Annie D (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scaramouche) wrote2025-12-17 11:11 am
scaramouche) wrote2025-12-17 11:11 am
Book Log: Elizabeth's London
I needed a palate cleanser of something light after my last two reads, so from the back of my unread drawer came out Liza Picard's Elizabeth's London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London. My Tudor-reading phase was a while back so the book's high page count was a bit tiring, but I did enjoy revisiting the era.
The book itself is a mix about the place that is London (in modern terms, the city of London and a bit of Greater London) with all its buildings, streets, river traffic and resources, and its people with all their habits, occupations, clothes, food, medical options, social obligations and so on. The description of various familiar areas and what they used to be like (all those open fields!) is fun for navigating by the mind's eye, and of the details of people I think for me the most interesting was their dietary habits, where they ate more different things than you'd think and also in the Elizabethan era there was a push to eat more fish, and no longer because of the old religion but in order to support the local fishing industry. Also, about how apprenticeships work, that's almost your whole life! And the systemic discrimination of outsiders in order to protect local businesses. If you're writing fiction set in the era, it's such a useful resource, as it's both useful and readable, and Picard's few editorializing choices are thoughtful (IMO).
On a meta level, I was curious about some of Picard's comments and assumptions on what was common knowledge, so I looked her up and she was 76 when she published this book in 2003! She passed away a few years ago, but she was born in 1927, which totally explains some of her comments like:
I had no idea what she was talking about and had to search "coke hod", then "coke hod kitchen", then coke "hod" kitchen before finding what she meant, i.e. coal hods. Though this would also be a regional thing as much as an age thing.
The book itself is a mix about the place that is London (in modern terms, the city of London and a bit of Greater London) with all its buildings, streets, river traffic and resources, and its people with all their habits, occupations, clothes, food, medical options, social obligations and so on. The description of various familiar areas and what they used to be like (all those open fields!) is fun for navigating by the mind's eye, and of the details of people I think for me the most interesting was their dietary habits, where they ate more different things than you'd think and also in the Elizabethan era there was a push to eat more fish, and no longer because of the old religion but in order to support the local fishing industry. Also, about how apprenticeships work, that's almost your whole life! And the systemic discrimination of outsiders in order to protect local businesses. If you're writing fiction set in the era, it's such a useful resource, as it's both useful and readable, and Picard's few editorializing choices are thoughtful (IMO).
On a meta level, I was curious about some of Picard's comments and assumptions on what was common knowledge, so I looked her up and she was 76 when she published this book in 2003! She passed away a few years ago, but she was born in 1927, which totally explains some of her comments like:
[The Waterbearers' Company] members walked the streets of London with tall conical containers on their backs holding about three gallons -- exactly the shape of an old-fashioned coke hod, for anyone who remembers coke-burning domestic stoves.
I had no idea what she was talking about and had to search "coke hod", then "coke hod kitchen", then coke "hod" kitchen before finding what she meant, i.e. coal hods. Though this would also be a regional thing as much as an age thing.
