The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World

Caustic, cranky, and inadvertently hilarious, the bestselling Victorian author Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer rarely left the house-but that didn't stop her from writing several successful travel books. With volumes on Europe, Asia, and Africa and America, Mrs. Mortimer had something nasty to say about your ancestors, no matter where they had the misfortune of living. Todd Pruzan has assembled three of Mrs. Mortimer's very forgotten classics into one volume, The Clumsiest People in Europe, a wild tour through the comically and horrifyingly misinformed prejudices of a unique Victorian eccentric. Sublime in its peremptory dictate and overweening all-knowingness.-Boston Sunday Globe To the modern eye, Mortimer's work-by turns unsettling and hilarious-is nothing short of a revolution in guidebook writing: here at last, is the irritable-bowel-syndrome-as-travelogue.-New York Times Book Review Weirdly appealing...Mrs. Mortimer is, at once, fascinating, hilarious and furious but always maddeningly entertaining.-Chicago Tribune My favourite summer read this year...endlessly entertaining.-Toronto Globe & Mail Todd Pruzan is an editor at the bimonthly design journal Print and has been an editor and writer at several other magazines. He was born in Washington, D.C., and lives in Brooklyn, New York.