Search results for ""author victoria"

Melodrama, sentimentality, vulgarity, and sheer cockney cheek: the Victorian era was a period of extremes. With brass bands abounding in concert halls, bandstands and even street corners, the trombone flourished in this heady social and musical atmopshere. This varied collection of popular Victorian solos ranges from 'Home, Sweet Home!' to Grand Variations on 'Father's a drunkard and Mother is Dead'. With idiomatic arrangements for the intermediate trombonist why not wallow in nostalgia and recreate the spirit of a lost age?

Read more less

Surrey, one of England's smallest counties, has for centuries embodied contrasts in style and appearance. In the north where its boundary is the Thames, there is industrial and, more recently, suburban London, and further South, are the more rural areas of the Downs and Weald, which were the playground for 'Londoners' for centuries. This book looks at these dual areas as they were a century ago. Some of the best old photographs available have been collected together and reproduced here, in sepia, with an accompanying text made up of extracts gathered from contemporary writing from all over the county. Thus some evocative sights of old Surrey, from the tanneries of Southwark to the elegance of Victorian Epsom, are brought to life in these pages.

Read more less

Adults are invited to express their sense of color and creativity in this book of lovingly detailed drawings of the American West's Victorian-era buildings. In pen and ink, artist Shirley Salzman depicts a spectrum of styles within the period of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901. The black-and-white sketches are printed on high-quality paper in a fold-out-flat format and can be framed as they are or imaginatively embellished.

Read more less

Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious, the “the cheapest time-travel machine you’ll find” (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an historian who believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own firsthand adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work “imagines the Victorians as intrepid survivors” (New Republic) of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics to slipping opium to the little ones, Goodman’s account of Victorian life “makes you feel as if you could pass as a native” (The New Yorker).

Read more less

Explores the revival and impact of evangelicalism within the Church of Scotland after the Disruption of 1843 Locates the chronological development of established evangelicalism within the broader context of British imperialism, German biblical criticism, European Romanticism and Victorian print culture Based on a diverse range of primary sources, including newspapers, magazines, published sermons, personal correspondence, family papers, and General Assembly reports Follows the life, work, and theological development of ministers William Muir, Norman MacLeod, and A.H. Charteris The Revival of Evangelicalism presents a critical analysis of the evangelical movement in the national Church. It emphasises the manner in which the movement both continued along certain pre-Disruption lines and evolved to represent a broader spectrum of Reformed Presbyterian doctrine and piety during the long reign of Queen Victoria. The author interweaves biographical case studies of influential figures who played key roles in the process of revival and recovery, including William Muir, Norman MacLeod and A. H. Charteris. Based on a diverse range of primary sources, the book places the chronological development of established evangelicalism within the broader context of British imperialism, German biblical criticism, European Romanticism and Victorian print culture.

Read more less

'What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.' - W.H. DaviesWalking around London is one of life's great pleasures. There is a huge amount that you can only see on foot – but sometimes it is hard to know where to look. Luckily, Christopher Winn, bestselling author of I Never Knew That About London, knows where all the hidden treasures are. This book takes the reader on a series of stimulating original walks through different areas of central London, focusing on one particular period of history, the Victorian, so ubiquitous that we take it for granted, and yet so astonishing and so far reaching in its variety, imagination, ambition and detail.Discover.....the remarkable 300-foot bell tower at the Houses of Parliament you never knew was there.... ..the extraordinary fairytale house in Kensington where the Mikado was inspired.....the best Victorian loos in the world near Old Street... ..a hidden chapel in Bloomsbury described by Oscar Wilde as 'the most delightful private chapel in London'... ..London's best preserved high class Victorian shop near Tottenham Court Road… ...an almost complete Victorian townscape boasting the world's oldest surviving mansion block... Walk through history and discover the hidden gems of Victorian London!

Read more less

The Victorians gave us many of the Christmas traditions we enjoy today, from putting up Christmas trees to pulling crackers. This handy, pocket-sized colouring book embodies these customs in 45 unique illustrations. Colour in Victorian fireplaces adorned with stockings, St Nicholas with his sack full of presents, and scenes from the nativity. Why not de-stress and take a break over the Christmas period?

