The Victorian Scene: A Picture Book Of The Period 1837-1901 By Nicolas Bentley
The Victorian Scene: A Picture Book Of The Period 1837-1901 By Nicolas Bentley
Hardcover
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd 1968
Used - Very Good+. This book is in very good condition. The Dust Jacket has some very limited signs of wear and tear and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover.
Nicolas Bentley is a distinguished artist and it is with an artist's acute and selective eye that this sumptuous collection of images, there are over 400 in black and white and and 40 in colour has been assembled to reflect the Victorian domestic scene. The chapters deal with the eight essentials of Victorian existence: Food; Housing; Clothes; Education; Religion; Employment; Transport and finally Leisure.
Bentley takes a topical approach, with chapters on domestic life (residences from slums to mansions and palaces, sanitation, interior decoration, and the growth of hotels for the traveling middle class), food (cooking at home, chop houses for the bachelor, and the appearance of popular cookbooks), clothing and fashion (from underwear to mourning dress), education (the development of state-funded schools, "ragged schools," the governess, and the great universities), religion (the Oxford movement, spiritualism, and the Darwinian revolution), the working class (child labor, the servant class, farm workers, and the union movement), travel (the growth of railroads and the invention of London's Underground), and leisure (from the royal tea party to the music hall, not to forget the Great Exhibition). Every large-sized page includes one or several illustrations (mostly black-and-white) of people, places, things, and events both major and minor.
