Period Piece (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) | 
| Author: Gwen Raverat
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 238468
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 290
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0472064754
Dewey Decimal Number: 769.92
EAN: 9780472064755
ASIN: 0472064754
Publication Date: December 1, 1991
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Excellent customer service. Order inquiries handled promptly.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Memories of a turn-of-the-century childhood by the granddaughter of Charles Darwin
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| Customer Reviews:
 The writer makes the reader feel superior July 13, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Four or five anecdotes save Gwen Raverat's "Period Piece" from being so sweet it gives you tummy ache. It is no surprise that this charming memoir has remained in print for nearly 60 years. It has the "Upstairs" cachet, relieved by the Whiggery of Raverat's family -- she was the daughter of Charles Darwin -- which fits comfortably with both American and English tastes now.
Raverat was born in 1885 and her childhood ended about the same time the Boer War did, so there are plenty of horses, tea parties, country house theatricals and such to appeal to the romantics. Socially, the Darwins were middle class except for the snobbery and religion. Gwen's mother excepted, who was the type of ignorant American puritan who made H.L. Mencken's fortune.
Thus, the aunts went in for prudishness (especially in front of the servants) and silly dress codes, which Raverat can play against, giving the important sense of superiority that appeals to secret snobs.
In his memoirs of English society, a generation later, Peter Medawar alleged that Americans were wrong to imagine that P.G. Wodehouse country life really existed. But it did. There are no Georgian silver cow creamers in "Period Piece," but Raverat's aunts were every bit as dotty as Bertie Wooster's.
For me the most memorable episode, because like the book as a whole it captures the confusion of childhood so well, was Raverat's understanding of J.M.W. Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire." She and her cousins thought the little black tugboat was the Temeraire.
Raverat led a sheltered childhood and young ladyhood, but on occasion the grim features of the Victorian/Wilhelminian era intruded. It is these -- brutality to a peasant servant in Hamburg, animal torture in Cambridge, the lower depths of drunkenness in the alleys around the Slade School -- that raise "Period Piece" from idle gossip to seriousness.
The book is illustrated with Raverat's line drawings, very much in the style of the slighter travel books of her time. They are not charming.
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a wonderful window into an amazing family December 19, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Darwin fanatics and Jane Austen fans will gobble up this delicious dessert. Written by Darwin's grandaughter (Raverat was George's daughter born too late to know her illustrious grandfather personally)PERIOD PIECE contains both a wealth of Family Stories that helps humanize the usual image of the Great Victorian Sage and some real (although often tongue-in-cheek) insights into Late-Victorian/Edwardian Society. As Raverat says in the Preface, the book doesn't really have a beginning or an end, it is easily dipped-in-to at any point & you will have to be totally lacking in a sense of humor not to come away both charmed & informed.
Treat yourself July 27, 2001
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
An absolute masterpiece of comic writing. Ms. Raverat drawings mesh perfectly with her loving, but not pious, treatment of her eccentric aunts and uncles. A deft ironist, a great memoir of late 19th century Cambridge. I promise you will force this book on everyone you love and they will thank you for it.
All this and the Darwins too October 22, 2000
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a really lovely book, perfect for reading at bedtime or in the garden under the apple tree on a summer's afternoon. Gwen Raverat writes vividly with chapters by theme rather than chronologically and and gives a rounded view of her childhood experiences and the Darwin family of uncles and aunts.
Terrific, funny stuff with the flavor of another society. September 12, 1996
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Wood-cut artist Gwen Raverat was associated with the Bloomsbury group, and grew up with the Keynes children in nineteenth-century Cambridge.Here, she tells the story of growing up amid the fads and fetishes not only of academic and Victorian England, but of her extremely individual family, children and grandchildren of Charles Darwin.Raverat's wood-cut illustrations are as illuminating and funny as her text.
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