Read more less

Thousands of men and women all across Britain in the Victorian age were being mesmerized, twisted into bizarre postures and speaking out in unknown languages, and the Victorians were literally entranced with this phenomenon. The text focuses on mesmerism: who was entranced, who did the entrancing, why mesmerism was such a compelling experience to so many and how it became equally powerful evidence of fraud and "unscientific" behaviour to many others. It illuminates dark areas of the relationship between science and society, allowing the assessment of the role of authority in particular social contexts: who draws the line between the bogus and the authentic and how is the boundary maintained? More fundamentally, what is the nature of the powers that wield, and the influences that bind humans together in a social body?

Read more less

Victorian Britain was the world's industrial powerhouse. Its factories, mills and foundries supplied a global demand for manufactured goods. As Britain changed from an agricultural to an industrial ecomony, people swarmed into the towns and cities where the work was; by the end of Queen Victoria's reign, almost 80 per cent of the population was urban. Overcrowding and filthy living conditions, though, were a recipe for disaster, and diseases such as cholera, typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox and puerperal (childbed) fever were a part of everyday life for (usually poor) town-and city-dwellers. However, thanks to a dedicated band of doctors, nurses, midwives, scientists, engineers and social reformers, by the time the Victorian era became the Edwardian, they were almost eradicated, and no longer a constant source of fear. Stephen Halliday tells the fascinating story of how these individuals fought opposition from politicians, taxpayers and often their own colleagues to overcome these diseases and make the country a safer place for everyone to live.

Read more less

Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology is a fully annotated and illustrated collection of Victorian poetry. Features a generous selection of work by all the major figures of the age, including Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Oscar Wilde Presents several long poems in their entirety, such as Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna’, Clough’s Amours de Voyage, Meredith’s Modern Love and Tennyson’s In Memoriam AHH Each poet is introduced by a biographical headnote Each poem is introduced by a headnote giving publication details, biographical facts, contextual material, and other information The poems themselves are all fully annotated Extensive introductory material enables readers to read across the volume chronologically, thematically, or by individual author Features twelve black and white illustrations of images referred to in or relevant to the poetry

Read more less

Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology is a fully annotated and illustrated collection of Victorian poetry. Features a generous selection of work by all the major figures of the age, including Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Oscar Wilde Presents several long poems in their entirety, such as Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna’, Clough’s Amours de Voyage, Meredith’s Modern Love and Tennyson’s In Memoriam AHH Each poet is introduced by a biographical headnote Each poem is introduced by a headnote giving publication details, biographical facts, contextual material, and other information The poems themselves are all fully annotated Extensive introductory material enables readers to read across the volume chronologically, thematically, or by individual author Features twelve black and white illustrations of images referred to in or relevant to the poetry

Read more less

This book explores sexual violence against Victorian working women. The author examines how gendered notions inform both women's negotiation of relationships and men's aggression toward women.

Read more less

Comprehensive and authoritative history of Corby and Great Oakley, charting their growth and development from the early medieval period to the present day. Lying in north Northamptonshire, close to the borders with Leicestershire and Rutland, the neighbouring parishes of Corby and Great Oakley were formerly part of the ancient administrative division of Corby hundred. Both remainedagricultural villages, typical of much of rural Northamptonshire before 1932 when the landscape of the area was dramatically altered by large-scale industrialisation associated with the production of iron and steel following the discovery of rich ironstone deposits to the north and east of Corby village. Corby was most directly affected by these changes, with the parish experiencing a dramatic rise in population after the Stewarts & Lloyds Company chose toconcentrate their entire steel producing operation there. Between 1932 and 1950, the increasing population resulted in the hasty construction, firstly by the Stewarts & Lloyds Company and later by the Corby UDC, of housing estates on former agricultural land adjacent to the steelworks, before Corby was designated a New Town in April 1950 and responsibility for it passed to the Corby Development Corporation. From this point on, Great Oakley was inexorablydrawn into the expanding new town as it spread southwards, eventually being incorporated firstly into Corby urban district in1967 and in 1993 into Corby Borough. Although Corby is perhaps best known for the social problems or"New Town Blues" that blighted it after the steelworks (the town's principal employer) closed in 1980, this volume documents the lesser known medieval and early modern history of Corby and Great Oakley; it shows how generations of inhabitants utilised the rich natural geology and the abundant woodland to supplement the local agrarian economy, before examining in detail Corby's industrialisation, physical and economic growth, post-industrial decline and 21st-century regeneration. Mark Page is Assistant Editor, Victoria County History, Oxfordshire; Matthew Bristow is Research Manager, Victoria County History.

