Books 2012

Here’s what I’ve been reading this year. It doesn’t include odd chapters or anything seriously geeky (like programming manuals – uggh). An asterisk denotes a re-read. If you’re as nosey as me, you can also see what I read in 2011 and 2010.

  1. The Angel of the Revolution by George Chetwynd Griffith
  2. Yesterday Morning by Diana Athill
  3. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope *
  4. The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
  5. Queen Victoria’s Stalker by Jan Bondeson
  6. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome *
  7. Between Women by Sharon Marcus
  8. Stet by Diana Athill
  9. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
  10. Life Below Stairs by Alison Maloney
  11. People from the Other Side: the Enigmatic Fox Sisters and the History of Spiritualism by Maurice Leonard
  12. The Frock-Coated Communist: the Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt
  13. The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
  14. Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde by Franny Moyle
  15. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincey
  16. A Violent Act by Alison Joseph
  17. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
  18. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
  19. The West-End Front by Matthew Sweet
  20. Boomerang by Michael Lewis
  21. Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth
  22. All Sorts and Conditions of Men by Walter Besant
  23. Kathleen Ferrier by Maurice Leonard
  24. Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton
  25. A Genius for Money: Business, Art and the Morrisons by Caroline Dakers
  26. Any Human Heart by William Boyd
  27. How They Loved Him by Florence Marryat *
  28. Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
  29. Publisher by Tom Maschler
  30. Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd
  31. The Baron of Piccadilly by Raymond Fitzsimmons
  32. Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
  33. Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela Thirlwell
  34. Dr Janet of Harley Street by Arabella Kenealey
  35. Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
  36. The Massarenes by Ouida
  37. The Professor’s Wife by Leonard Graham
  38. Dr Cupid by Rhoda Broughton
  39. A Woman-Hater by Charles Reade
  40. The Beth Book by Sarah Grand *
  41. Dr Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll by Frank Danby (uggh)
  42. Taste by Kate Colquhoun
  43. Second Thoughts by Rhoda Broughton
  44. A Simpleton by Charles Reade
  45. The Luckiest Girl in Yorkshire and Other Stories by Florence Marryat
  46. The Lost Diamonds by Florence Marryat and Charles Ogilvy
  47. Weeds by Jerome K. Jerome
  48. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King
  49. Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper
  50. King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant: The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard by Tracy Borman
  51. Teach us to Sit Still by Tim Parks
  52. Queen Victoria’s Children by John van der Kiste
  53. The Doom of the Great City by William Delisle Hay
  54.  Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victoria Adventure by Tim Jeal
  55. Princess Louise: Queen Victoria’s Unconventional Daughter by Jehanne Wake
  56. Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis
  57. The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley
  58. The Report by Jessica Francis Kane
  59. The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician by Julia Boyd
  60. An Angel of Pity by Florence Marryat
  61. The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor by Mary Coleridge
  62. St Bernard’s: The Romance of a Medical Student by Æsculapius Scalpel
  63. Lemon Sherbert and Dolly Blue by Lynn Knight
  64. When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
  65. The Psychic Tourist: A Voyage into the Curious World of Predicting the Future by William Little
  66. Splendour and Squalor: The Disintegration of Three Aristocratic Dynasties by Marcus Scriven
  67. The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R S Thomas by Byron Rogers
  68. An Audience with an Elephant by Byron Rogers
  69. Me: The Authorised Biography by Byron Rogers
  70. Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
  71. Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt by Maurice Leonard
  72. Girl in a Green Gown by Carola Hicks
  73. The Convert by Elizabeth Robins
  74. Mona Maclean, Medical Student by Graham Travers
  75. The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising by Gary Hicks
  76. Anna, the Professor’s Daughter by Anna Daal
  77. A Honeymoon in Space by George Chetwynd Griffith
  78. Dust, Mud, Soot and Toil: The Worst Jobs in Victorian London by Lee Jackson
  79. Adventures of an American Girl in Victorian London by Elizabeth L. Banks
  80. The Diary of a Nobody in the 21st Century by Charles Pooter V
  81. The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
  82. The Revolt of Man by Walter Besant
  83. Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome
  84. Titanic by Filson Young
  85. Mord Em’ly by William Pett Ridge
  86. Elijah’s Mermaid by Essie Fox
  87. Tom-All-Alone’s by Lynn Shepherd
  88. The Day Parliament Burned Down by Caroline Shenton
  89. The Charge of the Parasols by Catriona Blake
  90. The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton by Diane Atkinson
  91. Wilful Murder: The Sinking of the Lusitania by Diana Preston
  92. The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders
  93. The Last Englishman: The Life of J L Carr by Byron Rogers
  94. Her Father’s Name by Florence Marryat *
  95. The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat *
  96. Robert Elsmere by Mrs Humphry Ward *
  97. Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise
  98. Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith *
  99. The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli by Richard Aldous
  100. Moranthology by Caitlin Moran
  101. Becoming Lola by Harriet Steel

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