The Victorian celebration of death / James Stevens Curl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Curl, James Stevens, 1937-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tombs--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Tombs.

Cemeteries--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Cemeteries.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

History.

Sepulchral monuments.

Great Britain.

Sepulchral monuments--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Funeral rites and ceremonies--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

xxi, 330 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Stroud : Sutton, 2000.

Summary:

In this beautifully illustrated and well-researched book Professor Curl has rescued much fascinating material from undeserved oblivion, and his work fills a genuine gap. From humble working-class exequies to the massive outpourings of grief at the State funerals of Wellington and Queen Victoria herself, The Victorian Celebration of Death covers an immense canvas. It describes the change in sensibility that led to a new tenderness towards the dead; disposal of the dead as part of the great sanitary reforms of the epoch (though given appropriate expression in cemeteries as works of art); the history of the urban cemeteries with their architecture and landscapes; the ephemera of death and dying (including wreaths, mourning-cards and -jewellery, elaborate hearses crowned with ostrich-feather plumes, mourning-dress, and much else); State funerals as national spectacles; and the utilitarian reactions towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Combining wit with compassion, Curl wears his learning lightly, and his taste for the eerie is delicately balanced by his literary personality. His researches have resurrected many valuable and extremely interesting aspects of nineteenth-century attitudes to death and the disposal of the dead; furthermore, his celebrations of the cemetery in terms of aesthetics and landscape design strike a thrilling note, an outpouring of the great black cornucopia of Victorian agony and the terrific paraphernalia of the Last Act. Curl's achievement is as well-ordered as any sumptuous funeral, and is lucid as well as entertaining, with many surprises and associated delights. He proceeds from the elegiac garden (an antidote to the gruesome horrors of overcrowded, smelly and insanitary graveyards) to the Elysian Fields of the ideal cemetery, and then on to cremation, with scarcely a jolt. His robustly argued and beautifully written reportage makes his unique and elegant book an agreeable companion to the noneternal bedside.

Contents:

The Victorian Age

1 The Genesis of Victorian Attitudes to Death 1

Introduction: the 'Graveyard Poets'

The Essence of Night Thoughts

The International Significance of Night Thoughts

Narcissa's Burial

The Arcadian Landscape and the Tomb

Ermenonville and Burial in Gardens

The Cemetery Emerges

The Indian Influence

Some Early Cemeteries

2 The First Great Private Cemeteries in Britain 37

Early Nineteenth-Century Provision for Burial in Britain

Liverpool

Carden and London

Glasgow

The General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green

3 The Garden-Cemetery Flourishes 69

Introduction: the first American 'Rural' Cemetery

Progeny

More London Cemeteries

Highgate and Nunhead

Brompton Cemetery

Some Contemporary British Provincial Cemeteries

Abney Park Cemetery: the Congregationalists' Valhalla and Educational Arboretum

4 Crisis, Uncertainty, and Change 109

High-Density Burial

Agitation and Controversy: 'Graveyard' Walker and his Colleagues

Thomas Southwood Smith and Edwin Chadwick

A Supplementary Report on the Results of a Special Inquiry into the Practice of Interment in Towns and its Aftermath

Loudon, The Builder, More Agitation, and Counter-Attack

Cemeteries in the Late 1840s

Further Legislation

5 More Private and a Selection of Public Cemeteries 140

The Eclipse of Chadwick

The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company

Other Cemeteries Served by Train

Public Cemeteries in London

Public Cemeteries Outside London

Other Cemeteries

6 The Rise of Cremation 176

Introduction: the Closing and Clearing of Burial-Grounds

The Cremation Movement

William Robinson

The Design of Crematoria

7 Funerals, Ephemera, and Mourning 194

Mourning and Ephemera

Funerals

State Funerals

8 Royal Funerals 222

The Death of the Prince Consort

The Funeral and Entombment of Albert, Prince Consort

Memorials to the Prince Consort

Other Royal Funerals

9 The End of the Victorian Era 249

The Funeral of the Queen-Empress

A Retrospect.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0750923180

OCLC:

59573543