Read more less

Elizabeth Longford has chosen eleven Victorian women who in their actions or writing challenged the repressive rules of established society. They include Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, whose cloistered lives were illuminated by the vividness of their creative genius; Josephine Butler, who brought about the end of the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts; Annie Besant, who campaigned vigorously for the rights of women subject to unreasonable husbands or harsh employers; Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the cruelties of slavery to the world's attention; and James Barry, born Margaret Bulkley, medical reformer and arguably the first British female to qualify as a suregon. Eminent Victorian Women is a highly readable account of this period of struggle for women's rights and of some of the remarkable personalities who took part.

Read more less

Victorian pumping stations are colourful cathedrals of utility. Their imposing and striking exteriors enclose highly decorative cast-iron frames, built to encage powerful steam engines. They are glorious buildings which display the Victorians’ architectural confidence and engineering skills. More than that, they represent a key part of the story of urban development and how our towns and cities were shaped in this period of ground-breaking invention and civic pride. In this illustrated guide, Trevor Yorke tells the story of Victorian pumping stations and explains why they were built in such a flamboyant manner, describing their architectural features and showing how their mighty steam engines worked. He includes examples of their glorious interior decoration from pumping stations across the country and provides a detailed list of those which are open to visitors.

Read more less

A beautifully illustrated guide to the world of Victorian stained glass and its manufacturers and designers. Victorian stained glass – magnificent, colourful and artistic – adorns countless British churches, municipal buildings and homes. Across the decades, several artistic movements influenced these designs, from the Gothic Revival, through the Arts and Crafts Movement and into Art Nouveau as a new century dawned. Historian Trevor Yorke shows how craftsmen re-learned the lost medieval art of colouring, painting and assembling stained glass windows – but also, in this age of industry, how windows were templated and mass produced. Showcasing the exquisite glass generated by famous designers such as A.W.N. Pugin, Pre-Raphaelites William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and by leading manufacturers such as Clayton and Bell, this beautifully illustrated book introduces the reader to many wonderful examples of Victorian stained glass and where it can be found.

Read more less

1866. On a train bound for Portsmouth, an elegant woman shares a first-class compartment with a gentleman in a celebratory mood. Giles Blanchard reveals his lecherous side as the journey gets underway, but he will never reach his home on the Isle of Wight alive. This chance encounter is to prove fortuitous for the woman and her partner-in-crime. They find themselves not only the richer for picking the dead man's pocket, they also now possess the material for an extremely lucrative blackmail. Detective Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are swiftly dispatched to sift through the evidence. They are all too aware that with Her Majesty Queen Victoria spending the summer on the island, a speedy resolution to the case is a priority for their superiors. Tracing the pair who lured Blanchard to his death is an endeavour freighted with difficulties, but will the fact that their inquiries lead them to the door of a royal residence be one complication too many?

Read more less

This guide steers students through significant critical responses to the Victorian novel from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day.

Read more less

This beautiful, three-dimensional dollhouse is easy to assemble. Children and adults alike will enjoy the rich architectural ornamentation of this classic, Victorian cottage. Create your own color scheme for both its interior and exterior. Two resident cats add charm, and you can furnish the home with dollhouse furniture, small dolls, and your imagination. Assembled, the house stands a full 13 1/4" tall on its base of 6 3/4" by 9 1/2". Made of sturdy, thick board, this dollhouse folds flat back into its own box, and can be used again and again or preserved for future generations to come. Middle grades-ages 8-12.

Read more less

The history of the telegraph - the men and women who made it - and its relevance to the current Internet debateBeginning with the Abbe Nollet's famous experiment of 1746, when he successfully demonstrated that electricity could pass from one end to the other of a chain of two hundred monks, Tom Standage tells the story of the spread of the telegraph and its transformation of the Victorian world. The telegraph was greeted by all the same concerns, hype, social panic and excitement that now surround the Internet, and Standage provides both a fascinating insight into the past and a context in which to think rather differently of today's concerns.Standage has a wonderful prose style and an excellent eye for the telling and engaging story. Popular history at its best.

