Daniel Pool. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox-hunting to Whist—The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. Print.

This is a book for anyone who likes 19th century literature or the BBC/PBS shows based on them. It might be considered a book of trivia, except that it explains things that would not need explaining to the English people who first read the works when they came out.

The author writes in an engaging manner which keeps the subject matter from becoming dry. In doing so, What Jane Austen Ate covers most of society and culture in the 19th century. It includes things like coinage and the church calendar, aristocratic titles and social status. finances and government, country houses and city houses, transportation, sports, fashion, and institutions of all kinds. It has a little on the militia but otherwise not much on the military, and while it briefly explains most card games, you would have to go to Hoyle’s to get the actual rules.

The book reminds us that the England of 1800 was quite different from that of 1900, but we can see how it changed—the laws, the technology, even the culture. We learn, for example, that between 1750 and 1850 there were 380 known cases of men auctioning their wives like Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge. When we are told that Wickham and Lydia Bennet went north when they eloped, we understand a couple of things better after reading this book. Until 1823 no one could marry without parental consent in England before they were twenty-one. So they eloped. The laws in Scotland concerning marriage were more lenient because the state church was different, so English elopers would cross the border into Scotland. The town of Gretna Green right on the border was the Las Vegas of its day. Finally in 1856 Scotland required a three week residency, which slowed things down but still made it simpler than the south of the island.

Pool does a decent job of explaining inheritance laws and primogeniture. Heathcliff’s machinations to gain control of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange begin to make sense. Indeed Pool even explains what a grange is and how that differs from a hall, manor, or park.

The author cites many Victorian works and is clearly familiar with many of the authors besides Austen and Dickens: He cites the Brontës (all three sisters), Hardy, Henry James, Charles Kingsley, George Eliot (though I could not find George Meredith), Thackeray, Wilde, and especially Trollope. He also cites a few poets like Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, and most of the “major” romantics.

As you read, many different things will “click.” One that did for me helped me see things better in a French play from the 1890s. Pool explains the hierarchy among the various people who sell goods and services on the streets. Orange sellers, who were usually women, were considered socially lower than most “costermongers” because they kept no inventory but simply resold fruits they purchased in bulk. That heightens Cyrano de Bergerac’s chivalrous treatment of the orange seller at the theater in Act 1 of the play. And what skills governesses like Jane Eyre were expected to possess. And why Magwitch was shivering when Pip first met him. And it is significant that Miss Havisham uses wax candles rather than oil lamps or tallow candles. Or why the daughter of a brewer like Miss Havisham would have a reasonably high social status. And from Castle Rackrent to Portrait of a Lady, why titled aristocrats would often look for rich heiresses to marry.

About a third of the book is a glossary to explain all kinds of terms including coins, legal terms, labels of tradespeople, articles of clothing, wheeled transportation, and many other things. There are enough pictures to amplify some of the descriptions as well. For example, the text describes an epergne, but I still had a pretty vague idea until I turned to the glossary which not only defined the term more directly but also had a picture of one. Anyone who teaches English Romantic or Victorian literature, especially the novels, should have access to this book.

The clothes people wore, the social and artistic events they attended, the transportation they use, the names and titles they possess, the types and number of servants they have, how much money they are worth—all these things were important to the English. At times such a society sounds stifling, but then I think of what America is like today. It is not all that different, and members of America’s ruling class still do their best to stifle whatever does not appeal to their prejudices.