When she is suddenly whisked away to a wealthy widow's home in the prestigious Mayfair district, Sarah can't fathom what has happened. Why would this elderly woman, a stranger, want her company? But Dorothea Blake has reasons she isn't revealing.As Sarah blossoms into a young woman, the secret Mrs. Blake harbors threatens to make them both outcasts among London's elite. When a visitor unknowingly stumbles upon the truth, he puts Sarah at risk of losing everything she holds dear, including the attentions of a new curate. Will the mystery of her birth remain buried forever?

    . . . After years of schooling in England, Jesmond Corbett finds little has changed on her family’s estate along the sea-battered coast of Tasmania. Betrothed since childhood to a wealthy neighbor, Jessie comes home determined to conform to the expectations of her family and the society in which they live. But nothing in Jessie’s life has prepared her for the mysterious stranger who works in the stables, a man with searing eyes who haunts her dreams and awakens passions she never knew existed.Irishman Lucas Gallagher arrived on the island in chains, a convict sentenced to a lifetime of slave labor for the English gentry. For four years he has lived a dead man’s existence, using every spare moment to plan his escape. But when he meets Jessie, she touches his cold, angry heart. And although their love has no future, he finds himself unable to deny the longings of his battered soul– longings that threaten to destroy what may be his last chance to reach for freedom. . . .

    Her family is gone and her own life hangs by a thread after a desperate season seeking work. By the time Lew and his kindly neighbors have nursed Clare back to health, he is hopelessly in love with the frail Irish girl. But though she will always care for Lew, another man comes between them. Martin Heywood, a rich, young farmer sweeps Clare off her feet; however, he cannot marry a mere servant girl, even if it breaks both their hearts.

    We learn how and where they lived and, crucially, with whom, in this study of the intimate framework of their social arrangements. Thoroughly researched and beautifully presented, this book fully exploits extensive collections of poetry and prose, as well as probing the revealing contents of diaries and letters of the period. Appropriately, many superb reproductions of the great Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces accompany the narrative.

    The tremendous feeling of national pride was celebrated in the Great Exhibition of 1851. Drawing on his consummate skill as a storyteller, Adam Hart–Davis shows how Victorian movers and shakers changed our world.

    Their first biographer, Mrs Gaskell, transformed their story of literary ambition into one of the great legends of the 19th century, a dramatic tale of three lonely sisters playing out their tragic destiny on top of a windswept moor. Lucasta Miller reveals where this image came from and how it took such a hold on the popular imagination.Each generation has rewritten the Brontës to reflect changing attitudes - towards the role of the woman writer, towards sexuality, towards the very concept of personality. The Brontë Myth gives vigorous new life to our understanding of the novelists and their culture. It is a witty, erudite and refreshingly unsentimental unravelling of what Henry James described as "the most complete intellectual muddle ever achieved on a literary question by our wonderful public."

    Take advantage of fabrics applications; focus on unexpected pleasures that delight the eye (like a grouping of antique frames); and express your individual taste, from airily romantic to richly dramatic. You'll even learn tricks for transforming unusually shaped spaces--like sloping attic bedrooms-into something special!

    This Victorian icon has inspired more passionate debate than any other article of clothing. As a means of body modification, perhaps only foot binding and female genital mutilation have aroused more controversy.Summers' provocative book dismantles many of the commonly held misconceptions about the corset. In examining the role of corsetry in the minds and lives of Victorian women, it focuses on how corsetry punished, regulated and sculpted the female form from childhood and adolescence through to pregnancy and even old age. The author reveals how the ‘steels and bones', which damaged bodies and undermined mental health, were a crucial element in constructing middle-class women as psychologically submissive subjects. Underlying this compelling discussion are issues surrounding the development and expression of juvenile and adult sexuality. While maintaining that the corset was the perfect vehicle through which to police femininity, the author unpacks the myriad ways in which women consciously resisted its restrictions and reveals the hidden, macabre romance of this potent Victorian symbol.

    More than 200 illustrations and photos, many in full color, offer visual proof of the grace, spirit, strength, and passion of these remarkable people .

