Rites of Passage
29 February 2024Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
'Nobody knows more about everyday life in Victorian Britain than Judith Flanders' - Douglas Robert-Fairhurst, author of Metamorphosis and The Turning Point
In Rites of Passage, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders deconstructs the intricate, fascinating, and occasionally – to modern eyes – bizarre customs that grew up around death and mourning in Victorian Britain.
Through stories from the sickbed to the deathbed, from...
Details
29 February 2024352 pages
9781509816972Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Nobody knows more about everyday life in Victorian Britain than Judith Flanders, and in Rites of Passage she offers a compelling and often darkly comic history of the period’s fascination with death.Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces and The Turning Point, A Year That Changed Dickens and the World
Flanders writes with sharp intelligence and first-class scholarly attention to detail . . . and rather relishes the swirling gothic atmosphere of her subject, which takes in everything from bodysnatching to suicide, capital punishment to cremationThe Telegraph
The socio-economics of death in the long 19th century proves gruesomely fascinating and Flanders is a skilful marshaller of details to prove i . . . A gifted social historianFinancial Times
Flanders never forgets the human aspect of the Victorians as she richly documents their varied ways of coping with death.Literary Review
