The Physical Training of Children

Advice on the rearing of children from infancy to youth: feeding, air, sleep, exercise, clothing and the diseases of childhood, in question and answer. Pye Chavasse's manuals sold in hundreds of thousands from the 1830s onward and were on the shelf of every literate English household. Much of it is sound, some of it is alarming, and all of it explains how Victorian children were actually raised. Fifty-six paintings from 1832 to 1902, among them Mary Cassatt and Vilhelm Hammershøi, catch children at the frame, the shore and the window, the quiet domestic world Chavasse's advice was meant to shape.