Dr Johnson's London by Liza Picard
Sep. 9th, 2006 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Using contemporary sources of every kind, Liza Picard describes the practical realities of everyday life that are so often ignored in the history books.
Houses, gardens, transport and traffic; occupations and work, pleasure and amusements; health, medicine and hospitals; sex and food, clothes and fashion; education, manners and etiquette; crime and punishment.
While recording the strangeness and individuality of the past, this book also continually reminds us of parallels with the present.
This is a fascinating and well-researched book that gives you interesting snippets about how life was lived between 1740 and 1770. Particularly interesting is her use of first hand accounts of daily life in the time, told by foreign visitors, who must have viewed the customs as strangely as we do looking back. My main criticism is that the subject matter is perhaps too broad, which means that Picard barely scratches the surface of some of the most interesting topics - transport, the lives of the wealthy, shopping etc - but her book is good enough to encourage the reader to conduct their own research into these areas.
The Verdict:
Absorbing and fascinating by turns, this is a good read for anyone interested in history without being overly academic.
Using contemporary sources of every kind, Liza Picard describes the practical realities of everyday life that are so often ignored in the history books.
Houses, gardens, transport and traffic; occupations and work, pleasure and amusements; health, medicine and hospitals; sex and food, clothes and fashion; education, manners and etiquette; crime and punishment.
While recording the strangeness and individuality of the past, this book also continually reminds us of parallels with the present.
This is a fascinating and well-researched book that gives you interesting snippets about how life was lived between 1740 and 1770. Particularly interesting is her use of first hand accounts of daily life in the time, told by foreign visitors, who must have viewed the customs as strangely as we do looking back. My main criticism is that the subject matter is perhaps too broad, which means that Picard barely scratches the surface of some of the most interesting topics - transport, the lives of the wealthy, shopping etc - but her book is good enough to encourage the reader to conduct their own research into these areas.
The Verdict:
Absorbing and fascinating by turns, this is a good read for anyone interested in history without being overly academic.
