How did they live and work, what did they eat, what were they treated with, what did they ride, what did they dress in and how did ordinary Englishmen of bygone eras have fun? What was it like to cook on coal, drink beer for breakfast, brush your teeth with crushed cuttlefish bone, ride to work in a horse-drawn omnibus and work around the house in a corset? Drawing on extensive documentary evidence (diaries, letters, autobiographies, periodicals and books), this book by an authoritative British historian explores many aspects of typical 19th-century daily routines, including diet, health, intimacy, fashion, work and play. Featuring a series of black-and-white and color illustrations, the book is a vibrant collection of the amazing customs, habits and details of the private life of the English during the reign of Queen Victoria. “I want to study the history of the private, the personal, the material, which glorifies the everyday and allows us to recreate the lives of ordinary people, adults and children, through contact with their everyday life. I intend to understand how our ancestors thought, to learn about their hopes, fears and speculations. I will look at all aspects of everyday life of the Victorians and invite you to where I myself wandered in search of traces of that era. In trying to understand the past, from the very beginning I paid a lot of attention to the experimental aspect. I love immersing myself in the things people have made and used in the past and learning first-hand how they worked.” (Ruth Goodman)The publishing layout is saved in PDF A4 format.