Life as a Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn

I purchased Life as a Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn at the Victoria and Albert Museum book shop, and have found this small 89 page book to be full of delightful information. It can be read in one sitting and is useful for a quick reference. Here are some snippets:

"Presentation at Court took place at one of the official drawing rooms, presided over by Queen Victoria. Without this, declared Etiquette for Ladies (1900), "a girl has no recognised position..." p 25

"These casual methods on the part of the mistresses encouraged petty theft, with provisions such as tea and sugar, which were not likely to be missed, secretly passed on to friends and relatives. Buyers of kitchen waste would also contact cooks, offering to buy on liberal terms their perquisites of drippings and other fat." p 50

"Affluent gentlewomen, such as the widowed Emily Meynell Ingram of Temple Newsam Yorkshire, might own a yacht. For eleven years from 1886 she and a few friends spent tow or three months twice a year cruising in the Mediterranean during the spring and in Scandinavia or the Baltic during the summer. They commemorated the journeys with witty poems, watercolours and photographs inserted in the yacht's log books." p 80

Sutton Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7509--4607-0
Image from: Free Clip Art