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In the tradition of Janina Ramirez's Femina and Emily Hauser's Mythica, VICTORIANA is the revolutionary new history of the Victorians through the extraordinary and ordinary women written out of it.

Victorian history, as we know it, is a story of power, progress, and empire. It is also, overwhelmingly, a story of great men.

But what if that version of the past is only half the picture?

Across Britain and its empire, women were not standing on the sidelines of change, but working, inventing, organising, performing, and resisting at every level of society, even as they were excluded from its official record.

Here is Martha Grey, born into slavery and later a countess, who channelled her wealth into building communities across South Africa. Hertha Ayrton, an engineer whose work helped make electric light viable for everyday use. Cora Pearl, a courtesan who built a celebrity persona while reshaping the emerging beauty industry. Alongside them are coal miners and crime syndicates, political campaigners and professional athletes, artists, writers, and workers whose lives cut across the fault lines of class, race, and power.

Victoriana, a groundbreaking history full of fascinating original research, reveals a world far more dynamic – and far less orderly – than the one we think we know. This is not a history of exceptions, but of a hidden majority: women who helped build the Victorian world, even as it denied them recognition.

Sweeping, vivid, and sharply observed, Victoriana reframes a defining century, showing that to understand the Victorians, we need to see the whole story – starting with the women who were always part of it.

ALICE LOXTON says, 'Rosie Harte is a history trailblazer.'

TRACY BORMAN says 'Rosie Harte has an eye for those illuminating details that reveal so much about the real people behind history.'

© Rosie Harte 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026