Read more less

Whimsical Victorian novelties in clear and colored glass are displayed in over 590 beautiful color photos and over 80 black and white vintage advertisements and catalog images. Novelty candy containers, decanters, perfume bottles, paperweights, toothpick and match holders, shakers, butter dishes, condiment jars, celeries, and tableware in fanciful forms ranging from animals and humans to fruit, vegetables, personal apparel, furniture, and vehicles all have their place in this fascinating book. The text provides valuable information about the many companies that made these varied and amusing wares, including Fostoria Glass*TM, Hocking Glass*TM, Indiana Tumbler & Goblet*TM, Specialty Glass*TM, United States Glass*TM, and Wheeling Glass Letter & Novelty Company*TM, to name just a few. A bibliography and values in the captions are also provided.

Read more less

Victorian & Edwardian Oxfordshire illustrates through words and pictures the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a time of change for all levels of society. In the countryside, agriculture was becoming increasingly mechanized and there were bitter struggles over agricultural wages. In Oxford, significant social changes were taking place, the first colleges for women opened in 1879, religious tests in the universities were abolished in 1871 and in 1877 dons acquired the permission to marry. By 1912 William Morris had made his first car in Oxford and begun a process of industrialization and employment opportunity hitherto undreamt of. The area covered by this book is that of the old county, before 1974 and the reorganization of county boundaries. The photographs, printed here in sepia, depict the farmer and his labourer in the countryside, the traditional industries and the interaction of the city and the university in Oxford. The home life of rich and poor, sports and pastimes, traditional country customs, religious life and education are all depicted in this collection. The text, composed of a series of extracts gathered from a variety of contemporary sources, helps to bring alive these glimpses of life in the county of a time that is only just outside living memory.

Read more less

The decision to build a new army camp in the small market town of Colchester in 1856 was well received and helped to stimulate the local economy after a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Before long the Colchester garrison was one of the largest in the country and the town experienced an economic upturn as well as benefiting from the many social events organised by officers. But there was a downside: some of the soldiers' behaviour was highly disruptive and, since very few private soldiers were allowed to marry, prostitution flourished. As a result the number of cases of venereal disease soared. Having compiled a database of nearly 350 of Colchester's nineteenth-century prostitutes, the authors examine how they lived and operated and who their customers were. What were the routes into and out of prostitution and what was life like as a prostitute? Was it even seen by some as an acceptable way for girls and young women to boost inadequate earnings from more respectable work? How did prostitution intersect with the social life of the town, especially as this was played out in local beerhouses? This is also an investigation of how authority in its many guises - from policeman and solicitor to magistrate and lady reformer - dealt with prostitution and the many problems associated with it, bringing a great many vested interests into conflict with each other. Such large numbers of women could not be tidied away into a discreet red-light district but lived and worked all over the town. They gave the police considerable trouble, but it was routinely declared that nothing could be done about them. Prostitution itself was not illegal whilst efforts to tackle the women's criminal activity, such as soliciting, theft or assault, were largely ineffective. Under pressure from the army, Parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts, allowing prostitutes affected with venereal symptoms in garrison towns to be confined for treatment, but there was widespread opposition to these controversial laws. Bringing to bear considerations of class and gender, urban development, health and welfare, religion and moral reform, this is a wide-ranging, detailed and original study. As well as providing a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century Colchester, it will appeal to all those interested in the history of women's work, policing and society more widely.

Read more less

A bold study on the very epicentre of Victorian ideology: the white, male body'The Victorian Male Body' examines some of the main expressions and practices of Victorian masculinity and its embodied physicality. The white, and frequently middle class, male body was often normalised as the epitome of Victorian values. Whilst there has been a long and fruitful discussion around the concept of the 'too-visible' body of the colonised subject and the expectations placed on women's bodies, the idealised male body has received less attention in scholarly discussions. Through its examination of a broad range of Victorian literary and cultural texts, this new collection opens up a previously neglected field of study with a scrutinising focus on what is arguably the ideologically most important body in Victorian society. This collection provides a wide variety of essays on different aspects of Victorian literature and culture, considering the variety of forms that this 'idealised' male body actually encompassed: fat, starving or disabled bodies, the ghostly figure, the 'othered' body, and the developing body of the schoolboy. The chapters in this book offer a detailed and clear reassessment of the Victorian concepts of manliness, masculinity, homosociality, morality, action, and adventure.Key FeaturesProvides a wide variety of essays on different aspects of Victorian literature and culture with subjects ranging from nature poetry, disability and pirates, fat and thin men, ghost soldiers and popular magazinesOpens up a neglected field of study with a scrutinizing focus on the ideologically most important body in Victorian societyAllows a re-evaluation of other areas of Victorian culture such as colonialism and debates about class, religion and scienceEnables a detailed and clear reassessment of the Victorian concepts of manliness, masculinity, homosociality, morality, action, and adventure

Read more less

The Victorian Male Body examines some of the main expressions and practices of Victorian masculinity and its embodied physicality.