    These Victorian-era stories will touch hearts with the beauty of new love at Christmastime. Story list:“Behold the Lamb” by Catherine Palmer“Far Above Rubies” by Kristin Billerbeck“Memory to Keep” by Ginny Aiken

    The transformation of Josephine Butler from genteel wife of a schoolmaster and mother of four into a powerful force for change in Victorian Britain is presented in this vivid biography.

    Beyond the polychrome Victorian houses, there is a cumulative visual impact of all types of architecture, both exterior and interior. This beautiful book contains 260 color photos and includes sections devoted to Victorian House planning, the Edwardian Era, before and after transformations and Victorian Revival Interiors.

    In Doyle's original stories, Professor Moriarty is the bete noire of Sherlock Holmes, who deems the professor his mental equivalent and ethical opposite, declares him "the Napoleon of Crime, " and wrestles him seemingly to their mutual deaths at Reichenbach Falls. But indeed there are two sides to every story, and while Moriarty may not always tread strictly on the side of the law, he is also, in these novels, not quite about the person that Holmes and Watson made him out to be. In Kurland's fictions about Moriarty, the truth is finally revealed:The Infernal Device--A dangerous adversary seeking to topple the British monarchy places Moriarty in mortal jeopardy, forcing him to collaborate with his nemesis Sherlock Holmes.Death by Gaslight--A serial killer is stalking the cream o England's aristocracy, baffling both the police and Sherlock Holmes and leaving the powers in charge to play one last desperate card: Professor Moriarty.The Paradol Paradox--The first new Moriarty story in almost twenty years, it has never before appeared in print.Brilliantly and vividly evoking late Victorian England in all its facets, this first-ever omnibus of the adventures of Proefssor James Moriarty will delight longtime fans as well as readers new to the milieu.

    Nicola Bown explores what the fairy meant to the Victorians, and why they were so captivated by a figure which nowadays seems trivial and childish. She argues that fairies were a fantasy that allowed the Victorians to escape from their worries about science, technology and the effects of progress. The fairyland they dreamed about was a reconfiguration of their own world, and the fairies who inhabited it were like themselves.

    This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1892 edition by Macmillan and Co., New York and London.

    In this volume you'll find knitted and crocheted heirlooms, and both tatting (edgings and doilies galore) and beadwork. Patterns are exact replicas of the premier needlework magazine from turn-of-the-century England. Each volume is filled with hundreds of vintage projects, illustrations, information on little-known techniques, fashion as it was in the late 1800s and brief histories of needlework.

    Revealing the history of 19th-century dining, clothing, and etiquette, the volume includes sample menus and explicit instructions explaining how to recreate a dinner, tea, breakfast, or lunch in the 21st century. Collectors of china, crystal, and silver will also find this book helpful because it provides a photograph of each piece of tableware that was used, with a history and description of the item.After explaining the different dining styles and the way they evolved into rituals of the Victorian era, a formal dinner is examined course by course. The Schollanders present the history and uses of various wines and show they were matched with different foods. They also explain the evolution of silver, crystal, and china pieces. Additionally the book includes an explanation of the seating order at the Victorian table, correct Victorian table manners, invitations and menu cards, correct dress for dinner guests, correct table settings, the role of servants, and step-by-step instructions for recreating a formal Victorian dinner, tea, breakfast, or lunch.

    We witness life inside a hospital through the diary entires of a patient; the difficult decisions faced by a clergyman acting as charitable provider; a couple's grief at being parted by the war in India; a young woman's fears for her errant brother; and much more. Victorian Diaries presents the intricacies of ordinary daily lives with clarity and humor, and allows us to share their triumphs, sadnesses, and romances.

    Among the many topics: bouquets, cakes, and invitations; bridal showers, luncheons, and teas; composing the wedding vows or selecting passages to have read; arranging rehearsal dinners; and enjoying the engagement, with its lovely promise of happiness to come.

    Brimming with intelligent and original perceptions about authors or works that have fallen through literary-historical cracks, Romantic Victorians offers shrewd assessments of their formal and tactical designs. This is a literary period in which literature fully entered the marketplace, and in which an ideology was constitued - civic, domestic, Christian and imperial - that was to inform British society for more than a century. These are among the issues that Cronin addresses and, in so doing, successfully restructures nineteenth-century literary studies.

    This book gathers the riveting stories of adventurous women-miners, madams, merchants, and mothers -- who went North during the gold rush era.