of the body in the Victorian era.
What I got was just the rehashing of biographical facts that anyone even passingly familiar with the the people discussed would already know. In fact, most of it is freely available on wikipedia.
Hughes just recounts the biography of her subjects and drags each one down with information that is just a repetition of what others have already written about them.
"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?"
And it goes on in the same vein, the whole book feels like one giant clickbait.
I can only recommend it to those who know nothing of these people and the time period, as it's a nice intro.
What I got was just the rehashing of biographical facts that anyone even passingly familiar with the the people discussed would already know. In fact, most of it is freely available on wikipedia.
Hughes just recounts the biography of her subjects and drags each one down with information that is just a repetition of what others have already written about them.
"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?"
And it goes on in the same vein, the whole book feels like one giant clickbait.
I can only recommend it to those who know nothing of these people and the time period, as it's a nice intro.
September 9, 2021
Viktorijas laikmets ir visai dīvainu pretrunu kopums. No vienas puses īpaši konservatīvas, puritāniskas vērtības publiski, no otras puses pilnīgi melni joki, izvirtības utt. Šajā grāmatā var uzzināt Viktorijas laika attieksmi pret cilvēka ķermeni - kāpēc karalienei Viktorijai necieta grūtnieces,kāpēc Darvins audzēja garu bārdu, kas kopīgs noslepkavotai Fanijai un gaļas konserviem utt.
October 1, 2017
по-перше, британія хіх століття – це таке велике село, де всі з усіма пов'язані. наприклад, іконічну світлину дарвіна зробила джулія маргарет камерон, яка перефотографувала половину видатних вікторіанців, зокрема теннісона, однак так і не змогла переконати до позування данте габріеля росетті, племінника вільяма полідорі (він, щоправда, не знав свого дядька, бо народився вже після його смерті). або візьмімо джеймса кларка, одного з улюблених медиків джордж еліот: він примудрився залікувати до смерті й кітса, і принца-консорта альберта, а по дорозі між цими двома подвигами спричинитися до великого придворного скандалу з леді флорою гастінґс, якій, звісно, теж поставив неправильний діагноз.
по-друге, у вікторіанців справді були особливі стосунки з тілесністю (але чи тільки в них?). кетрін г'юз розповідає п'ять історій: про живіт леді флори, яку всіляко травить молода королева вікторія, жорстока, як старшокласниця, а придворний лікар, підозрюючи вагітність, запитує, чи вона, бува, не "privately married" – і навіть це формулювання скандально відверте; про бороду чарльза дарвіна, який вважав себе потворним і дуже через це переймався; про руки джордж еліот, точніше, одну, праву, про яку існувала легенда, що вона більша за ліву через те, що в юності письменниці доводилося працювати на молочарні та збивати масло (здавалось би, тривіально й побутово, але ні – у цьому вікторіанці теж відчували дух страшної непристойності, бо від молочниці до повії один крок); про вуста фанні корнфорт – і тут уже чиста й відверта порнографія, адже подивіться на її портрет авторства росетті та спробуйте сказати, що він не про оральний секс; нарешті, про всеньке тіло восьмирічної фанні адамс, знайдене розчленованим одного літнього дня. навіть самих сюжетів було б достатньо, щоб показати мальовничу картину вікторіанських звичаїв, мод і схильностей, але дослідниця копає глибше, створюючи зображення справді панорамне. серед інших епітетів, які залишила в моїй голові ця книжка, особливо часто трапляються weird, troubled і disturbed – воістину вікторіанська тріада.
по-друге, у вікторіанців справді були особливі стосунки з тілесністю (але чи тільки в них?). кетрін г'юз розповідає п'ять історій: про живіт леді флори, яку всіляко травить молода королева вікторія, жорстока, як старшокласниця, а придворний лікар, підозрюючи вагітність, запитує, чи вона, бува, не "privately married" – і навіть це формулювання скандально відверте; про бороду чарльза дарвіна, який вважав себе потворним і дуже через це переймався; про руки джордж еліот, точніше, одну, праву, про яку існувала легенда, що вона більша за ліву через те, що в юності письменниці доводилося працювати на молочарні та збивати масло (здавалось би, тривіально й побутово, але ні – у цьому вікторіанці теж відчували дух страшної непристойності, бо від молочниці до повії один крок); про вуста фанні корнфорт – і тут уже чиста й відверта порнографія, адже подивіться на її портрет авторства росетті та спробуйте сказати, що він не про оральний секс; нарешті, про всеньке тіло восьмирічної фанні адамс, знайдене розчленованим одного літнього дня. навіть самих сюжетів було б достатньо, щоб показати мальовничу картину вікторіанських звичаїв, мод і схильностей, але дослідниця копає глибше, створюючи зображення справді панорамне. серед інших епітетів, які залишила в моїй голові ця книжка, особливо часто трапляються weird, troubled і disturbed – воістину вікторіанська тріада.
December 21, 2017
5 stars - truly excellent. Witty and thoroughly entertaining.
I was really excited about reading this and made sure I was first in the queue to order it in from our local Library. Victorians, social history, the human body - perfect subject matter for me.
Hughes very cleverly looks at all the above from 5 different aspects - the scandalous 'pregnancy' of one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting, the relative size of George Eliot's hands, Charles Darwin and his beard, Fanny Cornforth's mouth and the horrendous murder of Sweet Fanny Adams.
I can't begin to imagine the research and scholarship that went into writing this - each 'subject' above leads us on to all manner of other fascinating details.
Hughes has a brilliant way of making it all enthralling. Her brisk, no nonsense, slightly waspish tone absolutely suits the writing - it is funny and horrendous in turns. Loved it and didn't want it to finish.
I was really excited about reading this and made sure I was first in the queue to order it in from our local Library. Victorians, social history, the human body - perfect subject matter for me.
Hughes very cleverly looks at all the above from 5 different aspects - the scandalous 'pregnancy' of one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting, the relative size of George Eliot's hands, Charles Darwin and his beard, Fanny Cornforth's mouth and the horrendous murder of Sweet Fanny Adams.
I can't begin to imagine the research and scholarship that went into writing this - each 'subject' above leads us on to all manner of other fascinating details.
Hughes has a brilliant way of making it all enthralling. Her brisk, no nonsense, slightly waspish tone absolutely suits the writing - it is funny and horrendous in turns. Loved it and didn't want it to finish.
