Books That Can Help You Be a Victorian
As the author of the Dr. William Scarlet Mystery Series, I’m interested in all things Victorian. In fact, I enjoy spending time there, as often as I can!
Wrapping yourself in the events and social milieu of another historical period is a great form of escapism. That’s especially true if you can find writers, in both fiction and nonfiction, who are skilled at bringing that era to life. If the Victorian period (1837-1901), is your preferred form of time travel, you’re in luck. The literature of the period is plentiful, and much of it is beautifully written. There’s also the advantage that modern authors and historians continue to find the era fascinating.
But if you want to be a Victorian (as in setting a series of novels in the period), then you have to take a slightly different approach. I wanted my Scotland Yard surgeon and psychic, Dr. William Scarlet, his sidekick medium Django Pierce-Jones, and everyone else who populates my novels to be as realistic as possible. It helps that I lived in London while attending one of the acting academies there. But of course it wasn’t in the nineteenth century!
I needed material to get me up to speed, then. In addition to reading and re-reading some of the great literature and history of the period, I wanted guidebooks that would allow my characters to act, look, react, and sound like they were authentic inhabitants of the period. Here are five books that helped enormously:
A Dictionary of Victorian London: An A-Z of the Great Metropolis, by Lee Jackson (London: Anthem Press, 2010). A delightfully arbitrary smorgasbord of life in Queen Victoria’s London. Looking for statistics on female convicts in Brixton Prison? You’ll find them here. (Out of 664 prisoners, by the way, only 16 claimed they were innocent!)
The Chronicles of Crime, or The New Newgate Calendar, vols. 1 and 2, by Camden Pelham (London: Thoms Tegg, 1841). Here is true crime at its contemporary best (or worst). Why wouldn’t it be, since this is (to quote the subtitle): A Series of Memoirs and Anecdotes of Notorious Characters Who Have Outraged the Laws of Great Britain from the Earliest Period to the Present Time? Get ready to hang out with coiners, extortioners, forgers, footpads, highwaymen, impostors, murderers, pirates, pickpockets, sharpers, and many, many more. I own an original set of the two volumes.
A Dictionary of Victorian Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, From the Underworld and Elsewhere, by John Camden Hotten (Owlfoot Press, 2017). From Abraham-Men (them that have beene mad, and bene kept in Bethelem) to “Zounds!” (an expression, often found in English drama, meaning “God’s wounds”), you’ll find it here. Believe me, read this little book and you’ll know what’s o’clock.
A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England, by Michelle Higgs (Pen & Sword Books, 2021). Victorian London comes to life in this social history of the period. How else will you know how to find the best seat on an omnibus, or protect yourself from a “lady wire” (that’s a female pickpocket to you twenty-first century types)?
How To Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life, by Ruth Goodman (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2014). The best book I found on “becoming Victorian.” As a New York Times review stated, “If you want to know how Victorians looked, sounded, felt, and smelled,” this is the book for you. Goodman is a social historian and consultant for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum who actually lives the daily life of the period she is studying as an experiment. So, before you’re ready to “step forward into the nineteenth century,” be sure to make her acquaintance.
Ready for some supernatural suspense? Follow Dr. Scarlet and Django Pierce-Jones in all their investigations! You’ll find all of the books in the Dr. William Scarlet Mystery Series at www.garygenard.com.
Click on the image below to get your signed copy of The Master of Illusion, Book #3 in the Dr. William Scarlet Mystery Series!
