Death and the Victorians, Adrian Mackinder
Death and the Victorians, Adrian Mackinder
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Death and the Victorians
A Dark Fascination

Author: Adrian Mackinder

Narrator: Adrian Mackinder

Unabridged: 7 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 02/05/2025


Synopsis

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death - and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age.
Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for the truth about what lies beyond our mortal realm was matched only by the imagination and invention used to find it.
Walk among London’s festering graveyards, where the dead were literally rising from the grave. Visit the Paris Morgue, where thousands flocked to view the spectacle of death every single day.
Lift the veil on how spirits were invited into the home, secret societies taught ways to survive death, and the latest science and technology was applied to provide proof of the afterlife.
Find out why the Victorian era is considered the golden age of the ghost story, exemplified by tales from the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde and Henry James.
Discover how the birth of the popular press nurtured our taste for murder and that Jack the Ripper was actually a work of pure Gothic horror fiction crafted by cynical Victorian newspapermen.
Death and the Victorians exposes the darker side of the nineteenth century, a time when the living were inventing incredible ways to connect with the dead that endure to this day.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Janelle on February 26, 2024

Death and the Victorians is an entertaining and interesting read. It covers a wide range of topics including cemeteries, the occult and spiritualism, photography(eg. posing the dead in photos), ghost stories, the rise of sensationalist newspapers and penny dreadfuls, and of course Jack the Ripper. M......more

Goodreads review by Katy on November 20, 2023

Hundreds of years ago, at university, I did a course on Death and Mourning in Victorian Literature. I've been obsessed ever since. Give me an opportunity to talk about the overcrowding of graveyards in Victorian London and I'm there for twenty minutes minimum. This tapped right into my interests. I......more

Goodreads review by Kitty Pollock on February 02, 2024

I really enjoyed this book but have the mark in down due to the tangents the author goes on. There are part of the book that are connected to death and the victorians but pages where dedicated to but other parts that where summed up in a paragraph or two but should have been more explored. Regardles......more

Goodreads review by Janalyn, the blind reviewer on December 01, 2023

Death And The Victorians by Adrian Mackinder is a well written book on the practices of burying their dead during the Victorian age. This book is so good from how they started cremating their dead to having better burying practices from what they did with their deceased battle victims to strange dis......more

Goodreads review by Elisa on November 18, 2023

This book is insanely entertaining, informative and well researched. I’ve always felt a strange fascination with Victorian times, so this read was like a time machine that allowed me to look at the people who lived those lives. The author makes a good case for the way Victoriana has influenced us th......more