February 6, 2017
This is a marvellously entertaining journey through a collection of human bodies in the Victorian age in which the body was concealed and ignored as much as possible. The author has delved into letters and archives to produce this exploration of a neglected aspect of social history. Through five well known and not so well known people who played a part in Victorian public life the author explores the human body and Victorian attitudes to it.
Lady Flora Hastings - one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting - fuelled a great deal of speculation at the start of Victoria's reign about whether or not she was pregnant even though she was unmarried. This scandal inadvertently revealed that Victoria herself was far from ignorant of aspects of human behaviour of which as an innocent girl she should have been ignorant.
Did George Eliot have a right hand which was bigger than the left because of spending time as a young girl working in the dairy of her family's farm? Why was it so important for fashionable ladies to have elegant hands?
Why was Fanny Cornforth, with her voluptuous body and versatile lips, air brushed out of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's life even though she was his mistress for twenty five years? The section on Fanny Cornforth shows how her body was shared by several of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood over a period of many years and how her lips influenced many of the most iconic paintings of the era.
Why did Charles Darwin grow that huge beard several years after his contemporaries had stopped growing them? Why was there a craze for beards and why did so many apparently rational men compete with each other to grow beards?
What exactly was the story behind the expression Sweet Fanny Adams - or Sweet F A - which was still in use in the 1950s when I was a child. I knew that the expression originated with a real person but I've never known who Fanny Adams was. The answer is somewhat gruesome.
This is a well written and well researched book which will appeal to anyone who is interested in the lesser known aspects of social history. It is written in an easy approachable style with plenty of humorous comments which made me laugh out loud at times. There are copious notes on sources and some illustrations which display well on a Kindle.
Lady Flora Hastings - one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting - fuelled a great deal of speculation at the start of Victoria's reign about whether or not she was pregnant even though she was unmarried. This scandal inadvertently revealed that Victoria herself was far from ignorant of aspects of human behaviour of which as an innocent girl she should have been ignorant.
Did George Eliot have a right hand which was bigger than the left because of spending time as a young girl working in the dairy of her family's farm? Why was it so important for fashionable ladies to have elegant hands?
Why was Fanny Cornforth, with her voluptuous body and versatile lips, air brushed out of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's life even though she was his mistress for twenty five years? The section on Fanny Cornforth shows how her body was shared by several of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood over a period of many years and how her lips influenced many of the most iconic paintings of the era.
Why did Charles Darwin grow that huge beard several years after his contemporaries had stopped growing them? Why was there a craze for beards and why did so many apparently rational men compete with each other to grow beards?
What exactly was the story behind the expression Sweet Fanny Adams - or Sweet F A - which was still in use in the 1950s when I was a child. I knew that the expression originated with a real person but I've never known who Fanny Adams was. The answer is somewhat gruesome.
This is a well written and well researched book which will appeal to anyone who is interested in the lesser known aspects of social history. It is written in an easy approachable style with plenty of humorous comments which made me laugh out loud at times. There are copious notes on sources and some illustrations which display well on a Kindle.
October 2, 2018
I did not finish this book, in all fairness. Do yourself a favor and read Matthew Sweet's "Inventing the Victorians" or Deborah Lutz's "Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels" if you have an interest in the corporeal Victorians. I read the introduction, the Fanny Adams chapter, and most of the Fanny Cornforth chapter. It's best to read an entire book before leaving a review but I am judgy so here goes.
The premise of this book, as described in the intro, is that Victorian writing, as well as later writing about Victorians, ignored the corporeal body. What a shame that everyone remembers Coleridge as a great poet with a tragic addiction, rather than as a bloated corpulent pile of foul-smelling flesh and oozing sores! Okay, I'm being sarcastic, but that does seem to be the premise of the intro: knowing Coleridge was fat, unhealthy, and basically revolting would give us a better understanding of his poetry, and his influence on other poets. Likewise for other Victorians; we understand their inner lives, but not their outer lives, because their physical appearance has been concealed from us by prudish Victorians who documented their own era, and by subsequent high-minded scholars who wrote about Victorians.
The fact that 19th century public transportation was very crowded seems to inform the author's point of view that breasts and bums were everywhere, just everywhere in the 19th century! But they've been left out of the writing so we don't think of the Victorians as physical creatures. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. Much has been written of the Victorian relationship to physical bodies, especially in the context of Victorian women, medicine, gender roles, fashion, labor, and sexuality.
The reason I skipped to the Fanny Adams chapter is because I happen to already know the sad tale of the murder of Fanny Adams, a child who was murdered and hacked into pieces by a depraved psychopathic solicitor's clerk. It's one of the most famous of all 19th-century murders because of its brutality and sheer randomness. It was a sensational crime, akin to the Jack the Ripper murders in the amount of public attention it received. And as with the Ripper murders, body parts played no small role in the media reports.
It is extremely difficult to argue that the Victorian public, or those who documented the murder, or those who read about the murder today, are somehow not getting the full story about the body of Fanny Adams - yet that's the author's point, as described in the intro. That Fanny Adams' corpse was so defiled, and that some of her body parts were never found, along with her tender age, are what made the murder so shocking and sensational.
But what made me stop reading this book is the author's attempt to describe what the murderer was thinking: "He was hoping to find a young girl to finger and maybe f-ck." It's probably true; the murderer almost certainly raped the young girl or defiled her corpse. But did she have to describe it in such a way? It's not "the murderer thought to himself, 'I hope to find a young girl to finger and possibly f-ck.'" Nope, it's the author's own words, the way she willfully chose to describe the murderer's intention.
Why not just say "He was hoping to find a young girl to rape"? Does she have to get into the specifics, then describe those specifics in such a way that is brutal and offensive? It's like she goes out of her way to be crass and describe the most disgusting aspects of corporeal bodies. And I'm going to go out on a limb here: no one can "f-ck" an eight-year-old girl, only rape her. So that was a dealbreaker for me.
UPDATE: I tried another chapter, the one about Fanny Cornforth, the famous artists' model and one of the painter Rossetti's favorite subjects. The author starts off with the ludicrous premise that Cornforth has been "forgotten" and no one remembers her "bee-stung lips." This is absurd. Conforth is the subject of some of the most popular 19th-century paintings that were ever painted, though the fame of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is more of a modern phenomenon than a 19th century one. But to insist Cornforth has been forgotten, sheesh! Also ludicrous is her reference's to Cornforth's "bee-stung lips" when anyone can see that she had full lips. She did not have 1920s-style bow lips or "bee-stung" lips with a plump center and narrow outer edges, like Bettie Boop.
