Restoration London : from poverty to pets, from medicine to magic, from slang to sex, from wallpaper to women's rights / Liza Picard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Picard, Liza, 1927-2022.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

London (England)--History--17th century.

London (England).

Great Britain--History--Restoration, 1660-1688.

Great Britain.

History.

Physical Description:

xxi, 330 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Summary:

Liza Picard presents a picture of everyday life in seventeenth-century London in this remarkably thorough and informative book -- a must-have for the readers of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

Making use of every possible contemporary source -- diaries, almanacs, newspapers, advice books, government papers, even the Register of Patents -- Liza Picard presents a picture of daily life in seventeenth-century London: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and jewelry, cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, education, hobbies and etiquette; law and crime, religion and popular beliefs.

We see a great and prosperous capital city -- in the known world only Paris and Constantinople were bigger -- checked in mid-decade by the horrors of plague and fire. We watch its elegant rebuilding. We enjoy the changing fashions of clothes and decor; the pleasures of gardening; the revival of theater; the craft of cabinet-making and the art of embroidery; the practice of music and dancing. We are shown the importance of astrology in medical care; the labor of housework and laundry; the hazards of sex; and the extremes of poverty and wealth. We hear the words Londoners used, and examine the education they received.

Notes:

Originally published: London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-318) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0312186592

OCLC:

38478528