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Sebastian Ritscher
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UNMENTIONABLE

Therese Oneill

The Victorian Lady's Guide To Sex, Marriage & Manners

A guide to almost everything a modern woman needs to know to navigate this simpler time among genteel society. Readers will learn how to smear white lead over their body to cover freckles, and how to face the horrors of one's wedding night. Most importantly, this book will explain the logic behind these bizarre behaviors. Our great-great grandmothers were not idiots. This is a book about the complex nature of everyday female life in the 19th century.
Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era? Welcome to the 19thcentury, where there’s arsenic in your face cream, cocaine wine in your pantry (to help with “nerves”), and all of your underwear is crotchless.

In the spirit of "Texts from Jane Eyre" and Schott’s "Miscellany", UNMENTIONABLE is your guide to the secrets of life as a Victorian lady, giving detailed advice on everything from how much laughter is permitted a lady on the street (none), how to please your husband (stop talking) to what to wear (whalebone corsets, crinoline cages, and crotchless pantalettes – for quick bathroom access under all that hardware!), to managing your monthly “unwellness” (imagine crocheting your own maxi-pads!).

This is laugh-out-loud funny, naughty, and the historical details are fascinating.

Jane Austen fans will love it, and it’s the perfect holiday gift for women of all ages.

In her first book, Therese ONeill expands the success of her laugh-out-loud history pieces written for The Atlantic, Mental Floss, The Week, and Jezebel to a full-length adventure through the underbelly of Victorian femininity. Learn the mystery of the two-seater outhouse. Explore the different methods to ensure male offspring. Understand precisely why it's your own fault if your husband brings home syphilis. And most importantly, come away with an astonishing new appreciation of the fortitude of our great-grandmothers.
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Book

Published 2016-11-01 by Little Brown

Book

Published 2016-11-01 by Little Brown

Comments

This book will banish your silly romantic notions of life in the nineteenth century and make you laugh out loud while doing it.

Flat-out hysterical (and occasionally alarming)...Read it and be very, very glad you're a woman of modern times.

'Unmentionable' Tells The Disgusting Truth About Life In The Victorian Era Read more...

It's hard to imagine a woman - or a teenage girl - who won't love this book.

If you've ever felt like you should have been born in another time, Unmentionable will disabuse you of that sensibility, and it will do so charmingly.

If Unmentionable does not secure the Pulitzer Prize for Most Fascinating Book Ever, the whole gig is rigged. Hilarious, horrifying, shocking and revelatory.

Salon talks to author Therese Oneill about "Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners. Read more...

There's perhaps never been a better time to snicker a little at what's come before us. Read more...

Hysterically funny and unsettlingly fascinating. This book is full of awesome.

Unmentionable transports us back to the world of middle-class 19th-century women, with special emphasis on the messy details that costume dramas airbrush out. . . . With a 4-year-old's scatological glee, Oneill details the logistics of old-time peeing, pooping, gestating, menstruating and mating . . . Oneill has dug up some lovely tidbits from the dustbin of history.