Well, she's an author who never uses the word "vagina" when "c-nt" will do, and also assumes that anyone reading her book has like a fifth grade education and has therefore never heard of any of the subjects of her chapters. And isn't British, because "fanny" is still widely-used slang. There is only so much patronizing lewdness I can tolerate in any single author, and she maxxed out almost immediately.
Perhaps that's why she devotes so many pages to determining exactly what kind of sex Cornforth and Rossetti were having. At once she treats Cornforth like the proverbial Madonna/Whore. I mean, bonus points for trying to disprove the origin story of Cornforth: that she met Rossetti in a music hall and he was attracted to her good looks and high spirits as she cracked nuts with her teeth. Sure, that could be a lie. But so could Fanny's story that Rossetti stopped her on the street, struck by her beauty. We may never know how they truly met.
The premise of this book, as described in the intro, is that Victorian writing, as well as later writing about Victorians, ignored the corporeal body. What a shame that everyone remembers Coleridge as a great poet with a tragic addiction, rather than as a bloated corpulent pile of foul-smelling flesh and oozing sores! Okay, I'm being sarcastic, but that does seem to be the premise of the intro: knowing Coleridge was fat, unhealthy, and basically revolting would give us a better understanding of his poetry, and his influence on other poets. Likewise for other Victorians; we understand their inner lives, but not their outer lives, because their physical appearance has been concealed from us by prudish Victorians who documented their own era, and by subsequent high-minded scholars who wrote about Victorians.
The fact that 19th century public transportation was very crowded seems to inform the author's point of view that breasts and bums were everywhere, just everywhere in the 19th century! But they've been left out of the writing so we don't think of the Victorians as physical creatures. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. Much has been written of the Victorian relationship to physical bodies, especially in the context of Victorian women, medicine, gender roles, fashion, labor, and sexuality.
The reason I skipped to the Fanny Adams chapter is because I happen to already know the sad tale of the murder of Fanny Adams, a child who was murdered and hacked into pieces by a depraved psychopathic solicitor's clerk. It's one of the most famous of all 19th-century murders because of its brutality and sheer randomness. It was a sensational crime, akin to the Jack the Ripper murders in the amount of public attention it received. And as with the Ripper murders, body parts played no small role in the media reports.
It is extremely difficult to argue that the Victorian public, or those who documented the murder, or those who read about the murder today, are somehow not getting the full story about the body of Fanny Adams - yet that's the author's point, as described in the intro. That Fanny Adams' corpse was so defiled, and that some of her body parts were never found, along with her tender age, are what made the murder so shocking and sensational.
But what made me stop reading this book is the author's attempt to describe what the murderer was thinking: "He was hoping to find a young girl to finger and maybe f-ck." It's probably true; the murderer almost certainly raped the young girl or defiled her corpse. But did she have to describe it in such a way? It's not "the murderer thought to himself, 'I hope to find a young girl to finger and possibly f-ck.'" Nope, it's the author's own words, the way she willfully chose to describe the murderer's intention.
Why not just say "He was hoping to find a young girl to rape"? Does she have to get into the specifics, then describe those specifics in such a way that is brutal and offensive? It's like she goes out of her way to be crass and describe the most disgusting aspects of corporeal bodies. And I'm going to go out on a limb here: no one can "f-ck" an eight-year-old girl, only rape her. So that was a dealbreaker for me.
UPDATE: I tried another chapter, the one about Fanny Cornforth, the famous artists' model and one of the painter Rossetti's favorite subjects. The author starts off with the ludicrous premise that Cornforth has been "forgotten" and no one remembers her "bee-stung lips." This is absurd. Conforth is the subject of some of the most popular 19th-century paintings that were ever painted, though the fame of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is more of a modern phenomenon than a 19th century one. But to insist Cornforth has been forgotten, sheesh! Also ludicrous is her reference's to Cornforth's "bee-stung lips" when anyone can see that she had full lips. She did not have 1920s-style bow lips or "bee-stung" lips with a plump center and narrow outer edges, like Bettie Boop.
Well, she's an author who never uses the word "vagina" when "c-nt" will do, and also assumes that anyone reading her book has like a fifth grade education and has therefore never heard of any of the subjects of her chapters. And isn't British, because "fanny" is still widely-used slang. There is only so much patronizing lewdness I can tolerate in any single author, and she maxxed out almost immediately.
Perhaps that's why she devotes so many pages to determining exactly what kind of sex Cornforth and Rossetti were having. At once she treats Cornforth like the proverbial Madonna/Whore. I mean, bonus points for trying to disprove the origin story of Cornforth: that she met Rossetti in a music hall and he was attracted to her good looks and high spirits as she cracked nuts with her teeth. Sure, that could be a lie. But so could Fanny's story that Rossetti stopped her on the street, struck by her beauty. We may never know how they truly met.
September 24, 2019
I loved this. History through body image, what a clever idea. The tragic story of Flora Hastings, the lady in waiting who Queen Victoria condemned for being pregnant when she had cancer (probably of the womb) is a salutary lesson in perception being the only reality. The tale of George Eliot and her big right hand another salutary tale, this time of stardom and legend. But for me, the most intriguing story was of beards, and in particular Charles Darwin's beard.
Hughes puts forward an intriguing and convincing arguments for the growth of beards (literally) as a rebellion against the emasculation of men in middle-class Victorian society. Men were expected to be home bodies by mid-Victorian times, the paternalist partner to the female Angel of the House, not wild carousers who liked a bit on the side (even though they did). They worked in offices, they were 'tamed'. So, Hughes argues, they grey beards. Of course it wasn't only that. There's the Crimean War too. With the soldiers of that blood bath returning to the UK returning bearded, men saw facial hair as evidence of heroism. And then there's photography. And in particular, the photographs of Julia Cameron, which created an image for the eminent men of the age such as Darwin. So beards became symbolic of greatness and intelligence. I found this utterly fascinating, and it's left me thinking hard about the parallels with our own newly-bearded men - why? It's easy to say fashion, but surely it's not quite so simple?
