THE VICTORIAN CELEBRATION OF DEATH by James Stevens Curl ( 9780750938730 )

Item Details

Title:

THE VICTORIAN CELEBRATION OF DEATH

By:

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£12.99
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ISBN 10:

0750938730

ISBN 13:

9780750938730

Publisher:

THE HISTORY PRESS LTD

Pub. date:

1 September, 2004

Pages:

352

Description:

From humble working-class exequies to the massive outpouring of grief at the State funerals of Wellington and Queen Victoria, this study describes the change in sensibility that led to a new tenderness towards the dead; the history of the urban cemetery; the ephemera of death and dying; and utilitarian reactions towards the end of the 19th century.

Synopsis:

In this beautifully illustrated and well-researched book Professor Curl has rescued much fascinating material from undeserved oblivion, and his work fills a genuine gap. From humble working-class exequies to the massive outpouringof grief at the State funerals of Wellington and Queen Victoria herself, The Victorian Celebration of Death covers an immense canvas. It describes the change in sensibility that led to a new tenderness towards the dead; the history of the urban cemeteries with their architecture and landscapes; the ephemera of death and dying; State funerals as national spectacles; and the utilitarian reactions towards the end of the nineteenth century. Combining wit with compassion, Curl wears his learning lightly, and his taste for the eerie is delicately balanced by this literary personality. He has resurrected many valuable and extremely interesting aspects of nineteenth-century attidues to death and the disposal of the dead; Curl's achievement is as well-ordered as any sumptuous funeral, and is lucid as well as entertaining, with many surprises and assiciated delights. He proceeds from the elegiac garden to the Elysian fields of the ideal cemetery, and then on to crem

Illustrations:

100 illustrations

Publication:

Imprint:

Sutton Publishing Ltd

Returns:

Returnable

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CLASSICAL CHURCHES IN ULSTER (PB)