The Victorians stopped the clock when someone died

And more of what Sally learned about Victorian death rituals from listening to her all-time favourite Dickens novel on Audrey.

Great Expectations was my Mum’s favourite and I got to know Joe Gargery, Pip and Miss Havisham at an early age.

I took part in the Audrey listen-along in January this year and loved hearing Anton Lesser read this novel so beautifully. He was born to read books aloud! The Audrey guide, Nat Reeve (author of Nettleblack) is a lively and insightful commentator and includes some funny and memorable personal reflections on their experience of the novel.

I Am the Resurrection and the Life, by Francis Montague Holl (1872).

In their notes to chapter 35, Nat explains that Victorian funeral processions (and funeral subscriptions, to make sure you could afford one) were elaborate, lustreless black mourning clothes were worn, sometimes for years on end, and a great deal of money was made from it all.

The fashion for extravagant mourning intensified when Queen Victoria lost her husband Prince Albert in 1861. Victoria remained in mourning for the rest of her life.

The video below is from Caitlin Doughty’s YouTube channel Ask a Mortician. From clock-stopping to mirror-covering, how to die the right way, how to create your mourning wardrobe, corpse coolers, through to mourning photography. It’s pretty fascinating stuff!

For those of you, like me, who love to understand the context of novels, to dive down rabbit holes and delve that bit further into your reading, there is nothing like Audrey!

Great Expectations, read by Anton Lesser, with Nat Reeves’ full chapter-by-chapter guide, recaps and characters descriptions is available worldwide exclusively on the Audrey app, for £9.99 or the equivalent in your currency.