Death in the Victorian Family

This enthralling book explores the experience of dying, death, grieving, and mourning in the years between 1830-1920. 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 Christianculture. Drawing upon the private correspondence, diaries and death memorial of fifty-five middle and upper class families, Pat Jalland shows us how dying, death and grieving were experience 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.

Pat Jalland is Associate Professor of History at Murdoch University, WA. From 27 January 1997 she will be Professor of History at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University. Her books include Women, Marriage, and Politics 1860-1914, which won the non-fiction prize in the 1987 Western Australia Week Literary Awards.