Though I found the tail of Sweet Fanny Adams interesting, I have to say I did wonder at it being included in this book, and I wasn't convinced it added much to the overall theory. But this was a brilliant bit of history really well told nonetheless. Highly recommended.
Hughes puts forward an intriguing and convincing arguments for the growth of beards (literally) as a rebellion against the emasculation of men in middle-class Victorian society. Men were expected to be home bodies by mid-Victorian times, the paternalist partner to the female Angel of the House, not wild carousers who liked a bit on the side (even though they did). They worked in offices, they were 'tamed'. So, Hughes argues, they grey beards. Of course it wasn't only that. There's the Crimean War too. With the soldiers of that blood bath returning to the UK returning bearded, men saw facial hair as evidence of heroism. And then there's photography. And in particular, the photographs of Julia Cameron, which created an image for the eminent men of the age such as Darwin. So beards became symbolic of greatness and intelligence. I found this utterly fascinating, and it's left me thinking hard about the parallels with our own newly-bearded men - why? It's easy to say fashion, but surely it's not quite so simple?
Though I found the tail of Sweet Fanny Adams interesting, I have to say I did wonder at it being included in this book, and I wasn't convinced it added much to the overall theory. But this was a brilliant bit of history really well told nonetheless. Highly recommended.
July 25, 2018
One can approach history from many directions. Recently, micro-history has taken a prominent place in scholarship. I’m not sure what to call Kathryn Hughes’s Victorians Undone so let’s just call it a very interesting and unique view of five Victorians. And what a range it is. From the horrid murder of Fanny Adams in a country field to the regal residences of Queen Victoria, we read of Darwin’s beard, George Eliot’s right hand and Fanny Cornforth’s mouth.
The range of body parts that are exposed and discussed is only the beginning. Hughes expands her commentary into Victorian society and its morals and foibles as well as offering great insight into the biographical world of the book’s subjects. If you search for a dreary tome of history you will be disappointed. If you demand a serious tone in the diction you will be angered. If you want to enjoy and learn and even giggle a few times, then this book is for you.
One example will be enough. Indeed, Hughes does focus of the size of George Eliot’s right hand and does link it to her time milking cows and making better. To me, however, the great revelation of the chapter comes when Hughes turns her critical and analytic eye to how Eliot’s early life on a farm is re-invested in her novels. Adam Bede became a much fuller novel to me because of, well, because of Eliot’s right hand.
Enjoy the book. As to why not 5 Stars? Well, more illustrations would have been an extra treat although there are enough illustrations to satisfy most readers.
The range of body parts that are exposed and discussed is only the beginning. Hughes expands her commentary into Victorian society and its morals and foibles as well as offering great insight into the biographical world of the book’s subjects. If you search for a dreary tome of history you will be disappointed. If you demand a serious tone in the diction you will be angered. If you want to enjoy and learn and even giggle a few times, then this book is for you.
One example will be enough. Indeed, Hughes does focus of the size of George Eliot’s right hand and does link it to her time milking cows and making better. To me, however, the great revelation of the chapter comes when Hughes turns her critical and analytic eye to how Eliot’s early life on a farm is re-invested in her novels. Adam Bede became a much fuller novel to me because of, well, because of Eliot’s right hand.
Enjoy the book. As to why not 5 Stars? Well, more illustrations would have been an extra treat although there are enough illustrations to satisfy most readers.
November 2, 2017
Fascinating! Absolutely fascinating! This book is written beautifully, in a highly intelligent and humorous tone, by a woman who has clearly done thorough research on the subject. Case studies are presented (such as darwin's beard or George Eliot's hands), in order to highlight Victorian opinions and beliefs about the human body. The insight you get as reader into the perceptions of Victorians with regards to their own bodies is astounding. I'd love to find more books that deal with the same subject, but in different time periods. Would recommend it to everyone!
May 29, 2017
Ah, I really wanted this to be a five star read! It's the kind of engaging combination of textual sleuthing and narrative flair which provides snappy answer to a question I am often asked: 'you study the Victorians? Why would you DO that to yourself?'
Fast-paced, engaging and sometimes (theatrical gasp) funny, there is nothing boring about this book. It makes scholarly rigour what it should be: fascinating. Furthermore, Victorians Undone is concerned with a subject which deeply interests me: the ephemerality of flesh versus the eternity of fame/ history/ canonicity. It's right up my street, I thought, reading gleefully.
At least, for the first three chapters.
However, the final two did temper my enthusiasm, and that is why, for me, this book falls short of five stars. The Pre-Raphaelites are one of my key academic interests, and while I did enjoy the chapter on Fanny Cornforth and her immortal mouth, I couldn't shake the sense that Hughes was giving a highly partial account. In Hughes's version, Fanny is something akin to the great love of DG Rossetti's life, with other significant figures relegated to bit-players.
It is a great challenge to interpret the lives of real people. We should know there is no such thing as historical objectivity. But, being well-informed on the Pre-Raphaelites, I found myself irritated with the book's tendency to conflate fact with opinion, opinion with fact. (A glaring example: there is really no way to definitely tell whether Siddal's fatal overdose of laudanum was suicide or accident - speculation is all we can do. To suggest otherwise, based on letters and memoirs alone is inaccurate).
Overall, these flaws called into question the authority of the earlier chapters. Though Hughes claims her work as entirely text-based, there are a number of instances or presuming to know the thoughts of her subjects. And in the final chapter, I was discomfited by the sense that she was over-emphasising the graphic horrors of child-molestation and murder, to heighten the tension of the account.
Ultimately, I think this is a good book. It is engaging, well-researched, and illuminates new ground. For the armchair historian, or
the casual enjoyer of Victoriana, it could be perfect. I was maybe cursed with highly subject specific knowledge, unable to buy into the certainty Hughes expresses in her writing. However, I cannot deny that it is a genuinely impressive and well-researched work. Most importantly (for a jaded postgraduate student) it rekindled my enthusiasm for my subject. Proof that just because you read something critically, it needn't detract from your enjoyment.
Fast-paced, engaging and sometimes (theatrical gasp) funny, there is nothing boring about this book. It makes scholarly rigour what it should be: fascinating. Furthermore, Victorians Undone is concerned with a subject which deeply interests me: the ephemerality of flesh versus the eternity of fame/ history/ canonicity. It's right up my street, I thought, reading gleefully.
