Elizabeth's London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London

Summary (from the publisher): This picture of the London of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) is the result of Liza Picard's curiosity about the practical details of daily life that almost every history book ignores. As seen in her two previous, highly acclaimed books-Restoration London and Dr. Johnson's London-she has immersed herself in contemporary sources of every kind. She begins with the River Thames, the lifeblood of Elizabethan London. The city, on the north bank of the river, was still largely confined within old Roman walls. Upriver at Westminster were the royal palaces, and between them and the crowded city the mansions of the great and the good commanded the river frontage. She shows us the interior décor of the rich and the not-so-rich, and what they were likely to be growing in their gardens. Then the Londoners of the time take the stage, in all their amazing finery. Plague, small-pox, and other diseases afflicted them. But food and drink, sex and marriage and family life provided comfort, a good education was always useful, and cares could be forgotten in a playhouse or the bear-baiting rings, or watching a good cockfight. Liza Picard's wonderfully skillful and vivid evocation of the London of four hundred years ago enables us to share the delights, as well as the horrors, of the everyday lives of sixteenth century Britain.

Review: This interesting history book sheds life on daily life in London as it might have been during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to her death in 1603. Each chapter focuses on a different area of interest, covering such topics as the River Thames, water and sewer, buildings and furnishings, gardens, health, clothes, diet, family life, education, entertainment, crime, the welfare system, and religion. Pulling from a vast range of sources, Picard gives an insightful image of what life was like for those living in London over four hundred years ago. 

Rather than a dry textbook, this book is composed of brief chapters which give illuminating detail without bogging the reader down with excessive descriptions. Despite having read numerous historical fictions, histories, and biographies that focus on the time period, I learned a great deal about the practicalities of life in this book that I have never heard of before.  For instance, I had never thought about the logistical issue of the need for water in the home before indoor plumbing and thought it was interesting to learn that waterbearers walked around selling water, the price of which likely varied based on whether "they had simply filled their water-vessels from the river or taken the purer water dispensed by a conduit" (38). Similarly, the popular ruff collar style of the period was not always white, even though that is how it has been preserved in popular culture. Another interesting tidbit was that on average, couples had far fewer children during this time period that families did during the later Victorian period. 

This book is written in a relatively casual, conversational style and the author is clear when she isn't sure about how something worked in practice. Given that the details of ordinary life are only rarely captured in print of the time, it was little wonder that there were a few holes in the author's knowledge. The sources and examples did lean heavily on the lives of the wealthy and royalty of the time, which isn't necessarily indicative of 'everyday life' but on the other hand, those are the accounts that were preserved in writing and they still reveal many clues about ordinary life. I did have a difficult time initially getting into this book, as the early chapters are on slightly dryer subjects (layout of the city, the path of the river) compared to later chapters but it was well worth pressing onwards. Overall, I found this book extremely interesting and a fast read. 

Stars: 4