Read more less

There is a widely held belief that Thomas Cook invented the railway excursion. In fact the railway excursion is almost as old as the railway itself, dating back to the 1830s, when hordes of people from one town would descend on another for a 'cheap trip'. Susan Major has carried out much in-depth research for this book, drawing on contemporary Victorian newspapers, and discovered that in fact Cook played a very minor role, mainly in encouraging middle-class people to go on more expensive excursions. Her book fills an important gap in railway history. It explores for the first time how the vast majority of ordinary working people in Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century were able to travel cheaply for leisure over long distances, in huge crowds, and return home. This was a stunning experience for the excursionists and caused great shocks to observers at the time. These 'trippers' had to overcome many obstacles, particularly from the Church of England and the non-conformist movement, who were affronted by the idea of people enjoying themselves on a Sunday, their only day away from work.The book takes the story of the early railway excursions from the 1840s to the 1860s, a dramatic period of railway and social change in British history. It looks at how these excursions were shaped and the experiences of working class travellers during this period, demolishing a number of cliches and myths endlessly reproduced in traditional railway histories. While Michael Portillo paints a picture of travellers sitting tidily in their railway carriages, consulting their Bradshaws, many working class excursionists on their trips were hanging on to the roof of a crowded carriage, endangering their lives, or enduring hours of travel in an open wagon in heavy rain.

Read more less

A Choice "Outstanding Academic Book for 1996" While drawing on work in feminism, queer theory, and cultural history, Dandies and Desert Saints challenges scholars to rethink simplistic notions of Victorian manhood. James Eli Adams examines masculine identity in Victorian literature from Thomas Carlyle through Oscar Wilde, analyzing authors who identify the age's ideal of manhood as the power of self-discipline. What distinguishes Adams's book from others in the recent explosion of interest in masculinity is his refusal to approach masculinity primarily in terms of "patriarchy" or "phallogocentrism" or within the binary of homosexualities and heterosexualities.

Read more less

Victorians were fascinated by the strange new worlds which science was revealing to them. Exotic plants and animals poured into London from all corners of the Empire, while revolutionary theories such as the radical idea that humans might be descended from apes drew forth heated debates. The aristocracy and the middle class avidly collected scientific specimens for display in their homes, and devoured literature about science and its practitioners. This study sets out to capture the essence of this fascination with science, charting the many ways in which science influenced and was influenced by the larger Victorian culture. The contributors show how practical concerns interacted with contextual issues to mould Victorian science - which in turn shaped much of the relationship between modern science and culture.

Read more less

In July 1861 London newspapers excitedly reported two violent crimes, both the stuff of sensational fiction. One involved a retired army major, his beautiful mistress and her illegitimate child, blackmail and murder. In the other, a French nobleman was accused of trying to kill his son in order to claim the young man's inheritance. The press covered both cases with thoroughness and enthusiasm, narrating events in a style worthy of a popular novelist, and including lengthy passages of testimony. Not only did they report rumor as well as what seemed to be fact, they speculated about the credibility of witnesses, assessed character, and decided guilt. The public was enthralled. Richard D. Altick demonstrates that these two cases, as they were presented in the British press, set the tone for the Victorian "age of sensation." The fascination with crime, passion, and suspense has a long history, but it was in the 1860s that this fascination became the vogue in England. Altick shows that these crimes provided literary prototypes and authenticated extraordinary passion and incident in fiction with the "shock of actuality." While most sensational melodramas and novels were by lesser writers, authors of the stature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and Wilkie Collins were also influenced by the spirit of the age and incorporated sensational elements in their work.