At least, for the first three chapters.
However, the final two did temper my enthusiasm, and that is why, for me, this book falls short of five stars. The Pre-Raphaelites are one of my key academic interests, and while I did enjoy the chapter on Fanny Cornforth and her immortal mouth, I couldn't shake the sense that Hughes was giving a highly partial account. In Hughes's version, Fanny is something akin to the great love of DG Rossetti's life, with other significant figures relegated to bit-players.
It is a great challenge to interpret the lives of real people. We should know there is no such thing as historical objectivity. But, being well-informed on the Pre-Raphaelites, I found myself irritated with the book's tendency to conflate fact with opinion, opinion with fact. (A glaring example: there is really no way to definitely tell whether Siddal's fatal overdose of laudanum was suicide or accident - speculation is all we can do. To suggest otherwise, based on letters and memoirs alone is inaccurate).
Overall, these flaws called into question the authority of the earlier chapters. Though Hughes claims her work as entirely text-based, there are a number of instances or presuming to know the thoughts of her subjects. And in the final chapter, I was discomfited by the sense that she was over-emphasising the graphic horrors of child-molestation and murder, to heighten the tension of the account.
Ultimately, I think this is a good book. It is engaging, well-researched, and illuminates new ground. For the armchair historian, or
the casual enjoyer of Victoriana, it could be perfect. I was maybe cursed with highly subject specific knowledge, unable to buy into the certainty Hughes expresses in her writing. However, I cannot deny that it is a genuinely impressive and well-researched work. Most importantly (for a jaded postgraduate student) it rekindled my enthusiasm for my subject. Proof that just because you read something critically, it needn't detract from your enjoyment.
August 22, 2017
This is appalling bad: recycled tidbits from well-known episodes of 19th century history, dressed up into a "new approach" to biography. The Introduction sets the portentous tone, unscholarly tone. Carlyle's attack on Coleridge's physique can partly be explained, according to Hughes, by "sharp Oedipal elbows" (what on earth has Oedipus to do with it?). Next we are told that people were thrown by the industrial revolution into an "intimate embrace" at the railways station and factory bench (an "intimate embrace"? really). A few lines down, the same revolution led "quite literally" to people's bums and snores being "in your face" (well, actually not literally at all). And then (and we are still only on page 3 of the introduction), we are handed this sentence in which Hughes says that "For everyone else [that is those without bums in their faces] it was a question of raising thresholds of embarrassment and shame to protect against sensory overload". Can anyone -- Hughes excepted -- explain what this can possibly mean?
This is a real disappointment. Over-heated, under-researched, over-theorised, and underwhelming.
This is a real disappointment. Over-heated, under-researched, over-theorised, and underwhelming.
July 20, 2018
Wonderful read and a terrific way of taking a look at Victorian society and at the possibilities and impossibilities of historiography and biography. Sometimes she lets her predilection for turning a phrase run away with her (nowhere more so than in the introduction, e.g: ‘His eyes were light and burning, his nose and mouth as decided as granite, and he had doubtless fizzed up North London’s steep incline in double-quick time, only to find this dollop of slop waiting for him at the top.’). But on the whole her style is sober enough and quite simply engaging, as are some of the little quips (that admittedly some might find puerile) such as: ‘To approach the topic of fellatio head-on would have been out of the question.’ These don’t dominate: on the whole the book is just a marvel of good storytelling.
October 18, 2017
I think this book is at least as concerned with biographical and cultural details as bodies per se. That being said, I actually liked the way the subject of the body was contextualised by broader historical facts, because in this way it felt like I was reading a book about certain aspects of the Victorian era with a focus on the body, rather than about the more rigidly-defined category of "the Victorian body".
Definitely broadened my knowledge of many things Victorian.
Definitely broadened my knowledge of many things Victorian.
July 16, 2018
This is something else.
The brilliance of each segment consists in the way the author astutely connects a small detail with the larger societal panorama. You go into each chapter wondering what is worth saying about something so trivial as a beard and you come out with a sociological study worthy of at least its own separate volume. But the book never becomes stuffy or overly-academic. Quite the contrary, it is breathlessly paced and wildly entertaining.
The brilliance of each segment consists in the way the author astutely connects a small detail with the larger societal panorama. You go into each chapter wondering what is worth saying about something so trivial as a beard and you come out with a sociological study worthy of at least its own separate volume. But the book never becomes stuffy or overly-academic. Quite the contrary, it is breathlessly paced and wildly entertaining.
March 2, 2017
Very readable social history that's as compelling as a good novel. I loved the chapter on Fanny Adams: sad to think that a poor little dismembered eight-year-old went down in history as "Sweet F*ck All". Hughes is as far from a dull and dry historical biographer as it's possible to be. I want more chapters! Bravura.
May 21, 2017
Well researched with funny and direct writing. Each chapter ostensibly hinges on very specific body parts of famous Victorians, but expands out, giving a good deal of information about what life in the era was like.
Very fun to read.
Warning: last chapter is about the murder and dismemberment of a child, so maybe skip if bothered by that.
Very fun to read.
Warning: last chapter is about the murder and dismemberment of a child, so maybe skip if bothered by that.
June 7, 2025
In this book there are five essays, each about seventy pages long, linked on the surface by body parts and under the surface about concerns over sexuality and decorum: the murder of Fanny Adams, Fanny Cornforth's mouth, George Eliot's Hand, Charles Darwin's Beard, and Lady Flora's belly. I should stress that it is only tales of the heterosexual flesh has attracted this author's attention and there are aspects of the work that while interesting to often appear to often to be based around the exciting, but long debunked idea, that the Victorians knew nothing about sex. It also suffers from a lack of rigour in defining 'Victorians'. The Victorians of the 1830s were vastly different to the Victorians of the 1870s while those of the 1890s were altogether different as well. You could illustrate how much England changed by contrasting Victoria's shambolic coronation with the splendour of her Jubilees near the end of her reign.
To be read with caution. To often sex brings out the idiot in historians and I can't say that Kathryn Hughes hasn't fallen in that trap.
To be read with caution. To often sex brings out the idiot in historians and I can't say that Kathryn Hughes hasn't fallen in that trap.
