1. They didn’t die young. People lived to an average age of just 40 in 19th-century England, but that number is deceiving. Certainly, infants and children died of disease, malnutrition and mishaps at much higher rates than they do today. But if a girl managed to survive to ...read more

1. Brook Farm (1841-1846): The Transcendentalist Romance The philosophical movement known as Transcendentalist was in full swing when Unitarian minister George Ripley founded Brook Farm in the rural Boston suburb of West Roxbury in 1841. The community wasn’t particularly unique ...read more

1. Take a bath every day. If you had asked any fashionable young Englishman (or lady, for that matter) of the early 19th century whether they bathed every day, they would have given you an astonished reply in the affirmative. But in truth, they probably only meant that they ...read more