Read more less

This captivating and charming novel from international multi-million copy seller Joanne Harris takes us back to the French village we first discovered in Chocolat. Seamlessly interweaving the past and the present, magic and memory, it is a sensual rollercoaster that will appeal to fans of Victoria Hislop, Fiona Valpy, Maggie O'Farrell and Rachel Joyce.'Thickly sensuous, wildly indulgent, magical escapism: Chocolat lovers will drink deeply' --GUARDIAN'Joanne Harris has the gift of conveying her delight in the sensuous pleasures of food, wine, scent and plants... Blackberry Wine has all the appeal of a velvety scented glass of vintage wine' -- DAILY MAIL'A wonderful story' -- ***** Reader review'A beautiful story... beautifully written and very atmospheric' ***** Reader review'I could NOT put this book down' ***** Reader review'A very good book, lots of warmth and light' ***** Reader review*******************************************************************Jay Mackintosh is trapped by memory in the old familiar landscape of his childhood, to which he longs to return.A bottle of home-brewed wine left to him by a long-vanished friend seems to provide the key to an old mystery. As the unusual properties of the strange brew take effect, Jay escapes to a derelict farmhouse in the French village of Lansquenet.There, a ghost from the past waits to confront him, and the reclusive Marise - haunted, lovely and dangerous - hides a terrible secret behind her closed shutters.Between them, a mysterious chemistry. Or could it be magic?

Read more less

Positions the sensation novel, and nineteenth-century popular fiction more generally, as vital to the history of feeling Argues for the literary significance of this popular form Examines work by lesser-known female writers, such as Caroline Clive, Annie Edwards and Florence Wilford Demonstrates that sensationalism can be traced across a wide range of writers and genres, from spasmodic poetry to the novels of Louisa May Alcott Connects Victorian writing on feeling to contemporary affect theory Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies argues that Victorian sensation novels long dismissed as plot-driven, silly, and feminine develop complex theories of narrative affect, our embodied responses to reading, imagining, and even writing a narrative. The popular sensation novel thus should be understood as a key contribution to the novel's assessment of its own workings, especially the ways in which reading and writing figure as affective acts. Additionally, the book radically expands the field of sensation fiction, taking seriously lesser-known female authors, and reading them alongside a range of writers not typically considered sensational. These novels insist that feelings are not bound to a single body and that bodies generate meaning when they are put in relation to other bodies and systems of knowledge.

Read more less

Nineteenth-century photography is usually thought of in terms of ‘black and white’ images, but intense experimentation with generating and fixing colors pre-dated the public announcement of the daguerreotype in 1839. Introducing readers to the long, frequently overlooked story of the relationship of color to photography, this short anthology of primary sources includes: accounts of the scientific search for color by Elizabeth Fulhame and Sir John Herschel;photographers' views on color; extracts from the photographic press and from manuals on handcoloring; and accounts by critics such as John Ruskin. The volume provides a fresh perspective on the culture, history and theory of early photography, demonstrating why scientists, philosophers, photographers, literary writers and artists were so fascinated by the potential for polychrome in photographs. With an introductory essay arguing that from the earliest days of photography the prospect of color loomed large in the imagination of its creators, users and critics, this reader is an essential resource for students and scholars wanting to gain a full understanding of nineteenth-century photography and its relationship to art history, literature and culture.

Read more less

During the last two decades, numerous studies have been devoted to the Victorian fascination with King Arthur, however . the figure of King Alfred has received almost no attention. For much of the nineteenth century, Alfred was as important as Arthur in the British popular imagination. A pervasive cult of the king developed which included the erection of at least four public statues, the completion of more than twenty-five paintings, and the publication of over a hundred texts, by authors ranging from Wordsworth to minor women writers. By 1852, J.A. Froude could describe Alfred’s life as ‘the favourite story in English nurseries’; in 1901, a national holiday marked the thousandth anniversary of his death, organised by a committee including Edward Burne Jones, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hughes. England’s darling sets out to answer the questions that must arise in the face of such nineteenth-century enthusiasm for a long-dead king. It addresses a genuine gap in the literature on Victorian medievalism in particular and cultural history in general and argues that knowledge of the cult of Alfred is crucial to understanding the Victorian cultural map. The book examines the ways in which Alfred was rewritten by nineteenth-century authors and artists, and asks how beliefs about the Saxon king’s reign and achievements related to nineteenth-century ideals about leadership, law, religion, commerce, education and the Empire. The book concludes by addressing the most interesting enigma in Alfred’s reception history: why is the king no longer ‘England’s darling’?A fascinating study that will be enjoyed by scholars of history, cultural history, literature and art history.

