{"product_id":"victorians-undone-9781421429007","title":"Victorians Undone","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes a book just bowls you over with how good it is. For instance, I can remember starting my review of A. S. Byatt's \u003ci\u003ePossession\u003c\/i\u003e with the sentence 'Sometimes a critic just wants to say Wow.' Still, I never expected to feel anything approaching Nabokovian bliss when reading five lengthy biographical essays about figures and incidents from 19th-century British history. But Kathryn Hughes's \u003ci\u003eVictorians Undone \u003c\/i\u003eis just amazing, and her 'Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum' are so various, so imaginatively structured, so delicately salacious and so deliciously written that I sighed with pleasure as I turned the pages and even felt those tiny prickles along the neck that A. E. Housman once claimed were the sign of true poetry . . . This is popularized history done right, done with panache. Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.\u003cbr\u003e—Michael Dirda, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe average biographer peers into a Great Man's mind. Kathryn Hughes's \u003ci\u003eVictorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum\u003c\/i\u003e, in contrast, narrates the lives of five body parts.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tales are entertaining, but Hughes's real achievement is historical—amounting to a new understanding of, as she puts it, 'what it meant to be a human animal in the nineteenth century.'\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLively, iconoclastic and consistently riveting, this is popular history in the best sense.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe body parts in these \u003ci\u003eTales of the Flesh\u003c\/i\u003e . . . illuminate the wider cultural world in which their owners participated.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eVictorians Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is excellent at providing a sniff of the 19th century that other forms of life writing have discreetly ignored.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublic Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntriguing, gleefully contentious and—appropriately enough—fizzing with life, \u003ci\u003eVictorians Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is the most original history book I have read in a long while.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA page-turner . . . brilliant all the way through. One of the best books I’ve read in ages.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSunday Express\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis lively study goes behind the frills and furbelows to explore aspects of the Victorians’ notoriously strange attitude to the body.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElegantly sidestepping the usual clichés of Victorian history, from foggy streets to whimpering urchins, each page becomes a window on to a world that is far stranger than we might expect. It is writing that takes the raw materials of everyday life, starting with the body’s ‘bulges, dips, hollows, oozes and itches,’ and makes them live again. A dazzling experiment in life writing . . . Every page fizzes with the excitement of fresh discoveries.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is rich and scholarly, something fascinating to be discovered on every page . . . Hughes is a thoroughly engaging writer: serious-minded but lively, careful yet passionate . . . Some of the encounters in its pages, whiffy and indelible, will stay with me for ever.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eVictorians Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is a work of formidable scholarship, but Hughes has a fluid, jaunty style that propels the reader from idea to idea. Reading it is like unraveling the bandages on a mummy to find the face of the past staring back in all its terrible and poignant humanity.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHistory so alive you can smell its reek . . . With her love of bodily detail, Hughes does indeed put the carnal back into biography.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one remotely interested in books should miss it.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can’t think of a recent social history I’ve enjoyed more.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Big Issue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeautifully constructed, narrated not only with wit and gusto, but a clear sense of purpose.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMail on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSex certainly rears its many heads, but so does every other aspect of Victorian life, from farming techniques to court etiquette, dentistry to oil painting.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHughes regularly surprises us by showing just how much her subjects’ physical selves impinged on their contributions to our culture, and sometimes on the very course of history.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeeply researched and wonderfully entertaining . . . Hughes undoes conventional representations of the Victorians and connects us with them anew, alert to the pastness of the past, but also to its continuities with the present.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eVictorian Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e1. Lady Flora's Belly\u003cbr\u003e2. Charles Darwin's Beard\u003cbr\u003e3. George Eliot's Hand\u003cbr\u003e4. Fanny Cornforth's Mouth\u003cbr\u003e5. Sweet Fanny Adams\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements\u003cbr\u003eList of Illustrations\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49529536282967,"sku":"9781421429007","price":17.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/victorians-undone-9781421429007","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}