Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City

Rating:
Summary: Peter Bailey's fiasco
Review: Book of semi-historical signifance. Normal everyday reader will find book boring and "long" winded. Good primary sources but not a book with a "bite." No new information given to change this person's mind about the Victorian Era in England. Bailey's thesis is lost in the mire of words.

Rating:
Summary: Peter Bailey's fiasco
Review: Book of semi-historical signifance. Normal everyday reader will find book boring and "long" winded. Good primary sources but not a book with a "bite." No new information given to change this person's mind about the Victorian Era in England. Bailey's thesis is lost in the mire of words.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Educational
Review: I find Bailey's work/words a relieving breath of fresh air in a discipline not usually known for its energy and entertainment. Bailey manages to break free of the conventional style of historical writers by focusing truly on the cultural feel of the period. As a history graduate student I have read my fair share of other's accounts, but you know from the first chapter of this book that you will not grow weary, you will be entertained with Bailey's subtle wit, and you will indeed learn much about the period in the process. I am reading it a second time now, grabbing the delicacies that I overlooked in the first read. In a field that often leaves your mouth caked, we either need more writers like Bailey, or Bailey needs to write more books.