Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum

A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians, author of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton and George Eliot: The Last Victorian.Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left?Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors?Who knew Queen Victoria had a personal hygiene problem as a young woman and the crisis that followed led to a hurried commitment to marry Albert?What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the mos…