Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet
Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong. That we have persistently misrepresented their culture, perhaps to make ourselves feel more satisfyingly liberal and sophisticated. What if they were much more fun that we ever suspected? As Matthew Sweet shows us in this brilliant study, many of the concepts that strike us as terrifically new - political spin-doctoring, extravagant publicity stunts, hardcore pornography, anxieties about the impact of popular culture upon children - are Victorian inventions. Most of the pleasures that we imagine to be our own, the Victorians enjoyed first: the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the amusement arcade, the crime novel and the sensational newspaper report. They were engaged in a well-nigh continuous search for bigger and better thrills. If Queen Victoria wasn't amused, then she was in a very small minority . . .
Matthew Sweet has been film critic for the Independent on Sunday, a columnist for The Big Issue and a director's assistant at the RSC. He has co-authored the FilmFour Film Guide, contributed to the Oxford Companion to English Literature, and has edited an edition of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White for Penguin Classics
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780571206582 |
| ISBN 10 | 0571206581 |
| Title | Inventing the Victorians |
| Author | Matthew Sweet |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber |
| Year published | 2005-02-24 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |