The upstairs/downstairs image is of maids in starched aprons overseen by an outwardly stern cook with a heart of gold, but what was life really like below stairs in Victorian times?

    Harriet Ritvo here gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations.Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big game hunting; an era of reform and reformers that saw the birth of the Royal SPCA. Ritvo examines Victorian thinking about animals in the context of other lines of thought: evolution, class structure, popular science and natural history, imperial domination. The papers and publications of people and organizations concerned with agricultural breeding, veterinary medicine, the world of pets, vivisection and other humane causes, zoos, hunting at home and abroad, all reveal underlying assumptions and deeply held convictions--for example, about Britain's imperial enterprise, social discipline, and the hierarchy of orders, in nature and in human society.Thus this book contributes a new new topic of inquiry to Victorian studies; its combination of rhetorical analysis with more conventional methods of historical research offers a novel perspective on Victorian culture. And because nineteenth-century attitudes and practices were often the ancestors of contemporary ones, this perspective can also inform modern debates about human-animal interactions.

    On her very first dive, however, Kate got much more than she bargained for --- she discovered sunken treasure. But when she went to claim her bounty, suddenly all the divers around her disappeared, and Kate found herself staring into a pair of hypnotizing blue-gray eyes! This diver wasn't familiar at all --- he wasn't wearing scuba gear and didn't have an oxygen tank strapped to his back! Frightened, Kate swam off in the direction of the ship she had dove in from, realizing too late that she hadn't even offered to share her life-supporting oxygen with the stranger . . .The Prize of LoveShipping entrepreneur Michael Sheridan couldn't believe his own eyes --- he found a mermaid at the bottom of the ocean! All of those ancient sea tales were true . . . even if this was the modern age and the year 1868, he now had reason to believe those old stories. She had fins for feet, a sleek body and the most exquisite flowing hair he'd ever seen. But as quickly as she appeared, she was gone, and Michael vowed to find her again. The underwater beauty became the object of his ultimate fantasy. He would seek the depths of the ocean to touch her skin, to kiss her lips, to caress her curves --- for once loved by a mermaid he would forever burn with Time-Kissed Destiny

    16 full-color illustrations.

    A tour of the astonishing and stunning newly painted Victorian homes now beautifying all of the United States as ancestors of the original Painted Ladies of San Francisco! 172 full-color photographs.

    Heartbroken and confused she makes a hasty marriage but never forgets her true love. From the author of THE MORNING TIDE.

    Watson, and Orson Welles as the nefarious Professor Moriarty. With three giants of the theater in such colorful roles, it’s no mystery why this collection is so popular.Includes:* “The Blue Carbuncle” (Disc 1)* “The Golden Pince-Nez” (Disc 1)* “The Norwood Builder” (Disc 2)* “The Solitary Cyclist” (Disc 2)* “The Final Problem” (Disc 3)* “A Case of Identity” (Disc 3)* “The Six Napoleons” (Disc 4)* “The Dying Detective” (Disc 4)* “The Second Stain” (Disc 5)* “The Speckled Band” (Disc 5)* “Charles August Milverton” (Disc 6)* “A Scandal in Bohemia” (Disc 6)A fully dramatized production on 6 CDs (5 hours, 15 minutes).

    Wild Heron, located just south of Savannah on the Little Ogeechee River, is the oldest plantation house still standing in Georgia. A one-and-a-half story farmhouse built in the style of a West India cottage, it is being restored to reflect the period of the early 1800s.Farther to the interior, in the area around Augusta, are such homes as Fruitlands, now the clubhouse of the Augusta national Golf Club; Meadow Garden; Ware's Folly; and Montrose, built in 1849 and one of the Loveliest Greek Revival houses in the area. Houses photographed along the Plantation Trail, from Athens to Macon, include the white-columned President's House, home since 1949 to the presidents of the University of Georgia; the Howell Cobb House, in Athens; Whitehall, in Covington; Glan Mary, in Sparta; and the Woodruff House, in Macon.Gleason devotes considerable attention to the homes of the western side of the state, from Chickamauga to Thomasville. The Gordon-Lee House, constructed in 1847, was headquarters fro the Union army during the battle of chickamauga. Other houses in this part of Georgia are valley View, which overlooks the Etowah River, west of Cartersville; the Archibald Howell House, near downtown Marietta; Lovejoy, in Clayton Country; The oaks, in the vicinity of LaGrange; and Greenwood and Pebble Hill, near Thomasville.In all, Gleason captures more than one hundred of Georgia's most beautiful antebellum homes, including many lesser-known houses. In addition to exterior photographs, Antebellum Homes of Georgia contains a number of interior views as well as aerial photographs that show the relationship between the houses and their environs: outbuildings, formal gardens, and recd clay fields that were once white with cotton. Captions provide brief histories of the houses and their owners as weel as notes on construction and outstanding architectural details.