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Author: John Wade
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473849020
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Discover some of the Victorian Era’s most outlandish inventions—from the world-changing to the simply weird—in this look at nineteenth-century innovation. We all know that some of history’s greatest inventions came about in the Victorian age. But in The Ingenious Victorians, John Wade goes beyond those famous advances to explore some of the weird and wonderful ideas and projects that have largely been forgotten. He also offers a new perspective on some of the era’s well-known inventions by shedding light on how they emerged. Discover the fascinating true stories behind the world’s largest glass structure; cameras disguised as bowler hats; the London Underground as a steam railway; safety coffins designed to prevent premature burial; unusual medical uses for electricity; the first traffic lights, which exploded a month after their erection in Westminster; and the birth and rapid rise to popularity of the cinema ... as well as many other ingenious inventions.
Author: John Wade
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473849020
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Get Book Here
Book Description
Discover some of the Victorian Era’s most outlandish inventions—from the world-changing to the simply weird—in this look at nineteenth-century innovation. We all know that some of history’s greatest inventions came about in the Victorian age. But in The Ingenious Victorians, John Wade goes beyond those famous advances to explore some of the weird and wonderful ideas and projects that have largely been forgotten. He also offers a new perspective on some of the era’s well-known inventions by shedding light on how they emerged. Discover the fascinating true stories behind the world’s largest glass structure; cameras disguised as bowler hats; the London Underground as a steam railway; safety coffins designed to prevent premature burial; unusual medical uses for electricity; the first traffic lights, which exploded a month after their erection in Westminster; and the birth and rapid rise to popularity of the cinema ... as well as many other ingenious inventions.
Author: Matthew Sweet
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466872713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
"Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong." So begins Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact and mind-bending whirlwind tour through the soul of the nineteenth century, and a round debunking of our assumptions about it. The Victorians have been victims of the "the enormous condescension of posterity," in the historian E. P. Thompson's phrase. Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an age when, supposedly, existence was stultifying, dank, and over-furnished, and when behavior conformed so rigorously to proprieties that the repressed results put Freud into business. We think we have the Victorians pegged--as self-righteous, imperialist, racist, materialist, hypocritical and, worst of all, earnest. Oh how wrong we are, argues Matthew Sweet in this highly entertaining, provocative, and illuminating look at our great, and great-great, grandparents. One hundred years after Queen Victoria's death, Sweet forces us to think again about her century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and by images of unfettered capitalism and grinding poverty. Sweet believes not only that we're wrong about the Victorians but profoundly indebted to them. In ways we have been slow to acknowledge, their age and our own remain closely intertwined. The Victorians invented the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the penny arcade, the roller coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational newspaper story. Sweet also argues that our twenty-first century smugness about how far we have evolved is misplaced. The Victorians were less racist than we are, less religious, less violent, and less intolerant. Far from being an outcast, Oscar Wilde was a fairly typical Victorian man; the love that dared not speak its name was declared itself fairly openly. In 1868 the first international cricket match was played between an English team and an Australian team composed entirely of aborigines. The Victorians loved sensation, novelty, scandal, weekend getaways, and the latest conveniences (by 1869, there were image-capable telegraphs; in 1873 a store had a machine that dispensed milk to after-hours' shoppers). Does all this sound familiar? As Sweet proves in this fascinating, eye-opening book, the reflection we find in the mirror of the nineteenth century is our own. We inhabit buildings built by the Victorians; some of us use their sewer system and ride on the railways they built. We dismiss them because they are the age against whom we have defined our own. In brilliant style, Inventing the Victorians shows how much we have been missing.
Author: Emily Midorikawa
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640092315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women to express themselves. But not so within the social sphere of the séance--a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic, in which women who craved a public voice could hold their own. Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and most important, influence as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead. The Fox sisters inspired some of the era’s best-known political activists and set off a transatlantic séance craze. While in the throes of a trance, Emma Hardinge Britten delivered powerful speeches to crowds of thousands. Victoria Woodhull claimed guidance from the spirit world as she took on the millionaires of Wall Street before becoming America’s first female presidential candidate. And Georgina Weldon narrowly escaped the asylum before becoming a celebrity campaigner against archaic lunacy laws. Drawing on diaries, letters, and rarely seen memoirs and texts, Emily Midorikawa illuminates a radical history of female influence that has been confined to the dark until now.