Read more less

How can we tell plagiarism from an allusion? How does imitation differ from parody? Where is the line between copyright infringement and homage? Questions of intellectual property have been vexed long before our own age of online piracy. In Victorian Britain, enterprising authors tested the limits of literary ownership by generating plagiaristic publications based on leading writers of the day. Adam Abraham illuminates these issues by examining imitations of three novelists: Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton, and George Eliot. Readers of Oliver Twist may be surprised to learn about Oliver Twiss, a penny serial that usurped Dickens's characters. Such imitative publications capture the essence of their sources; the caricature, although crude, is necessarily clear. By reading works that emulate three nineteenth-century writers, this innovative study enlarges our sense of what literary knowledge looks like: to know a particular author means to know the sometimes bad imitations that the author inspired.

Read more less

The history of the town of Bolsover and neighbouring parishes, from prehistory to the present day. The history and topography of the small market town of Bolsover in north-east Derbyshire and four parishes immediately to its north (Barlborough, Clowne, Elmton - including Creswell - and Whitwell) are covered in this volume. Alllie mainly on a magnesian limestone ridge, rather than the exposed coalfield, and therefore only became mining communities late in the nineteenth century. Since the end of deep mining in Derbyshire all have faced a difficult period of economic and social adjustment. As well as the general development of the five parishes, the book includes detailed accounts of the medieval castle at Bolsover, the mansion built on the site of the castle by the Cavendish family of Welbeck in the seventeenth century, and Barlborough Hall, a late sixteenth-century prodigy house built by a successful Elizabethan lawyer. Philip Riden teaches in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham; he has been the editor of the Victoria County History of Derbyshire since 1996, when he re-established the VCH in the county.

Read more less

As editor of The Economist, Walter Bagehot offered astute commentary on the financial issues of his day and his name lives on in an eponymous weekly column. During the upheavals of 2007–9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of this Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill and author of Lombard Street, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that—decades later—inspired the radical responses to the financial crises.

Read more less

This is an appraisal of the quality, diversity and impact of photography in Victorian Scotland. This is the first book to provide a full and coherent introduction to the photography of Victorian Scotland. There are many books which deal with particular elements and individual photographers, which show the interest in the subject, but no book draws everything together to provide an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of photography and the inter-relationship with other activities in the society of the time. This authoritative introduction, building upon these other publications, will provide a wide-ranging appreciation of early Scottish photography and in particular that Scottish photography was in the vanguard of many international trends. The material has been structured and the topics organised, with appropriate illustrations, as a readable narrative and to provide a foundation text for the subject. It draws together a coherent narrative of the many different aspects of photography in Victorian Scotland. It shows how photography was related to, and was influenced by, the society and culture of the time. It highlights how Scotland and Scots were in the forefront of photography in Victorian times. It uses the most apt illustrations to emphasise the quality of the image-making. It includes 130 illustrations.

Read more less

The Victorian architecture of San Francisco is known the world over for its distinctive look and charm. More than 200 color images show broadshot views of homes tightly stacked together along steep streets, as well as close-ups of details. The text provides a historic background of the architecture that has helped characterize San Francisco as one of the world's most beautiful cities. Styles featured include Italianate, Queen Anne, Eastlake/Stick, and Victorian.

Read more less

Victorian poetry shocks with the physicality of its formal effects, linking the rhythms of the human body to the natural pulsation of the universe. In Electric Meters: Victorian Physiological Poetics Jason R. Rudy connects formal poetic innovations to developments in the electrical and physiological sciences, arguing that the electrical sciences and bodily poetics cannot be separated, and that they came together with special force in the years between the 1830s, which witnessed the invention of the electric telegraph, and the 1870s, when James Clerk Maxwell’s electric field theory transformed the study of electrodynamics. Combining formal poetic analysis with cultural history, Rudy traces the development of Victorian physiological poetics from the Romantic poetess tradition through to the works of Alfred Tennyson, the “Spasmodic” poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Algernon Swinburne, among others. He demonstrates how poetic rhythm came increasingly to be understood throughout the nineteenth century as a physiological mechanism, as poets across class, sex, and national boundaries engaged intensely and in a variety of ways with the human body’s subtle response to rhythmic patterns. Whether that opportunity for transcendence was interpersonal or spiritual in nature, nineteenth–century poets looked to electricity as a model for overcoming boundaries, for communicating across the gaps between sound and sense, between emotion and thought, and—perhaps—between individuals in the modern world. Electric Meters will appeal to those interested in poetry of any period and particularly those interested in nineteenth–century culture and history.

Read more less