How to be a Victorian

What did it really mean to be Victorian? Living through a time of such economic, cultural and technological change was exciting, but it also came with many challenges, as Jamie Kamplin explores in his most recent book, Being Victorian. In this episode, Isabel King spoke to Jamie about this great era of innovation and how it continues to affect us today. So, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, and we're here to talk about your book, Being Victorian. Your book covers the entire Victorian period, but it focuses a lot on the decades following 1850.

What made this a watershed moment within the era? Well, first of all, delighted to be with you. I I'd like to start off with a very simple point. If we want to get into the heads of people who were living in 1850, It's very important to focus on a simple thing.

They had their present and they had some knowledge of their past. What they didn't know anything about was the future, though they could make decisions which would affect that future, but they didn't know anything about it. So when we're trying to evaluate what changed in Victorian times, and even more if we want to consider whether that was a change for the better or not, We need to keep coming back to that simple constraint. They were living in a present and they had some knowledge of the past, and that was their reference point.

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