Victorian Days

Like others of you perhaps, I take a break now and then from my frequent pattern of reading, which is nonfiction and often history, and strike out elsewhere with a spate of new books. This time it is the often ornate language of novels from the Victorian period, mostly American and British of the time or thereabouts, although yes even one short Russian novel. And, I have to fess up and say that the books were all purchased. Don’t tell my Library friends, but seven paperbacks from the Dover Thrift Editions at a total cost of about $25 just made that too convenient. This is how the on-line Encyclopedia Britannica describes the Victorian era: “in British history, the period between approximately 1820 and 1914, corresponding roughly but not exactly to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign …