She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist – I helped her lace them up – but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said...

In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the...

The Victorian era was perhaps the last point in Western history when magic and science were allowed to coexist.

Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going “to...

Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing:...

The Victorians lost a few workers in everything they built, rather like a votive offering.

You have a spine of steel and fire in your eyes, Rosalie. To have such a quality, one must be shaken to the foundation of one’s soul and put back together. I want to know...

The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health,...

It was the dog Abel, who – as animals have been reported to do – had made his way over all England’s hills and rivers, to return to that home where he was first kindly...

Don’t forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session...

Thinking back on the outing to the theatre, she added, ‘I want a man, not a preening peacock!

Erano morbide e piene, le labbra di James. Sapevano di un che di dolciastro, che ben si sposava con il sapore salato delle labbra di Sebastian, rese tali dalle lacrime che non aveva saputo trattenere...

You make me burn with life, and yearn to set aside my cold and distant, solitary ways.

Sebastian non aveva mai incontrato anima viva in quel luogo che sembrava essere dimenticato da tutto e da tutti, ogni volta che si era recato ad ammirare il salto nel vuoto compiuto dal fiume ogni...

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully.

I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within.

But she had learnt, in those solemn hours of thought, that she herself must one day answer for her own life, and what she had done with it; and she tried to settle that most...