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5. Sally Mitchell: ''Daily Life in Victorian England'' – This book is a quick primer on social history in Victorian England. It deals mostly with the rise of the middle class, which is a very important part of nineteenth-century history. Great for a quick overview of Victorian social history.
6. Alex Owen: ''The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England'' – While this book deals with a specific subject matter, it is a wonderful introduction to the little-explored life of women during the Victorian period. It In zeroing in on spiritualism as a mechanism by which women subverted traditional gender relations, Owen also examines the role of gender relations during this era in a more general sense.
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7. Lytton Strachey: ''Eminent Victorians'' – This work, first published in 1918, was one of the first biographies to ''not '' examine great men who did great things. It Strachey's style helped replace a certain reverence that Victorians usually had for famous figures with a healthy skepticism of their these figures' actions. Strachey examines his subject’s subjects' great deeds alongside their faults, all the while displaying a great witand undeniable readability.
8. Richard Ellmann: ''Oscar Wilde'' – With a subject like Oscar Wilde, a biographer would be hard-pressed to not render his subject engrossing. This is the definitive biography of Wilde; it brilliantly juxtaposes Wilde’s eccentricities against straight-laced Victorian society.
