Tea-drinking in Victorian England was a pervasive activity that, when seen through the lens of a century’s perspective, presents a unique overview of Victorian culture. Tea was a necessity and a luxury; it was seen as masculine as well as feminine; it symbolized the exotic and the domestic; and it represented both moderation and excess.

Tea was flexible enough to accommodate and to mark subtle differences in social status, to mediate these differences between individuals, and to serve as a shared cultural symbol within England. In A Necessary Luxury: Tea in Victorian England, Julie E. Fromer analyzes tea histories, advertisements, and nine Victorian novels, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, and Portrait of a Lady.

Fromer demonstrates how tea functions within the literature as an arbiter of taste and middle-class respectability, aiding in the determination of class status and moral position. She reveals the way in which social identity and character are inextricably connected in Victorian ideology as seen through the ritual of tea.

Drawing from the fields of literary studies, cultural studies, history, and anthropology, A Necessary Luxury offers in-depth analysis of both visual and textual representations of the commodity and the ritual that was tea in 19th-century England.

The book is published by Ohio University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

“This book is a genuine tour de force.” (Deborah Denenholz Morse, author of Women in Trollope’s Palliser Novels)

“Anyone who opens Julie Fromer's absorbing book may never read a Victorian novel in quite the same way again.” (Mansfield News Journal)

“A well-researched history of the development of a habit inextricably woven into England’s national identity.” (Dickens Quarterly)