4th Estate Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age Хьюз Кэтрин

A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians • Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left? • Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors? • Who knew Queen Victoria had a personal hygiene problem as a young woman and the crisis that followed led to a hurried commitment to marry Albert? • What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the most exquisite watercolours the world has ever seen, feel about marrying a woman whose big nose made smart people snigger? • How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular joke, one we still reference today, but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins? • Kathryn Hughes follows a thickened index finger or deep baritone voice into the realms of social history, medical discourse, aesthetic practise and religious observance - it's language is one of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, an implacably turned back подробнее