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Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain

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Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Paperback)

by Judith Flanders (Author)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: HarperPerennial (1 Oct 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0007172966
ISBN-13: 978-0007172962
Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 4.2 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 85,683 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

'Flanders writes with absorbing detail and elegant analysis.' Sunday Times 'Judith Flanders's wonderfully entertaining book!a vigorously written, fact--filled cornucopia!it has nuggets of interest on every page.' Sunday Telegraph 'Flanders's book is suitably fat and fact-packed!this is a generous survey of a world that is both far stranger and far more familiar than the one we think we know.' Daily Telegraph '"Consuming Passions" tells the story of Victorian leisure and pleasure as an interrelated and intricate set of transformations!a fascinating, bewildering, marvel-crammed quest.' Guardian 'It is a world explored with much wit and insight!Flanders is excellent!It's a rich mix [and]!fluently written!It has every chance of becoming a bestseller.' Sunday Telegraph '!her book, which is about the ways our forebears enjoyed themselves, is itself pure pleasure from beginning to end! [Flanders] is encyclopaedic in her range!This book is packed with goodies as a rich Victorian Dundee cake. Seldom has painstaking academic research been put to better use to produce a work which is pure joy. Every page crammed with interest.' Daily Mail 'Formidable![an] excellent study!a major achievement.' Observer 'If there's a better social history this year, then I will eat my crinoline.'Sue Baker, Publishing News 'Bulging bran-tub of a book, wonderfully rich and hugely enjoyable!There is something dizzily acrobatic about the mountains of evidence she constructs, and she produces her punch lines with a conjuror's panache.' The Sunday Times 'Flanders is engagingly precise.' FT Magazine 'A fascinating, kaleidoscopic exploration of what Victorians did for fun.' thelondonpaper 'Deeply satisfying!Bursting with original research and statistics, it gives a panoramic view of Victorians at play.' Country Life 'I don't think anybody could read this book without learning something new and finding things of interest. Flanders has an eye for piquant details.' Spectator '"Consuming Passions" is an absorbing Gladstone bag of a book, from which curious items spill out in delightful profusion, some familiar, some very strange indeed.' Literary Review 'Full of fascinating nuggets, this book puts our modern obsession with buying stuff firmly into context. Reverting and revealing.' Time Out

Sunday Telegraph

'Judith Flanders's wonderfully entertaining book...a vigorously written, fact-filled cornucopia...it has nuggets of interest on every page.'

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	76% buy the item featured on this page: Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain 3.7 out of 5 stars (3) �7.52
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Customer Reviews

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3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference book, 16 Oct 2006

By	M. Styles (Northumberland UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Hardcover)

Ms Flanders has created an excellent reference for anyone interested in the social history of the 18th and 19th cnetury. In this book she charts the rise of consumerism.
It provides insight into diverse subjects as circulating libraries, the growth of the shop, music broadsheets, art, excursions, football and the theatre. Its main failing is that its index is simply not up to the job. I have often had to try to remember where I read a particular bit about Assembly Rooms, or railways - -this can be slightly annoying. The bibliography is excellent.
But the criticism is minor compared to the wealth of information Ms Flanders provides.
Anyone who is interested in the period, and in particular any historical novelist of the period should have this book on their shelves for easy reference.

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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been so much better..., 14 Oct 2006

By	Will Stevens "Will" (Carlisle, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Hardcover)

This is a fascinating, but frustrating, book. Clearly, Judith Flanders has done an enormous amount of research and is extremely knowledgeable. However, she seems to have followed her nose and researched just those matters which were of interest to her. Take sport, for example: she presents a great deal of interesting information about the early history of football and of bicycling, but she has scarcely a word to say about cricket, or boxing, or tennis, or fox hunting or shooting in Victorian Britain. Likewise, although the title of the book refers to Victorian Britain, large parts of it deal with the 18th century, and the first 37 years of the 19th century before Queen Victoria came to the throne.

The impression that you get reading the book is that Judith Flanders made enormous numbers of notes, then, without reviewing the material critically or discarding anything, rough sorted them by topic, and then sat down to write. For the reader, the result is like wandering through thick woodland, coming across remarkable trees and delightful open spaces, but without the least idea of where you're going, or what's going to happen next.

This makes it a good book to pick up and open at random, but attempting to read it from end to end is a deeply frustrating experience.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful treasure-trove of information, 17 Nov 2008

By	J. Goddard "Jim Goddard" (Shipley) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Hardcover)

This is an excellent compendium of information about the early development of consumerism in the UK. Whilst the criticisms of the other reviewers have some point, the book is bigger than its shortcomings. Its overall effect is to give one a new sense of just how novel our current conusumerist lifestyles are. In other words, consumerism is a modern, manufactured phenomenon. For my part, reading the book means that I will never see mass culture in quite the same way again. Even though Flanders is concerned to tell a story rather than to interpret it, the reader need not be so restricted. I found it immensely thought-provoking and well worth reading.

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