A review by archivesgeek
Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum by Kathryn Hughes

5.0

What a fascinating read! I highly recommend this book to any lover of history. Through meticulous research, Hughes tells the stories of Victorian era historical figures through the lens of their bodies. As an archivist and a historian, I so rarely think about the role a person's body played in historical events. Hughes's book is a reminder to us all that our physical self influences the events that play out around us. As she writes early in the book "...the body, no matter how we might like to imagine it as a safe haven from the messy contingency of history, is deeply implicated in it."