Author: E.K. Johnston
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101994576
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
Speculative fiction from the acclaimed bestselling author of Exit, Pursued by a Bear and Star Wars: Ahsoka. Victoria-Margaret is the crown princess of the empire, a direct descendent of Victoria I, the queen who changed the course of history. The imperial tradition of genetically arranged matchmaking will soon guide Margaret into a politically advantageous marriage. But before she does her duty, she'll have one summer of freedom and privacy in a far corner of empire. Posing as a commoner in Toronto, she meets Helena Marcus, daughter of one of the empire's greatest placement geneticists, and August Callaghan, the heir to a powerful shipping firm currently besieged by American pirates. In a summer of high-society debutante balls, politically charged tea parties, and romantic country dances, Margaret, Helena, and August discover they share an extraordinary bond and maybe a one-in-a-million chance to have what they want and to change the world in the process. Set in a near-future world where the British Empire was preserved not by the cost of blood and theft but by the effort of repatriation and promises kept, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a surprising, romantic, and thought-provoking story of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world. ★ "This witty and romantic story is a must-read.”—SLJ, starred review ★ "Compelling and unique—there's nothing else like it."—Booklist, starred review. ★ "[A] powerful and resonant story of compassion, love, and finding a way to fulfill obligations while maintaining one’s identity."—PW, starred review
Author: Shona Parker
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1399056700
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The Victorian era's societal changes and cultural advancements are explored through the lens of daily life The Victorian era is arguably the most exciting and invigorating reign of an English monarch ever, and one of progress on a massive scale. By the time Queen Victoria died in 1901, England was almost unrecognisable. The Victorians neatly avoided revolution, built upon what the Georgians started and turned the country into a political powerhouse which ran the biggest Empire the world had ever seen. Meanwhile, Victorian writers and journalists were observing, questioning, and recording for prosperity the life and times of what would become known as the Victorian era: a steady, relentless building of the modern world. Using quotes from Victorian literature, How the Victorians Lived will help you on your way to understanding how society coped with the upheaval of the industrial revolution during one of the most innovative centuries England has ever seen. This book is a detailed exploration of the daily lives of mainly working- and middle-class Victorians. It recreates the remarkable and wondrous world of the English Victorians: their traditions, their expectations, their hopes and their fears and how these have shaped the society we live in today.
Author: Julie Halls
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500772479
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
A captivating, humorous, and downright perplexing selection of nineteenth-century inventions as revealed through remarkable–and hitherto unseen–illustrations from the British National Archive Inventions that Didn’t Change the World is a fascinating visual tour through some of the most bizarre inventions registered with the British authorities in the nineteenth century. In an era when Britain was the workshop of the world, design protection (nowadays patenting) was all the rage, and the apparently lenient approval process meant that all manner of bizarre curiosities were painstakingly recorded, in beautiful color illustrations and well-penned explanatory text, alongside the genuinely great inventions of the period. Irreverent commentary contextualizes each submission as well as taking a humorous view on how each has stood the test of time. This book introduces such gems as a ventilating top hat; an artificial leech; a design for an aerial machine adapted for the arctic regions; an anti-explosive alarm whistle; a tennis racket with ball-picker; and a currant-cleaning machine. Here is everything the end user could possibly require for a problem he never knew he had. Organized by area of application—industry, clothing, transportation, medical, health and safety, the home, and leisure—Inventions that Didn’t Change the World reveals the concerns of a bygone era giddy with the possibilities of a newly industrialized world.
Author: Michael Sims
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101486171
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
A wonderfully wicked new anthology from the editor of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime It is the Victorian era and society is both entranced by and fearful of that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides those new- fangled bicycles and doesn't like to be told what to do. And, in crime fiction, such female detectives as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard are out there shadowing suspects, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses, and sometimes committing a lesser crime in order to solve a murder. In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, Michael Sims has brought together all of the era's great crime-fighting females- plus a few choice crooks, including Four Square Jane and the Sorceress of the Strand.
Author: Kathryn Hughes
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142570X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.
Author: Jess Kidd
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982121300
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
In this “miraculous and thrilling” (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child. Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery. Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems. Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history” (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.
Author: Elizabeth Garner
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 030745973X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
The skies of Oxford are aflame with meteors the night Edgar Jones comes into the world–clearly this porter’s son, born in a small cottage in 1847, is no ordinary boy. While his mother is apprehensive about her restless, inquisitive child, Edgar’s father believes without a doubt that his son is destined for greatness. As the years pass, it becomes apparent that Edgar has a unique talent: He is a born inventor, and his gift for making is matched by a fierce will. Edgar turns his back on the scholarly life his father had intended for him and apprentices himself to a blacksmith. It is not long before his ingenuity and metalworking skills bring him to the attention of a maverick professor at Oxford University, a bone collector with plans for a museum of natural history. Finally, Edgar has the opportunity to showcase the singular gifts he’s learned in the hazardous soot and heat of the forge. But his great ability also becomes a curse, and his prominence is fraught with danger–both for him and for his family. Set at the dramatic midpoint of the nineteenth century, in a world on the cusp of change, The Ingenious Edgar Jones is an unforgettable coming-of-age story about the complexities of family life and the journey of one young man as he finds his place in a rapidly shifting world.