June 17, 2024
I absolutely loved this. Each chapter focuses on an aspect of a particular person's body and unpacks their personal history but also the social mores and wider history that defined their and other people's responses to it in the Victorian age. From Charles Darwin's beard to Fanny Cornforth's lips and ending with the spectacularly compelling case of Fanny Adams, this was brilliantly written, completely fascinating and taught me a tonne of things I didn't know.
December 5, 2017
When someone mentions the Victorian era, probably one of the most frequent terms that comes to mind is “straitlaced”, but in Victorians Undone historian and biographical studies professor Kathryn Hughes loosens the stays and gives readers fascinating views of Victorian society…through their body parts.
Victorians Undone consist of five studies centering on a particular body part of one person from that era, such as lady-in-waiting Flora Hastings’ belly or Charles Darwin’s beard. These body parts serve as a jumping-off point to explore various aspects of Victorian culture and mores, most of which relate to gender or sexuality in some way. For example, George Eliot reputedly claimed that her right hand was bigger than her left because of the amount of time she spent growing up making cheese and doing other chores in her family’s dairy operation, which gave Hughes the opening to discuss how crucial the female-operated dairy was to the financial solvency of dairy farms in the era (A farm dairy could generate 175 pounds from cheese alone, while the average rent for the farm was just 90 pounds.).
For the most part, I found this book hard to put down in ways I usually associate with a gripping thriller, as it described aspects of the era I had never thought about or was only mildly aware of. The research was very impressive. Hughes asserts that the information and what might seem like unlikely tales in her book are fact, not fiction, and her clearly meticulous research supports this. The book is full of quotes from the voluminous correspondence with which the Victorians filled the hours that people today devote to texting or web-surfing, and I was as impressed by how much of that correspondence was still available as I was with the fact that Hughes tracked it down and read it.
The book is enhanced by 19 color plates and a number of other illustrations, many of them photographs, that added a lot to the experience. For example, the reader can actually see the sensuosity of Fanny Cornworth’s mouth in several paintings of her as a young woman and contrast it with a photo of her as an elderly woman of seventy-two.
The breadth of her research and knowledge is both the book’s strength and its weakness. Having learned so much in the writing of this book, the author goes off on many tangents sharing it with the reader, and sometimes this reader wanted her to get back to the main thread. In addition, the cast of characters was VERY large, and I often had some trouble keeping them straight, especially since everyone seemed to be related to everyone else or at least sleeping with them.
Nonetheless, Victorians Undone is a real treat that left me both entertained and enlightened.
With history this interesting, who needs fiction?
https://www.amazon.com/review/RN2T87H...
Victorians Undone consist of five studies centering on a particular body part of one person from that era, such as lady-in-waiting Flora Hastings’ belly or Charles Darwin’s beard. These body parts serve as a jumping-off point to explore various aspects of Victorian culture and mores, most of which relate to gender or sexuality in some way. For example, George Eliot reputedly claimed that her right hand was bigger than her left because of the amount of time she spent growing up making cheese and doing other chores in her family’s dairy operation, which gave Hughes the opening to discuss how crucial the female-operated dairy was to the financial solvency of dairy farms in the era (A farm dairy could generate 175 pounds from cheese alone, while the average rent for the farm was just 90 pounds.).
For the most part, I found this book hard to put down in ways I usually associate with a gripping thriller, as it described aspects of the era I had never thought about or was only mildly aware of. The research was very impressive. Hughes asserts that the information and what might seem like unlikely tales in her book are fact, not fiction, and her clearly meticulous research supports this. The book is full of quotes from the voluminous correspondence with which the Victorians filled the hours that people today devote to texting or web-surfing, and I was as impressed by how much of that correspondence was still available as I was with the fact that Hughes tracked it down and read it.
The book is enhanced by 19 color plates and a number of other illustrations, many of them photographs, that added a lot to the experience. For example, the reader can actually see the sensuosity of Fanny Cornworth’s mouth in several paintings of her as a young woman and contrast it with a photo of her as an elderly woman of seventy-two.
The breadth of her research and knowledge is both the book’s strength and its weakness. Having learned so much in the writing of this book, the author goes off on many tangents sharing it with the reader, and sometimes this reader wanted her to get back to the main thread. In addition, the cast of characters was VERY large, and I often had some trouble keeping them straight, especially since everyone seemed to be related to everyone else or at least sleeping with them.
Nonetheless, Victorians Undone is a real treat that left me both entertained and enlightened.
With history this interesting, who needs fiction?
https://www.amazon.com/review/RN2T87H...
February 14, 2018
I thought that this was a great read. Much better than I am used to expecting from a volume of Victorian history. For me it deftly navigated (split infinitive!) a path between being too dry and too jokey. There is lots of humour in it, but also lots of insight into life in Victorian times.
It concentrates on the physical characteristics of five Victorian people. Lady Flora Hastings, whose cancer swollen belly caused a scandal in the court of the young queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, whose beard adorned the ten pound note in recent years, George Elliot's hand, reputedly made large by overwork in the dairy, Fanny Cornforth's mouth, painted and doubtlessly kissed a great number of times by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and the body of Sweet Fanny Adams, which was cruelly treated, and became a part of British slang.
Of these five probably Charles Darwin was the only one I knew more than a tiny bit about, and I had never heard of Fanny Cornforth at all.
So I got a lot from the book biographically, but there's more in it than that Kathryn Hughes uses these characters to look at social history in the period, and examine fashions, morals, working conditions and many other fascinating aspects of social history.
The book is divided into five distinct chapters, each one focusing on a particular character, and you could pick and choose the order in which you read them, or just choose one or two and leave the ones you don't fancy at the side of your plate. True crime fans should go for the last chapter which deals with poor Fanny Adams, and explains why Victorians had no real concept of paedophilIa. Those who are interested in the modern fashion for beards might find it interesting to read about the similar craze in Victorian times. In many ways I found the chapter on George Sands the least appealing, but I was still fascinated by the accounts of what it would have been like to work in a Victorian dairy, even though I would never have counted dairy farming amongst my interests (although I do like watching Country File when there's nothing better to do on a Sunday evening).
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in our serious faced Victorian ancestors, and the hi jinks they got up to behind closed oak panelled doors.
It concentrates on the physical characteristics of five Victorian people. Lady Flora Hastings, whose cancer swollen belly caused a scandal in the court of the young queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, whose beard adorned the ten pound note in recent years, George Elliot's hand, reputedly made large by overwork in the dairy, Fanny Cornforth's mouth, painted and doubtlessly kissed a great number of times by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and the body of Sweet Fanny Adams, which was cruelly treated, and became a part of British slang.
