The Domestic Revolution: How Coal Transformed Victorian Households

Linda: I first borrowed this on Kindle Unlimited after family members enthused about it. I zipped through it as fast as I would a novel. I'm bemused by the review who thought it read like a textbook because it's It's fascinating, well researched and written with a light and lively hand, despite the depth of Ms Goodman's scholarship. I've now ordered a hard copy for my bookshelf. Highly recommended.

United Kingdom on Aug 22, 2023

Millicent K Chaplinski: Amazing detailed information about life in this age. Recommend.

United States on May 16, 2023

cat: Sehr lehrreich, verständlich und auch humorvoll. Wie alle ihre Bücher ist auch dieses ein Muss will man Alltagsleben der "unteren" Schichten verstehen lernen.

Germany on Nov 27, 2022

Marisa: Molto interessante. Ho potuto capire ed approfondire tutta una serie di conoscenze che mi erano rimaste un po' criptiche!

Italy on Nov 20, 2022

John E. Dunlap: Most of us realize how large an impact coal had on the industrial revolution. Indeed, factories and locomotives would not have been possible without coal. However, few people realize the impact coal had on the life of every day citizens or the landscape. Due to the fact that trees will grow back once cut down, forest were protected and abundant even adjacent to urban centers. Once the use of coal became dominant, the need to protect forests vanished. Burning coal in a home was more difficult and much less clean than wood burning stoves.

United States on Nov 02, 2022

Kindle Customer: Ruth is a historian who dives deep into history to emerge as a person with practical experience to combine with education. This book is essential to anyone who needs to know about Britain's history from Elizabethan to our modern age.

United States on Oct 29, 2022

Jeanajoan: My interest was what the title suggested: how coal affected housekeeping and cooking. The first half of the book is mostly about fuels before coal and how coal came to dominate England. All worthy info, but the domestic info starts well past that, about p137. The author accurately explains how England’s wimpy cuisine into the early 20th century can be blamed on coal!

United States on Jul 24, 2022

B. S. Buss: This is an extremely well researched and written book, and an a very entertaining read. How the domestic sphere indeed changes the world is alarming overlooked in the way history is undertaken and taught, and should become part of the curriculum of the Western world. This includes important lessons for our future with regard to energy consumption! The work of diligent and insightful researchers like Ruth Goodman is key in promoting such a perspective. Highly recommended read!

Germany on Jul 22, 2022

BGH Kindle: It was a book full of details describing the life of British households during transition from wood to coal. The part of the book dealing with the domestic life is fascinating. The part of the book where the author tries to make the wood to coal transition into the major driving force of change for the rest of world is much less so.
The author is an expert in the area of domestic life in the XV to XIX century England. As long as the topic is domestic life the book is choke full of captivating details. Unfortunately, sometimes these descriptions are too detailed and one would like to speed up the narrative. By the middle of the book, these details became so detailed that I had to read it in short burst: the narrative is very slow.
A good quarter of the book is devoted to an attempt to relate transition from wood to coal burning to the evolution of society at large. These are not the best chapters of the book. They are somewhat preachy and Great-Britain-centric. The thesis that change in domestic fuel consumption changed the world culture is not completely unreasonable but it requires a bit more justification to be accepted; something that the author hints at but does not...

United States on Jun 04, 2022

ABmonkey: The Domestic Revolution by historian Ruth Goodman is an interesting insight into how coal, and later soaps changed Britain, and the Empire. Everyone has heard of the Industrial Revolution, but in many ways the changing habits of how humans burned fuel for warmth, food-making and the domestic domain was more significant, if less well known.

For thousands of years humans have burned wood, peat, or variations thereof in the home – cooking and keeping warm. This practice shaped the landscape – wood was used everywhere – fuel, building, weapons, war, ships, homes etc. Land was managed, farmed, coppiced and the industries around this were important. Many folks did not travel far, and so utilised what was around them. Certain foods and ways of cooking do not manage on wood or peat, and others do not manage well on coal.

Ms Goodman describes cooking on wood, peat, dung and charcoal, how it was sourced and the foods which worked best. Cleaning was done, largely with wood ash, lime and various other intriguing ways. Ash doesn’t work on coal dirt and so hot water became the norm, and new vessels for boiling, new detergents and new roles.

Then came coal – which...

United Kingdom on Nov 19, 2020