Book Reviewage
Dec. 28th, 2003 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroAt last! These aren't going to be as long or as articulate as I would have liked, but they'll have to do.
1. Children of the Dark: Life and Death Underground in Victoria's England by Alan Gallop.
Given the title, I had to buy this. But seriously, history of the working poor in the Victorian era is on of my major interests. It's about children working in coal mines, specifically in the South Yorkshire village of Silkstone (just outside Barnsley). There was a disaster there in July 1838 in which 26 children (and no adults) were killed when a freak storm flooded the mine shaft, which received good publicity and was partly responsible for the Royal Commission enquiring into the question of children in mines (earlier acts regulating the employment of children in factories did not apply to mining).
That life was grim for coal miners, adult and child, didn't come as news, but I had been ignorant of just how unhealthy it was. Coal may have powered the industrial revolution, but mining coal was still a pre-industrial operation at this time. The many ways in which the mine owners ripped off the workers are astounding. Attempts by the mine owners and "establishment" figures to assert that mining was good for children and families are amusing in a perverse way, and not as obviously false as we see, because the outside world literally had no idea how these people lived, and were more likely to accept the opinions of educated people. Books like this are why I have nothing but contempt for goths who wish they'd been born in the 18th century.
The part that I found particularly of interest was the evidence that the coal miners were almost completely ignorant of Christianity - though this may have been emphasized by those agitating for reform, because in Victorian society a class of people who didn't know about religion would have been seen as a far worse thing than the physical conditions and dangers. As an ex-medievalist, I've heard various arguments for how much the average medieval peasant understood about Christianity, and every one of them argues for a far greater understanding than is demonstrated in this book. Certainly in the Early Modern period a good understanding of religion was extremely widespread. It's an interesting question how this decline came about.
It's a fairly short book and aimed at the general reader. The author makes use of a re-creation of the life of one of the families who lost children in the disaster, which is less annoying than it could have been. I think it was well worth the effort.
2. Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict
Moving on to fiction, I picked this one up in a charity shop some time ago for bus reading. The author is a native of West Virginia who went to Princeton, and this book is clearly an attempt to be some sort of latter-day Faulkner.
Mostly, he succeeds. It's about a bunch of misfits and losers in a lawless backwoods county in West Virginia. The plot line is clearer than in most of Faulkner, and the prose throughout is lovely. The Civil War graveyard is amazing.
I thoroughly recommend this one as well.
I've read other books lately, but nothing really worth writing up. I've said in comments on other peoples' journals that Eco's Baudolino is good fun, and for the Phillip Pullman fans out there, Lyra's Oxford is beautifully presented, a nice story, and fun, but I'd be seriously peeved if I'd paid full price for it.
1. Children of the Dark: Life and Death Underground in Victoria's England by Alan Gallop.
Given the title, I had to buy this. But seriously, history of the working poor in the Victorian era is on of my major interests. It's about children working in coal mines, specifically in the South Yorkshire village of Silkstone (just outside Barnsley). There was a disaster there in July 1838 in which 26 children (and no adults) were killed when a freak storm flooded the mine shaft, which received good publicity and was partly responsible for the Royal Commission enquiring into the question of children in mines (earlier acts regulating the employment of children in factories did not apply to mining).
That life was grim for coal miners, adult and child, didn't come as news, but I had been ignorant of just how unhealthy it was. Coal may have powered the industrial revolution, but mining coal was still a pre-industrial operation at this time. The many ways in which the mine owners ripped off the workers are astounding. Attempts by the mine owners and "establishment" figures to assert that mining was good for children and families are amusing in a perverse way, and not as obviously false as we see, because the outside world literally had no idea how these people lived, and were more likely to accept the opinions of educated people. Books like this are why I have nothing but contempt for goths who wish they'd been born in the 18th century.
The part that I found particularly of interest was the evidence that the coal miners were almost completely ignorant of Christianity - though this may have been emphasized by those agitating for reform, because in Victorian society a class of people who didn't know about religion would have been seen as a far worse thing than the physical conditions and dangers. As an ex-medievalist, I've heard various arguments for how much the average medieval peasant understood about Christianity, and every one of them argues for a far greater understanding than is demonstrated in this book. Certainly in the Early Modern period a good understanding of religion was extremely widespread. It's an interesting question how this decline came about.
It's a fairly short book and aimed at the general reader. The author makes use of a re-creation of the life of one of the families who lost children in the disaster, which is less annoying than it could have been. I think it was well worth the effort.
2. Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict
Moving on to fiction, I picked this one up in a charity shop some time ago for bus reading. The author is a native of West Virginia who went to Princeton, and this book is clearly an attempt to be some sort of latter-day Faulkner.
Mostly, he succeeds. It's about a bunch of misfits and losers in a lawless backwoods county in West Virginia. The plot line is clearer than in most of Faulkner, and the prose throughout is lovely. The Civil War graveyard is amazing.
I thoroughly recommend this one as well.
I've read other books lately, but nothing really worth writing up. I've said in comments on other peoples' journals that Eco's Baudolino is good fun, and for the Phillip Pullman fans out there, Lyra's Oxford is beautifully presented, a nice story, and fun, but I'd be seriously peeved if I'd paid full price for it.
