Voices of the Georgian Age is a fascinating book about seventeen people of all walks of life who recorded snippets of their daily lives of that era. Author James Hobson has included some quotes from diaries, letters and travelogues and described context in his own words.

Men and women, poor and wealthy, educated and uneducated, tradesmen and aristocrats are represented. Important and impactful topics include servitude, relationships, religion, travel, walking, meals at inns, prices, weather, transportation, (in)justice and body snatching. Thomas Holden's story is particularly poignant.

There are comparatively few actual diary excerpts, fewer than I thought there would be. However, Hobson's writing style is riveting and flows beautifully, a treat for History and Nonfiction readers. Such fun to read writing from the era when the writers had no idea their records would be studied centuries later for what they contained...and didn't.

My sincere thank you to Pen & Sword and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital copy of this remarkable book. I soaked it up like a sponge.

This is an extremely well-written and easy to read book. It takes excerpts from the diaries of real people who lived during the Georgian era and shares direct excerpts from those diaries along with lucid and informative facts and details from those writings. It’s all put together smoothly, with interpretations and explanations of what the original writer might have meant as language and its meanings has changed over time. The book covers seventeen individuals, well-known and unknown to us today.

This book will inform, entertain, enlighten, and educate the reader. I enjoyed it very much. If you like history and learning about earlier times, then this may well be a book you will also enjoy.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I thank all involved for their generosity, but it had no effect on this review. All opinions in this review reflect my true and honest reactions to reading this book.

Really enjoyable and intelligent choice of voices, good to hear rural voices for a change. I would return to this when reading novels set on the Georgian era..

I had really mixed feelings about this book. It was interesting that James Hobson was able to find 17 such different people's letters and biographies/autobiographies to give us the feel of the Georgian Age. They weren't all likable people, some were actually thieves and con artists, some politicians, writers, gentlemen, gentlewomen, etc. Hobson does agree with our unspoken question: what about the poor people, where are they? Well, he reminds us that his vague theme running through the book is the idea that these people are all traveling and writing about their travels and you weren't exactly going to get poor people doing that. The part that fell down for me is that I never quite felt that he lived up to the goal he set out for the book. More of the chapters felt like biographies, or at least partial biographies, of various people instead of their travelogues and the chapters weren't all (or even mostly) "in their own words". Hobson is doing the talking and there are occasional quotes by the person thrown in.

So for what it was advertised as, I was really disappointed. But I think if it was described differently and my expectations going through the book were just to read about the lives of 17 different people across the Georgian Age and get a good feel for what it was like to live then, I'd have really enjoyed the book. This might be one I try and come back to later to see if different expectations than the ones the book actually sets me up to have make me like it better. I think it would.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This was a very interesting and accessible collection of 17 biographical sketches of various people from the Georgian era. I breezed through this faster than I'd thought as the accounts were told in such an engaging way. Just a note that I had expected something a bit different from the book as the title says ‘in their own words’ while most of the text is actually narrated by the author and the actual quotes appear just from time to time.

Thank you to Netgally and Pen&Sword for the e-arc copy.

'Voices of the Georgian Age' is a curated taster of what Georgian life was like. Using 17 character examples from all walks of life: aristocracy, criminals, artists, authors, working class, and poor, the book covers the gamut of livelihood. 'That they are human beings, with fundamentally the same emotions and core desires is obvious...It is the differences that tell us much more.'

What indeed becomes clear, is that the quirks and nuances of human nature have remained the same; albeit with different triggers. We might judge people today on their clothes and the model of their car. 400 years ago, people were still classified by their attire and whether they owned a carriage, or could at least hire one. Then, as today, people were highly suspicious of strangers and scams. We might believe that the rise in social media has increased criminal activity, but in reality only the medium has changed; the behaviour was always just as rife. The biggest difference was the overt cruel behaviour and the harsh reality of life. Mostly for the poor to middle class but even the rich weren't exempt from illness, early death, beatings, and loveless marriage matches.

James Hobson has scoured a diverse range of primary sources and collated a plethora of voices to represent the age, within a concise book. Each chapter discusses a new person and is introduced with the context of their life and the pertinent focus for that chapter. It is inevitable that some characters might be more interesting to read about than others, and therefore the pace of the book varies accordingly. This book is a good read for history lovers who will enjoy a taste of what life was really like - aside from a version represented in a Jane Austen book (although she is, in fact, also represented in this book).

This book acts as a lens to view the Georgian period, but unlike numerous other history books on this era, this one does so through snapshot biographies of seventeen people (men and women). There's enough information from each to provide context, while the reader will never feel that one person outlasts their welcome. I would say casual readers may find this interesting, as there's a human connection to answer the ever present 'why does this matter?' question.

Such an interesting collection from many different perspectives. Carefully curated, this collection shines a light on the Georgian Age from many different people across different walks of life. A great addition to our understanding of the time.