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8. Richard Ellmann: ''Oscar Wilde'' – With a subject like Oscar Wilde, a biographer would be hard-pressed to create a work that didn't read like a best-selling novel. Ellmann's work is the definitive biography of Wilde; it brilliantly juxtaposes Wilde’s eccentricities against straight-laced Victorian society. It's a hefty read at over 700 pages, but well worth it.
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9. Judith Flanders: ''Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England'' – This is a fun, quick read on the daily lives of Victorian upper and middle class people. Flanders delightfully illustrates the real "stuff" of nineteenth-century England: What did they do all day, what did they wear, what did they eat? Her main flaw is the she largely ignores the lives of the working classes, who made up the majority of Victorian society, but this work is, nevertheless, an interesting look into the life of the new middle class in Britain.
10.Edward Royle: ''Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement'' – A little mentioned book among modern British historians, but a very important work, nonetheless. Royle’s study examines the beginnings of secularism in the UK, outside the context of class and political boundaries. Before Royle, most British historians considered atheism/agnosticism as products of working-class distrust of the State. Royle's work changed all that, and it is perhaps one of the most important books on the beginnings of secularism ever published. [[File:vicinfidels.jpg|200px]]
