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Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to the development and completion of this book, and I owe thanks to them all. The advice and support of David Sanders, the director of Ohio University Press, has been instrumental in the growth of this project, allowing it to become the book it was meant to be. I am grateful for the rigorous comments of the two anonymous reviewers; their constructive criticism and their generous praise spurred me to add significant sections to this project and thus broaden its scope and deepen its impact.

For the graphic illustrations from Victorian tea advertisements, I owe my thanks to the Bodleian Library’s John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, at Oxford University. The librarians in the John Johnson Reading Room were tireless in assisting my research; they pulled dozens of boxes of miscellaneous papers, packages, and advertisements for tea, and they painstakingly photocopied these images.

My thanks to the English department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which offered me the opportunity to pursue the studies that grew into this book. The UW-Madison library, and the librarians’ decision to invest in the Chadwyck-Healey Nineteenth-Century Collection, was significant in the development of this project; without the microfiche collection of nineteenth-century conduct manuals, cookery books, and tea histories, I wouldn’t have been able to begin my research. My advisor, Susan D. Bernstein, inspired me to pursue my interests in Victorian literature. Her encouragement and advice were crucial to this project and to my development as a scholar, and I owe her my gratitude. I also would like to thank the Ithaca College Scholars’ Working Group, a group of professors who helped me to maintain my inspiration and my commitment to this project.

I’m especially grateful to Garrett Piech for offering me his devoted support—emotional and financial—over the years. And I’m thankful for the sense of perspective granted to me by my daughters, Evelyn and Dorothy. In their own way, they offered me their understanding and their patience as I’ve worked to complete this project. Writing this book, with its demands of time and dedication and its intellectual and emotional rewards, became a “necessary luxury” for me.