Of these five probably Charles Darwin was the only one I knew more than a tiny bit about, and I had never heard of Fanny Cornforth at all.
So I got a lot from the book biographically, but there's more in it than that Kathryn Hughes uses these characters to look at social history in the period, and examine fashions, morals, working conditions and many other fascinating aspects of social history.
The book is divided into five distinct chapters, each one focusing on a particular character, and you could pick and choose the order in which you read them, or just choose one or two and leave the ones you don't fancy at the side of your plate. True crime fans should go for the last chapter which deals with poor Fanny Adams, and explains why Victorians had no real concept of paedophilIa. Those who are interested in the modern fashion for beards might find it interesting to read about the similar craze in Victorian times. In many ways I found the chapter on George Sands the least appealing, but I was still fascinated by the accounts of what it would have been like to work in a Victorian dairy, even though I would never have counted dairy farming amongst my interests (although I do like watching Country File when there's nothing better to do on a Sunday evening).
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in our serious faced Victorian ancestors, and the hi jinks they got up to behind closed oak panelled doors.
March 27, 2017
Really interesting: there is a tendency when looking at paintings or reading character descriptions in 19thC novels to overlook the significance of bodily features or to think they were just like us only in different costumes. Here we encouraged to look and think again about the cultural significance of growing a beard (and imagine its smell), social anxiety about the effect of physical work on the size of a hand, among other examples.
February 24, 2019
While I don't quite get the vitriol this book has been met with here on Good Reads, there's no denying this is fairly mediocre and doesn't offer much new to anyone who's kept up with developments in the writing of history, particularly Victorian history, over the past few decades. Hughes' focus is scattershot and her emphasis on body parts seems more a gimmick than genuine inspiration.
Not worth getting upset over but not especially worth reading either.
Not worth getting upset over but not especially worth reading either.
Read
June 5, 2017DNF. Victorians Undone is trying so hard to be chatty and commercial (even adopting a snarky, 'amusing' tone when recounting one woman's lifetime of miscarriages -- zing!). But, the trouble is, it suffers exactly the same deadening levels of historical minutiae as non-mainstream history books. The result: chatty, but still so boring.
December 2, 2018
Pealkiri ja sissejuhatus on küll ambitsioonikad, kuid tegelikult on pr kirjandusteadlasele aastate jooksul kogunenud palju teisejärgulist materjali, mida on kahju lasta raisku minna. Sestap on K Hughes vormistanud selle viieks anekdoodiks, millest igaüks keskendub ühele inimkeha osale ja ütleme kohe, mingit teemakohast üldistust siit oodata pole.
Esimene lugu räägib kuninganna Victoria õuedaamist, kelle kõht läks punni ja hakati seetõttu kahtlustama, et ta on rase. Hea õukonnadraama.
Järgmine on Charles Darwini habeme kasvamise lugu. Kultuurilooliselt kõige laiahaardelisem, peatudes ka tänapäeval relevantsel teemal, kuidas habemekasvatamist enda ja avalikkuse jaoks ära põhjendada (protip: habe kaitseb mumpsi eest). Praeguses karvarohkes maailmas tundub see kahjuks veidi ära leierdatud teema. Oleks pidanud ilmuma 10-15 aastat tagasi.
Kolmas räägib sellest, kuidas kuulujutu järgi George Elioti üks käsi oli teisest suurem, sest lapsepõlves pidi ta kogu aeg võivurri vms väntama. Pikk tagasivaade George Elioti sugupuule ja kuidas 19. saj meiereis elu käis, ja mis oleks palju huvitavam kui ma kunagi mõnda George Elioti raamatut lugenud oleks.
Neljas on kõige põnevam - lugu sellest, kuidas DG Rossettil oli veel üks armuke Fanny Cornforth, kelle meelaid huuli ta armastas maalida ja armuleek susises kohe mitukümmend aastat ja kuidas Rossetti biograafid ta kui ebasiivsa naisterahva oma raamatutest täiesti välja jätsid. Ma olen ise ka suur DG Rossetti ekspert eksole, sest lugesin Tim Powersi romaani "Hide Me Among the Graves" ja tean kõike Rossettide pere võitlustest nephilimide ja vampiiridega. Fannyt pole ka Powersi raamatus ning tema lisamine oleks raamatu nutt-ja-hala vaimus dünaamikat kindlasti elavdanud. Nii et see ptk avardas silmaringi kõige rohkem, kahtlemata.
Viies peatükk räägib 8-aastase lapse brutaalsest mõrvast ja on lihtsalt kohtuprotokollide ümberjutustus.
Hea vahelugemine, mulle selline anekdoodiformaat meeldib. Meeldis ka, et tegemist on ikkagi hingelt kirjandusteadlasega ja kui mõne kõrvaltegelase sugupuu oli seotud mõne kuulsa kirjandusliku perekonnaga, siis jättis K Hughes kõik muu kus kurat ja kirjutas mitu lehekülge täpselt kogu selle seose läbi, kes kellega ikka abiellus ja mis linnakesse nad mis aastal kolisid. See kirg ja austus kirjameeste vastu elavdas ka habemepeatükki omajagu. K Hughesil on lihtsalt lõpmatu kannatus uurida välja ja kirja panna kõik, mida Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson jpt habemetest mõtlesid, sest tema meelest on see oluline ja tõepoolest - lõpuks on päris huvitav.
Esimene lugu räägib kuninganna Victoria õuedaamist, kelle kõht läks punni ja hakati seetõttu kahtlustama, et ta on rase. Hea õukonnadraama.
Järgmine on Charles Darwini habeme kasvamise lugu. Kultuurilooliselt kõige laiahaardelisem, peatudes ka tänapäeval relevantsel teemal, kuidas habemekasvatamist enda ja avalikkuse jaoks ära põhjendada (protip: habe kaitseb mumpsi eest). Praeguses karvarohkes maailmas tundub see kahjuks veidi ära leierdatud teema. Oleks pidanud ilmuma 10-15 aastat tagasi.
Kolmas räägib sellest, kuidas kuulujutu järgi George Elioti üks käsi oli teisest suurem, sest lapsepõlves pidi ta kogu aeg võivurri vms väntama. Pikk tagasivaade George Elioti sugupuule ja kuidas 19. saj meiereis elu käis, ja mis oleks palju huvitavam kui ma kunagi mõnda George Elioti raamatut lugenud oleks.
