Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. We usually visit a minimum of five times. This year our visits were curtailed because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began.
Nevertheless, we did find many books to add to our collection. These are six of the books my husband found. As you can see from this list, he enjoys reading about social history.
My husband purchased the following three books about daily life in various historical periods in England. The author is Elizabeth Burton. The three books were published between 1958 and 1972, and all of them have lovely illustrations by Felix Kelly. In the 1940s she published 6 novels as Susan Alice Kerby. Wikipedia describes them as comic fantasy novels.
The Elizabethans at Home by Elizabeth Burton.
First published in 1958. This edition is a reprint from 1970.
From the dust jacket:
In this reissue of Miss Burton's highly praised and highly successful domestic history of the Elizabethans, she draws most entertainingly on a wealth of contemporary sources. How did the Elizabethans really live? What was ordinary existence like for the Elizabethan man and woman? What sort of furniture did they use? What were their staple diets? What sort of remedies did they keep in their medicine chests? How did they get their news? What games did they play? These and other questions are answered in this fascinating account which is illuminated by the superb drawings of Felix Kelly.
The Georgians at Home by Elizabeth Burton
Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1967.
From the dust jacket:
In The Georgians at Home, she covers the period from the accession of George the First to the death of George the Fourth, and from a mass of sources, many of them unpublished, she presents a fascinating and remarkably complete picture of Georgian domestic life in all its detail.
She is as interested in the chattels and hovels of the poor as she is in the architecture, gardens, furniture and interior decoration of the great houses built by Kent, Gibbs, Adam, Holland, Nash, Soane and others of a glorious age. Cooking and food; glass, china and utensils; the relative cost of living; the bizarre and often horrifying medical remedies of doctors and quacks, the use of cosmetics; travel, transport and amusements–from Elizabeth Burton's meticulous research into such minutiae a whole way of life emerges.
The Early Victorians at Home by Elizabeth Burton
Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1972.
From the dust jacket:
The Early Victorians at Home gives a wonderfully detailed account of the domestic lives of our ancestors–their houses, furniture, food, medicine, recreations, gardens–with numerous sidelights on the minutiae of every day life at all levels of society.
The Last Country Houses by Charles Aslet
From the Goodreads description:
The magnificent country houses built in Britain between 1890 and 1939 were the last monuments to a vanishing age. Many of these great mammoths of domestic architecture were unsuited to the changes in economic and social priorities that followed the two world wars, and rapidly became extinct. Those that survive, however, provide tangible evidence of the life and death if an extraordinarily prosperous age. This book recounts the architectural and social history of this era, describing the clients, the architects, the styles and accoutrements of the country houses.
Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom
From the Goodreads description:
Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and “frost fairs” were erected on a frozen Thames–with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.
Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A timely examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.
McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories by Michael Chabon (editor), Mike Mignola (Illustrator)
From the Goodreads description:
Michael Chabon is back with a brand-new collection that reinvigorates the stay-up-all-night, edge-of-the seat, fingernail-biting, page-turning tradition of literary short stories, featuring Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Peter Straub, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Heidi Julavits, Roddy Doyle, and more!
A complete list of the authors and their stories:
- Margaret Atwood - Lusus Naturae
- David Mitchell - What You Do Not Know You Want
- Jonathan Lethem - Vivian Relf
- Ayelet Waldman - Minnow
- Steve Erickson - Zeroville
- Stephen King - Lisey and the Madman
- Jason Roberts - 7C
- Heidi Julavits - The Miniaturist
- Roddy Doyle - The Child
- Daniel Handler - Delmonico
- Charles D’Ambrosio - The Scheme of Things
- Poppy Z. Brite - The Devil of Delery Street
- China Mieville - Reports of Certain Events in London
- Joyce Carol Oates - The Fabled Light-house at Viña del Mar
- Peter Straub - Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle
