100 books like The Corset

I adore immersive, hands-on history. Gordan took me on an intimate, hour-by-hour tour of a Victorian day, from the morning wash routine to the five-minute hair-brushing ritual at bedtime. She tested the power of the natural bristle brush; I’ll take it on faith that one can go weeks without shampooing.

Ever wonder how Victorians cleaned their teeth before Colgate? Coal soot is the surprising answer.  From what they ate to how they dressed, worked, and played, Gordon charts differences across social classes and down the century. 

The author’s unusual lens made this a captivating history. Murphy examines Victoria’s reign through the multiple attempts on the queen’s life. While the title isn’t entirely accurate (one would-be assassin used a walking stick rather than a gun), Murphy makes a persuasive case for the monarchy’s “rebirth.”

Defying death helped the queen survive some rough patches in her reign. Through eight attempts to kill her, the queen modeled “keep calm and carry on” in the best British tradition, and the public adored her pluck. After the final gunman failed to murder the queen, the aging Victoria said, “It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved.”

This superb biography is an engrossing account of the mysterious title surgeon and the doctor’s fascinating world. James Miranda Barry joined the British Army in 1813 as a regimental surgeon and served in colonial posts for the next fifty years. But Barry had been born Margaret Bulkley, an anatomical female—a surprise revealed after the doctor’s death.

Was Barry’s masquerade strategic, the doctor’s only route to a medical career? Was Barry a transgender person? I wondered if the “truth” would remain a mystery. Rachel Holmes persuaded me that the probable answer lies in a document “gathering dust” in Edinburgh’s medical school archives, a revelation she saves for the last chapter. 

This delightful book erases the stiff, sepia portraits of a bygone age, painting the Victorian world in living color. It shreds the era’s image as fun-challenged. The Victorians knew how to have a rollicking good time, inventing popular entertainment on a commercial scale.

In two generations, theatrical performances, professional sporting events, and seaside holidays were accessible to the masses. Jackson traces the social and economic transformations that made it possible.

Nobody tops Loretta Chase when it comes to writing a woman on a mission. Leonie Noirot comes from a long line of swindlers and con artists, but her business sense at fashion is no fake. When she runs up against a man who thinks he can both outsmart her and humble her, just because he’s a wealthy marquess, well… he’s in for a revelation. Leonie’s determined to win their bet and make her own fortune, and then fall in love. Simply marvelous.

I do love a novel with history and objects at the core and The Corset adds an extra layer of spine tingling to the mix as well.

Ruth is a poorly paid seamstress, awaiting trial for murder. She is visited by the well-to-do Dorothea who wants to hear her story. The object, the corset, lies at the heart of Ruth’s tale and every stitch that she made in the creation of high-end pieces for her mistress begins to carry a greater significance.

In a world of fast fashion I have become increasingly fascinated by the handmade, the art of the needle, and the skill of the maker and here it has a slightly sinister facet to it.

Gilder’s memoir of growing up in the 1860s as a boyish girl will seem remarkably contemporary to those who equate nineteenth-century girls and women with corsets and overly important etiquette. Gilder writes about baseball, pranks, and various attempts to look like a boy, confirming an instinctual tomboy identity even at a time when females could not legally wear pants.

I was a teenager the first time I picked up this book. Romance novels weren’t my thing, and considering this one was heavily marketed as such, I nearly overlooked it. But once I got past the swooning, steamy promotional packaging, I realized there was quite more to it. In some ways it planted the seed in my younger self for the storyteller I would eventually become. It tells the story of a woman who has lost hope for her mess of a life, only to be given the rare opportunity to experience past-life-regression and alternate versions of herself in several previous lifetimes. Readers are swept through the centuries in richly told settings as we watch her experience the loves, losses, and lessons that have all led to the circumstances of her current, present-day life. 

This is book 1 in the Regency Imposters series. The heroine has masqueraded as a male for 6 years, assuming her late husband’s identity. She’s actually a nonbinary character, which makes this a unique aspect of this book. The hero, while the perfect example of high society, is also open-minded in terms of sexuality, which gave this book a refreshing perspective. I’m glad to see today’s authors include more diverse characters. I think they make the stories more realistic.

This is one of the first books that I remember buying for myself in graduate school. Cullwick’s descriptions of her relationship with upper-class Arthur Munby (whom she eventually married) and the photographs of her dressed as a maid-of-all-work, a lady, a “slave,” an agricultural worker, and a valet highlight Victorian power negotiations and performativity.

Cullwick started working as a servant at the age of eight. From her diaries, I learned much about the daily lives of domestic servants: their relationships with employers, the different levels of service and employment networks, and the sheer amount of hard, physical labor that it took to run a Victorian household.