This Victorian Life

A unique memoir about a modern couple living the lifestyle of another era—and what it teaches them about history and human nature.

We all know that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to a country where it's spoken, but can the same immersion method be applied to history? How do interactions with antique objects influence perceptions of the modern world?

From Victorian beauty regimens to nineteenth-century bicycles, custard recipes to taxidermy experiments, oil lamps to an ice box, Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman decided to explore nineteenth-century culture and technologies from the inside out. Even the deepest aspects of their lives became affected, and the more immersed they became in the late Victorian era, the more aware they grew of its legacies permeating the twenty-first century.

Most of us have dreamed of time travel, but what if that dream could come true? In her first book, Victorian Secrets, Sarah Chrisman recalled a year she spent wearing a Victorian corset 24/7. In This Victorian Life, she documents her complete shift into living as though she were in the nineteenth century.

"Fascinating reflections on how each Victorian object shapes understandings of everyday life." —Jeanne E. Arnold, lead author, Life at Home in the Twenty-first Century