Rites of Passage
27 February 2025Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
'There is no aspect of Victorian death that does not make it into Judith Flanders’s latest investigation into 19th-century life' - The Sunday Times
'Flanders writes with sharp intelligence and first-class scholarly attention to detail' - The Telegraph
In Rites of Passage, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders deconstructs the intricate, fascinating, and occasionally – to modern eyes – bizarre customs that grew up...
Details
27 February 2025352 pages
9781509817511Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Nobody knows more about everyday life in Victorian Britain than Judith Flanders, and in Rites of Passage she offers a compelling and often darkly comic history of the period’s fascination with death.Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces and The Turning Point, A Year That Changed Dickens and the World
Flanders writes with sharp intelligence and first-class scholarly attention to detail . . . and rather relishes the swirling gothic atmosphere of her subject, which takes in everything from bodysnatching to suicide, capital punishment to cremationThe Telegraph
The socio-economics of death in the long 19th century proves gruesomely fascinating and Flanders is a skilful marshaller of details to prove it . . . A gifted social historianFinancial Times
Flanders never forgets the human aspect of the Victorians as she richly documents their varied ways of coping with death.Literary Review
