What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool is an utterly delightful book and a mine of information on everyday life in 19th century England. Are you unsure if your hero Viscount X goes into dinner before or after the Duke of Y? The answer is here. Does he lose a fortune at Faro but you don’t know what the heck Faro was? Mr. Pool can tell you. From the recipe for White Soup at the Netherfield ball to the etiquette of preceding a lady upstairs (but following her downstairs) there is a wealth of period detail for your novel.

For quick reference the book is divided into sections such as: The Public World which covers How to Address Your Betters, Society and “The Season”, Basic Etiquette, The Rules of Whist and Other Card Games, etc.; The Private World covers Sex, Furniture, The Governess (cross referenced with Sex perhaps?), Servants, Tea etc.; The Grim World is all about The Orphan, Apprentices, The Workhouse and Disease.

For further research Mr. Pool obligingly provides a bibliography which is almost as useful as the book itself.

His points are all illustrated with excerpts from Austen, George Eliot, The Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray and other Victorian authors.

This is not a new book and it may be that many of my fellow writers already know and use it. Even so, it cannot hurt to recommend this invaluable resource to new writers and readers.

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England