Reading Ruth Goodman’s “How to Be a Victorian”

  • Post category:History
  • Reading time:4 mins read

Ruth Goodman is one of my favourite historians. I’ve watched several of her shows and have seen her as a guest on other history programs, and am always impressed by how she tries to live as period-authentic as she can during a project. I don’t have that much commitment to anything!

I’ve recently finished her book How to be a Victorian, which I was very excited about. If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know that my favourite part of history are the smaller, everyday moments of regular people – and that’s kind of Ruth’s whole thing. This quote from the book is a prime example of why I love her – when talking about dry rubbing instead of washing, she writes:

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Secret Lives of Great Authors

  • Post category:History
  • Reading time:2 mins read

Note: This post originally appeared on Wordscience, a now defunct writing-focused blog of mine, on March 15, 2009. I was recently flipping through that blog’s archives and came across this post, which I thought would be neat to share here too. I've recently shared another post from that blog, "Weather, history,…

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Ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, York

  • Post category:Places
  • Reading time:2 mins read

In 2010 I visited York, England. I'd always wanted to go there, primarily because I was excited about all the historical sights in the town. My site's header comes from that trip - it's a small bit of what remains of St Mary's Abbey, a Benedictine abbey established in 1088.…

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