Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Beyond the Veil: The Victorian Obsession with Death and Mourning

Beyond the Veil: The Victorian Obsession with Death and Mourning

Gambino, Paul

Hardcover

General European HistoryGeneral World HistoryBritish History

Publisher Price: $29.00

ISBN10: 1836004222
ISBN13: 9781836004226
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Published: Sep 16 2025
Pages: 208
Weight: 1.58
Height: 0.98 Width: 6.99 Depth: 9.06
Language: English

Beyond the Veil is a visual tour through the curious history of how we deal with death--the grief and mourning, the funerals, symbols, and ceremonies.

From Victorian England across to the US, learn about the often peculiar and at times macabre ways of how the living memorialize the dead.

Humans have always had ways of marking death, but in Victorian England death became a morbid obsession that went global--death was as much 'celebrated' as it was a source of fear and sadness. Queen Victoria herself became a figurehead of grief after the death of her beloved Prince Albert in 1861. Her ensuing fascination with death took many visual forms--from her ritualized embrace of black clothing to the building of ostentatious monuments--and massively influenced cultural norms in both the UK and further afield.

The Victorians built complex cemeteries, collected precious memento mori, commissioned bizarre death portraits, and obsessed over the correct mourning attire and funerary protocol, while turn-of-the century America saw reflections of many of these cultural phenomena. The bestsellers of the period were often about life and death (think Frankenstein and Dracula), while the art, architecture, and style--with its often dark and heavy gothic overtones--revelled in the glamorization of death. Beyond the Veil brings this extraordinarily elaborate and stylised visual culture together while expertly explaining and elaborating on its most peculiar and fascinating aspects.

For example, it explores:

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