Neljas on kõige põnevam - lugu sellest, kuidas DG Rossettil oli veel üks armuke Fanny Cornforth, kelle meelaid huuli ta armastas maalida ja armuleek susises kohe mitukümmend aastat ja kuidas Rossetti biograafid ta kui ebasiivsa naisterahva oma raamatutest täiesti välja jätsid. Ma olen ise ka suur DG Rossetti ekspert eksole, sest lugesin Tim Powersi romaani "Hide Me Among the Graves" ja tean kõike Rossettide pere võitlustest nephilimide ja vampiiridega. Fannyt pole ka Powersi raamatus ning tema lisamine oleks raamatu nutt-ja-hala vaimus dünaamikat kindlasti elavdanud. Nii et see ptk avardas silmaringi kõige rohkem, kahtlemata.
Viies peatükk räägib 8-aastase lapse brutaalsest mõrvast ja on lihtsalt kohtuprotokollide ümberjutustus.
Hea vahelugemine, mulle selline anekdoodiformaat meeldib. Meeldis ka, et tegemist on ikkagi hingelt kirjandusteadlasega ja kui mõne kõrvaltegelase sugupuu oli seotud mõne kuulsa kirjandusliku perekonnaga, siis jättis K Hughes kõik muu kus kurat ja kirjutas mitu lehekülge täpselt kogu selle seose läbi, kes kellega ikka abiellus ja mis linnakesse nad mis aastal kolisid. See kirg ja austus kirjameeste vastu elavdas ka habemepeatükki omajagu. K Hughesil on lihtsalt lõpmatu kannatus uurida välja ja kirja panna kõik, mida Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson jpt habemetest mõtlesid, sest tema meelest on see oluline ja tõepoolest - lõpuks on päris huvitav.
April 6, 2018
I would file this under ‘popular ‘ history, a category some critics use to demean books they find not sufficiently scholarly, but a genre which I usually like and approve of. And, certainly, most of this book is an entertaining read. My problem with it is that I don’t get the premise. There have been a number of very good books recently that have set out to debunk or demythologise the Victorians and Katheryn Hughes seems to be trying to do something similar: exploring the commonly held notion of Victorian prudery about their bodies and bodily functions. However, some of the most persuasive parts of her research shows the frequent failures of doctors to diagnose women’s problems because of the decorum about male doctors examining female patients.
Each of the five sections of the book are interesting in their own way but it’s hard to see much of a connection between Charles Darwin’s beard and poor Fanny Adams’ brutal murder. And the issue of George Eliot’s hand seems much ado about nothing. Surely there were enough photos taken of her to solve the ‘mystery’?
Each of the five sections of the book are interesting in their own way but it’s hard to see much of a connection between Charles Darwin’s beard and poor Fanny Adams’ brutal murder. And the issue of George Eliot’s hand seems much ado about nothing. Surely there were enough photos taken of her to solve the ‘mystery’?
October 2, 2022
Absolutely fascinating! Victorian era is my favourite and I can't believe it took me so long to read this - as it's been on my TBR for ages. Victorians Undone is incredibly well researched and brilliantly written. I loved it. Out of the five parts, my favourite are: 'Lady Flora's Belly' - it was shocking and I've learnt that young Queen Victoria wasn't very innocent or nice! The way everyone treated Flora and her health was astonishing and terrifying. Another favourite is 'Fanny Cornforth's Mouth' - so detailed and complex, telling us so much about women (and men) of the era - at times unbelievable, and always fascinating. The last part, 'Sweet Fanny Adams' is basically a Victorian true crime piece - it's pretty bloody and incredibly gripping.
I loved Hughes's writing, how she structured the book and approached the people she wrote about. Victorians Undone covers so much more than it might appear on the first glance, but none of it is a tangent - it's all equally important, relevant and - let me say it one more time - fascinating.
I loved Hughes's writing, how she structured the book and approached the people she wrote about. Victorians Undone covers so much more than it might appear on the first glance, but none of it is a tangent - it's all equally important, relevant and - let me say it one more time - fascinating.
November 11, 2024
only some of the stories were mildly interesting, but all of them were extremely drawn out and written in a clickbaity manner than promised something much more exciting and worthwhile than what we ultimately got. very much couldve been an email - if you're curious about any of the stories here, genuinely opt for wikipedia
like not to spoil anything, but all the anecdotes were presented as shocking and groundbreaking while they were very.... obvious? like ohhh why did charles darwin grow a beard hmmm.... because he had eczema and because it was popular. thats it. and yet there are 5 chapters on the matter. similarly, the last chapter states that there exists an everyday phrase that stems from a gory murder - and the phrase turns out to be a niche sailor saying. like girl
like not to spoil anything, but all the anecdotes were presented as shocking and groundbreaking while they were very.... obvious? like ohhh why did charles darwin grow a beard hmmm.... because he had eczema and because it was popular. thats it. and yet there are 5 chapters on the matter. similarly, the last chapter states that there exists an everyday phrase that stems from a gory murder - and the phrase turns out to be a niche sailor saying. like girl
September 10, 2018
This is one of those books where the interest factor depends entirely on ones own personal quirks of interest, so one moment, dullsville, the next, fascinating. The writing style tries a bit too hard sometimes to be groovy and cool, or something, but I guess it beats dry and dusty. My favorite section was about Fanny Cornforth, Dante Rossetti's mistress/model, who, I agree, does get short shrift in most accounts of the Pre-Raphaelite stuff that I've read, anyway. (small caveat- perhaps not the best lunch reading, quite a few gross-out moments)
November 16, 2020
The book gives interesting anecdotes and that in itself is enjoyable. I like creepy and weird facts about victorian celebrities. However, the premise of this book, as set out in the intro, is to describe the Victorian’s relationship to their bodies. It supposes to do so by taking various bodyparts of famous victorians and analysing what is known about these parts. Very good premise, but it does not at all do what it promises. Yes, each section starts with a bodypart, but that is just an excuse to babble on about the biography of this person. The book also doesn’t have a conclusion that would make up for the babble and relate critically how victorians really viewed their bodies. And there are enough bios of Queen Victoria, Darwin and George Elliot as it is.
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