Product Information
This book presents a delightful and fascinating social history of Victorians at leisure, told through the letters, diaries, journals and novels of 19th-century men and women from the author of the bestselling The Victorian House . Imagine a world where only one in five people owns a book, where just one in ten has a knife or a fork - a world where five people out of every six do not own a cup to hold a hot drink. That was what England was like in the early eighteenth century. Yet by the close of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had brought with it not just factories, railways, mines and machines but also brought fashion, travel, leisure and pleasure. Leisure became an industry, a cornucopia of excitement for the masses. And it was spread by newspapers, by advertising, by promotions and publicity - all eighteenth, not twentieth century creations. It was Josiah Wedgwood and his colleagues who invented money-back guarantees, free delivery, and celebrity endorsements. New technology such as the railways brought audiences to ever-more-elaborate extravaganzas, whether it was theatrical spectaculars with breathtaking pyrotechnics and hundreds of extras, 'hippodramas' recreating the battle of Waterloo, or the Great Exhibition itself, proudly displaying 'the products of all quarters of the globe' under twenty-two acres of a sparkling 'Crystal Palace'. In Consuming Passions , the bestselling author of The Victorian House explores this dramatic revolution in science, technology and industry - and how a world of thrilling sensation, lavish spectacle and unimaginable theatricality was born.Product Identifiers
PublisherHarperCollins
ISBN-139780007172955
eBay Product ID (ePID)91125222
Product Key Features
Number of Pages448 Pages
Publication NameConsuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain
LanguageEnglish
SubjectHistory
Publication Year2006
TypeTextbook
AuthorJudith Flanders
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height240 mm
Item Weight1002 g
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom
Title_AuthorJudith Flanders