This Victorian Life, Sarah A. Chrisman
This Victorian Life, Sarah A. Chrisman
List: $17.99 | Sale: $12.59
Club: $8.99

This Victorian Life
Modern Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cooking, Fashion, and Technology

Author: Sarah A. Chrisman

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 11 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/24/2015


Synopsis

We all know that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to a country where it's spoken, but can the same immersion method be applied to history? How do interactions with antique objects influence perceptions of the modern world?

From Victorian beauty regimes to nineteenth-century bicycles, custard recipes to taxidermy experiments, oil lamps to an ice box, Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman decided to explore nineteenth-century culture and technologies from the inside out. Even the deepest aspects of their lives became affected, and the more immersed they became in the late Victorian era, the more aware they grew of its legacies permeating the twenty-first century.

In her first book, Victorian Secrets, Chrisman recalled the first year she spent wearing a Victorian corset 24/7. In This Victorian Life, Chrisman picks up where Secrets left off and documents her complete shift into living as though she were in the nineteenth century.

About Sarah A. Chrisman

Sarah A. Chrisman is the author of Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and Myself and the editor of True Ladies and Proper Gentlemen. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2002 and, alongside her husband, Gabriel, gives presentations on nineteenth-century fashion and culture. The couple lives in Port Townsend, Washington, in one of the beautiful nineteenth-century homes they once coveted on visits to Washington's Victorian seaport.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah on November 07, 2017

This is the kind of book I really love and, in fact, this was one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. However, the author's attitude was a big turn off for me. In several cases throughout the book, Chrisman discusses some of the negative attention they receive for living an out-o......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on February 09, 2016

I loved the history, but couldn't get past the precious writing style.......more

Goodreads review by Sharon on May 13, 2017

It’s all too easy to romanticize the past, and that is exactly what Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman make their life doing. To say the least, they have an unconventional lifestyle. They live like Victorians, abandoning modern comforts and conveniences for antiquated technology. Sarah documents this living......more

Goodreads review by Steven on May 30, 2016

I first became interested in reading this book while I was researching books about living in Victorian New England. I found a clip online of a modern man looking like a Victorian man jumping on the back of a two-wheeled Victorian bicycle and then sort of leap-frogging to the top of the gigantic fron......more

Goodreads review by Em on December 01, 2023

In some ways this was a fairly enjoyable read, with some interesting insights, but overall the author's attitude ruined it for me. I liked the discussions on using various household items and the insight into aspects of daily life in the 19th C. I thought that it was well-researched and the idea of......more