Unmentionable

The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners

By: Therese Oneill

Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman

Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era? Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.)

Unmentionable is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on: What to wear Where to relieve yourself How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating What to expect on your wedding night How to be the perfect Victorian wife Why masturbating will kill you And more!

Irresistibly charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and featuring nearly 200 images from Victorian publications, Unmentionable will inspire a whole new level of respect for Elizabeth Bennett, Scarlet O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and all of our great, great grandmothers. (And it just might leave you feeling ecstatically grateful to live in an age of pants, super absorbency tampons, epidurals, anti-depressants, and not dying of the syphilis your husband brought home.)

Critic reviews

"Hysterically funny and unsettlingly fascinating. This book is full of awesome."—Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy

"Oneill uncovers the filthy, untidy, licentious conditions of nineteenth-century women's lives that novelists of the period often glossed over...brilliantly conveyed with fascinating illustrations."—Elle

"Unmentionable transports us back to the world of middle-class 19th-century women, with special emphasis on the messy details that costume dramas airbrush out...With a 4-year-old's scatological glee, Oneill details the logistics of old-time peeing, pooping, gestating, menstruating and mating...For Oneill, Victorian time travel is a tour of horrors that makes us thankful to come home to tampons and toilets."—New York Times

"Oh, did Constant Reader's heart lift after turning page the first. It's hard to imagine a woman - or a teenage girl - who won't love this book."—The Washington Post

"Oneill has created a book so excellently informative about the Victorian period, it should be shelved right next to Dickens for reference. Your stomach will hurt so much from laughing, you'll be thankful you're not wearing a corset."—Bustle

"If Unmentionable does not secure the Pulitzer Prize for Most Fascinating Book Ever, the whole gig is rigged. Hilarious, horrifying, shocking and revelatory, this book is for every girl who pictured herself running through a field of wildflowers in a silk dress and Little House on the Prairie boots, only to discover she has nits in her hair, her clothes have never been washed and she sleeps with her poop under her bed in a bowl. A miracle of a book and one of my favorite reads ever, Unmentionable will be my go-to gift this year. All hail Therese Oneill for uncovering all of that dirty, dirty laundry."—Laurie Notaro, #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Looked Different on the Model and Housebroken

"If you've ever felt like you should have been born in another time, Unmentionable will disabuse you of that sensibility, and it will do so charmingly."—Vice/Broadly

"Flat-out hysterical (and occasionally alarming)...Read it and be very, very glad you're a woman of modern times."—Good Housekeeping

"Oneill writes from the perspective of an all-knowing, slightly cheeky Victorian woman giving guidance to the contemporary woman. The result is a thoroughly researched but hilarious look into daily life of the Victorian woman."

—The Millions

"A fascinating look into the shocking pseudoscience of the 1800s, in which Oneill sheds new light on the origins of today's misogyny, double standards, and just plain mystery surrounding women that, maddeningly enough, persist."—Booklist

Wonderfully funny

I adored this book. It is so witty, so well read, full of fun and shocking facts any fan of the Victorian era will love.

Hard to enjoy but very well researched

It's filled with sarcastic comments and bitterness making it, most of the time, very hard to enjoy. I thought it would be a 19th century guide, and the criticism would be delivered in a more subtle way, but no. The author cannot deliver one single piece of information without mocking it, which turns out to be very annoying.

Absolutely hilarious 😂

If you are looking for a deep dive, and nuanced account of womens lives during the Victorian era, this book is not it. If you are however looking for deep belly-laughs while also learning a bit more about the lives of your foremothers, then dive in. I could barely put this book down, the wording is poignant, personal and hilarious. I will forever more speak of my vagina as "the sacred vestibule".

Entertaining & Informative

It's funny, engaging, and informative, but the exceptional narration really makes this book a gem. Upon finishing it, I promptly gifted a copy to a friend, as any proper young lady would.

Starts out entertaining, grows tiresome

I was hoping for something far more historical in nature, and while I did find some interesting facts at the beginning of the book, the latter half became tiresome and hateful. Sarcasm is an excellent spice, but makes a poor main course.