The Victorian Celebration of Death

Curl traces the effects of the urbanisation and industrialization of Great Britain and its effect on public health and the funeral industry which was then in its infancy. He explores all aspects of the subject, beginning with Victorian attitudes to death in poetry and literature, then continues on to the more practical aspects, some of which are disturbingly unsavoury. Abuses, overcrowded churchyards, epidemics and concerns over public health are covered, as are the specialized parliamentary reports of the time and new legislation of the great Victorian cemeteries which are still with us today.

No subject is too small for his attention, from the landscaping of the new garden cemeteries to the ephemera surrounding the funeral itself, mourning, jewellery, funeral carriges and of course, the opulently staged funerals of the rich. There is a chapter dedicated to the funerals of royalty which culminates in that of Queen Victoria herself.

The text is interspersed and copiously illustrated with black and white photographs of elegant funeral memorials and romantically melancoly cemeteries.

The text is scholarly, well ordered and comprehensive without being dry, it is extremely readable, with copious notes and a biography for those wanting references for further study.

This book is THE definitive guide to this subject and absolutely invaluable to anyone studying the Victorian era, both for private or academic study.

Personally, I feel it would have been advantageous to have a few coloured illustations but this is a minor criticism.

James Stevens Curl has also written various books including "A Celebration of Death- An Introduction to some of the Buildings, Monuments, and Settings of Funerary Architecture in the Western European Tradition", "The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture" and "Victorian Churches" and various journal articles.


Brilliant study of a fascinating subject   April 27, 2007
S. Bailey (London)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

It is almost impossible to imagine how this book could have been improved upon; for anyone in any way interested in the attitude of the British to our dead, and in the development of British cemeteries, this has to be the definitive work.

By the early nineteenth century, disposing of the dead in Britain had come to crisis point. Increased urbanisation, ever-present disease and the limited amount of consecrated land had led to vastly overcrowded churchyards, burial grounds and private chapels, the dead left to rot at the surface or dug up again and burned to make room for the next paying customer.

Curl traces how the remedy for these horrors was found in a pastoralisation and celebration of death, from the gothic imaginings of seventeenth century poets like Robert Blair and Edward Young, inspired by the great necropoleis of Europe and India, and finally put into a practical form by pioneers like J C Loudon. He catalogues the spectacular cemeteries opened for the rich of the big cities, and the rather later and more meagre facilities made available for the disposal of the poor.

This is history written with a very human face. Unlike many of their contemporary, middle-class philanthropists, Curl whole-heartedly supports the right of the Victorian lower classes to emulate their social superiors and abrogate to themselves in death a dignity they never found in life. His attention to detail in unparalleled in any book on this subject I have read, as is his breadth of knowledge and obvious love for his subject.

This covers the development of the private cemeteries, the final push in the mid-nineteenth century for state intervention in burial practises, and the decline of cemeteries and increase in the number of those cremated. Two state funerals, those of the Duke of Wellington and of Queen Victoria herself, are followed in detail. Curl invokes an vast range of evidence to follow the change in attitude to death during this period, from something both hideous and expensive, to a necessity which could be made quite beautiful, and then to the beginnings of our own extreme antipathy to what must come to us all.

Back up Curl's work with a vast number of illustrations, many of them previously unpublished and from his own collection, and a compellingly vast bibilography, and we have a book that cannot be faulted.



Great for research!   January 15, 2002
Donna Marie Valenzano (Auburndale, NY United States)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful

I was researching for an article with a magazine and found this book most helpful in that endeavor. A must for anyone who is interested in the subject!


Death..............   October 3, 2009
Critical Eye (UK)
Good book, very detailed about Victorian view and ritual of death. Well worth the price if you are reseaching the subject or just havd a curious fascination about death in a bygone era.