I always rate books within their specific context or genre. In the case of general overviews, The Victorian Treasury is one of the better ones. It's not meant to be a deep or exhaustive look at the Victorian era. It's simply just an introduction for those who don't know much about it, or for those who want a quick recap or a short reference book that might be useful later on. The covers in this Andre Deutsch history series are absolutely gorgeous as well (it doesn't show in the picture, but the yellow parts are actually gilded).

There are topics on everything you can imagine, both general chapters and chapters about specific events and important people, and in addition to the main body of text there are small fact boxes (a timeline of slavery, tidbits about Victoria's wedding dress etc.). Adding the voice of the people themselves in the form of excerpts from novels, newspapers etc. was a nice touch (although maybe in a short book like this the longer excerpts could have been left out or shortened a little). Overall, there's just enough information about everything, so that you can decide what interests you and if you want to read more about it.

The Victorian era is one of my favorite eras in history, but so far I've focused only on specific things within that timeline or just read Victorian novels. The Victorian Treasury was definitely the push I needed to investigate the era further in a more general sense and understand it a bit more.