As long as we're borrowing from A&L Daily today, there's this Atlantic Monthly feature on the horrors of the Victorian household:
...And the houses themselves were deathtraps: the larders held food colored with poison, including lead, which was also in the primer on the walls, which were covered in paper that contained arsenic. The aspidistra became a symbol of the middle-class because it was one of the few houseplants that could withstand the noxious fumes in the gas-lit parlors....Besides which, we're told, the culture was so deeply obsessed with death that ladies' clothing for a latter stage of mourning was sold in the "Mitigated Affliction Department." Posted by Martha Bridegam at June 4, 2004 05:44 PM
P.S. How come this lady gave her book a dull title like Inside The Victorian Home when it coulda been The Girl From The Mitigated Affliction Department?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 4, 2004 07:50 PMThere was a great review of a book about Victorian cities by Carey in the Sunday Times, he used the review to comment at length on the pompous wrong-headedness of a lot of Victorian public architecture.
Posted by: ROBBIE at June 5, 2004 10:34 AM