| Description |
xii, 464 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. The Evangelical Ideal of the 'Good Death' -- 2. The Revival and Decline of the Good Christian Death --3. Bad Deaths, Sudden Deaths, and Suicides -- 4. Death and the Victorian Doctors -- 5. Nurses, Consultants, and Terminal Prognoses -- 6. 'That Little Company of Angels': The Tragedies of Children's Deaths -- 7. Death in Old Age -- 8. In Search of the Good Death: Death in the Gladstone and Lyttelton Families 1835-1915 -- 9. Funeral Reform and the Cremation Debate -- 10. The Funeral Week -- 11. Widows: Gendered Experiences of Widowhood -- 12. Widowers: Gendered Experiences of Widowhood -- 13. Christian Consolations and Heavenly Reunions -- 14. The Consolations of Memory -- 15. Rituals of Sorrow: Mourning-Dress and Condolence Letters -- 16. Chronic and Abnormal Grief: Queen Victoria, Lady Frederick Cavendish, and Emma Haden -- 17. 'A Solitude beyond the Reach of God or Man': Victorian Agnostics and Death |
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18. Epilogue. After the Victorians: Social Memory, Spiritualism, and the Great War |
| Summary |
"This engrossing book explores family experiences of dying, death, grieving, and mourning between 1830 and 1920. Victorian letters and diaries reveal a deep preoccupation with death because of a shorter life expectancy, a high death rate for infants and children, and a dominant Christian culture. Using the private correspondence, diaries, and death memorials of fifty-five middle and upper class families, Pat Jalland shows us how dying, death, and grieving were experienced by Victorian families, and how the manner and rituals of death and mourning varied with age, gender, disease, religious belief, family size, and class. She examines deathbed scenes, good and bad deaths, funerals and cremations, mourning rituals, widowhood, and the roles of religion and medicine." "Chapters on the deaths of children and old people demonstrate the importance of the stages of the life-cycle, as well as the failure of many actual deathbeds to achieve the Christian ideal of the good death. The consolations of Christian faith and private memory, and the transformation in the ideas and beliefs about heaven, hell, and immortality are analysed. The rise and decline of Evangelicalism, the influence of unbelief and secularism, falling mortality, and the trauma of the Great War are all key motors of change in this period."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Includes index. Bibliography: p. 382-441 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 382-441) and index |
| Notes |
Donation. ANU COOP 20120212 Brissenden collection, ANU Library |
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Signed by author 1 copy. ANU |
| Subject |
Bereavement -- Great Britain.
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Death -- Social aspects -- Great Britain.
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Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Grief.
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Mourning customs -- Great Britain.
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Attitude to Death.
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Funeral Rites -- history.
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Bereavement.
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History, 19th Century.
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History, 20th Century.
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| SUBJECT |
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85056952
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Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85056953
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England. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D004739 |
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United Kingdom. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D006113 |
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England. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D004739 |
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United Kingdom. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D006113 |
| LC no. |
96002389 |
| ISBN |
0198201885 |
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0198208324 (paperback) |
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