Book

Sounds interesting, but might be too specialized for a small library like ours.

Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. Norton, $34.95.

Library Journal: “absorbing and thoroughly researched…Reasomely entertaining and yet a wonderful addition to academic literature, this book is sure to become a classic. Highly recommended.” Publishers Weekly: “brims with delightful description and discussion…absorbing…working-class life is overlooked…intelligent and unromanticized.” NYT Book Review: “Nimble social history. This book can be used to decode the domestic symbolism of the period’s literature.” Booklist: “So fascinating that it yields at least one surprise on each page.” Wilson Quarterly: “An engaging, informative book. Its strength is Flanders’s research. Picky readers might sometimes wish for less matter and more art, but even they will never again see a Victorian house in the same old cozy, comfortable way.” Atlantic Monthly: “Flanders, who writes smoothly and cleverly, renders a detailed and engaging portrait of middle- and upper-middle-class domesticity in London from 1850 to 1890. Although vivid, Flanders’s rendition is somewhat distorted, largely because of the sources she’s used. But readers will perforce turn to the simplicities of books like Flanders’s until the academy learns to write again.”