Rites of Passage

Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain

Judith Flanders

$54.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Picador
11 June 2024

Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Social & cultural history; Sociology: death & dying

'Nobody knows more about everyday life in Victorian Britain than Judith Flanders' - Douglas Robert-Fairhurst, author of Metamorphosis and The Turning Point

In Rites of Passage, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders deconstructs the intricate, fascinating, and occasionally - to modern eyes - bizarre customs that grew up around death and mourning in Victorian Britain.

Through stories from the sickbed to the deathbed, from the correct way to grieve and to give comfort to those grieving to funerals and burials and the reaction of those left behind, Flanders illuminates how living in nineteenth-century Britain was, in so many ways, dictated by dying.

This is an engrossing, deeply researched and, at times, chilling social history of a period plagued by infant death, poverty, disease, and unprecedented change. In elegant, often witty prose, Flanders brings the Victorian way of death vividly to life.

By: Judith Flanders
Imprint: Picador
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 32mm
Weight: 585g
ISBN: 9781509816972
ISBN 10: 1509816976
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 11 June 2024
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Author Website: http://www.judithflanders.co.uk/

Judith Flanders is the author of several critically acclaimed and bestselling books: A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; The Invention of Murder (2011), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction; The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003); The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (2012), shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year; The Making of Home (2014); Christmas: A History (2017) and A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order (2020). In her copious leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.

Reviews for Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain

Nobody knows more about everyday life in Victorian Britain than Judith Flanders, and in Rites of Passage she offers a compelling and often darkly comic history of the period’s fascination with death. Ranging from mourning jewellery to vampires, and from miniature coffins to the opening of Britain’s first crematorium, her book helps modern readers understand what it was like to live at a time when thoughts of not living were as inescapable as gravity. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of <i>Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces</i> and <i>The Turning Point, A Year That Changed Dickens and the World </i>