Ruth Goodman is a rare person. She has not just researched the Victorian era, she has lived it. She has sewn its clothes, lived its conditions and done its work. Yes, she has washed floors in an ...

Brush your teeth with soot, stay away from water, wear a steel corset. We’ll talk with the author of “How to Be A Victorian.” Strange ways from another age. Frederick Daniel Hardy's "Baby's Birthday" ...

British social historian Goodman reveals what life was like in the Victorian era in a manner most readers have likely never encountered before: by personally subscribing to Victorian mores and way of ...

Victorian society was full of jobs that feel unbelievable today, yet they were once essential parts of daily life. From rat catchers scrambling through alleyways to pure finders collecting bizarre ...

Remember that old saying about not knowing a person until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes? Author Ruth Goodman has done that and then some. She’s walked in the shoes, corsets, dresses and nightgowns ...

Sarah A. Chrisman has never had a cell phone or a driver’s license. She uses an ice box instead of a refrigerator, bakes her own bread, sews all of her own clothes by hand and washes them with either ...

The crowning jewel of Cape May is the Emlen Physick Estate. This Victorian mansion is more than just gorgeous, ornate and historical -- it started a movement. When it was nearly demolished in the late ...

Sarah Chrisman would have us believe that life in Victorian times was better. Whose, life, exactly? Not women's. (Strohmeyer & Wyman/ Library of Congress, flickr) A couple years ago, my family and I ...

It is hardly news to say that, in his famous opening lines for A Tale of Two Cities – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” – Charles Dickens was remarkably prescient about how his ...