AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Nineteenth-century British History; Home; Death in the Victorian era
COURSES TAUGHT
At Home with the Victorians
BIO
Vicky Holmes joined Notre Dame London in 2022. Following a career in the public sector, she returned to the University of Essex to undertake a PhD on the topic of accidental deaths in coroners’ inquests. After her PhD, she has focused on using coroners’ inquests to examine ‘life’ rather than death in working-class homes. Her first book, In Bed with the Victorians: The Life-Cycle of Working-Class Marriage (2017), illustrates how we can understand gender and working-class married life through the most essential of objects: the bed. While more recently, her (co-edited) collection The Working Class at Home, 1790-1940 (2022) presents critical new understandings of the spaces inhabited by the working class over the long nineteenth century. Her second monograph, Living with Lodgers (forthcoming, Manchester University Press), traverses those Victorian homes accommodating lodgers.
SELECT WORKS
The Working Class at Home, 1790-1940 (2022)
In Bed With The Victorians: The Life-Cycle of Working-Class Marriage (2017)