Praise for Consuming Passions: '"Consuming Passions" tells the story of Victorian leisure and pleasure as an interrelated and intricate set of transformations!no single book could bind so complex and vast a field within a single theory!(it) leads its crocodile of readers on an eccentric, meandering path through the question of how Victorians took pleasure!its pursuit proves a fascinating, bewildering, marvel-crammed quest.' Guardian 'It is a world explored with much wit and insight!Flanders is excellent!It's a rich mix [and]!fluently written!It has every chance of becoming a bestseller.' Sunday Telegraph 'Formidable![an] excellent study!a major achievement.' Observer

Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling 'The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed' (2003) and 'Consuming Passions' (2006), as well as the critically acclaimed 'A Circle of Sisters' (2001) -- a biography of Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynder and Louisa Baldwin -- which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. She is a frequent contributor to the 'Daily Telegraph', the 'Guardian', the 'Evening Standard', and the 'Times Literary Supplement'. She lives in London.