Search results for ""author victoria"

Until this century, married women had no legal right to hold, use, or dispose of property. Since the ownership of property is a critical measure of social status, the married women's property acts of the nineteenth century were important landmarks in the legal emancipation of women. Reform campaigns represented the first organized attempts by women in Upper Canada to challenge their status in society. Ironically, emancipation was not the first goal of reformers: their demands reflected a concern with protection from economic instability. The laws granting women new rights and privileges were designed to force men to behave more responsibly and to mitigate the worst hardships imposed upon wives by abusive or negligent husbands. The most detailed and complete account of married women's property law reform yet written for any North American jurisdiction, this fascinating study will be of interest to those in the areas of law, women's studies, and nineteenth-century social history.

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1863. Young student, Bernard Pomeroy, flies into a panic when he receives a letter in the early hours of the morning. Leaving a note for a friend with a porter at Corpus Christi College, he rushes for the next train leaving Cambridge. However, shortly after disembarking at his destination, the undergraduate lies dead on the platform. Summoned by the master of the college, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming begin to investigate Pomeroy's untimely demise. But it seems that Pomeroy had ruffled many feathers during his short tenure at the University. With academic disputes, sporting rivalry and a clandestine romance in play, the Railway Detective will have to disentangle the many threads of Pomeroy's life in order to answer the truth of his death.

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Biography of Joseph Jenkins (1818-98) who left his family and successful farm in Wales to travel Australia as a farm labourer. His self-improvement through reading led to prizes for his poetry, and his diary is one of the most celebrated sources of information about life in rural Australia then.

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October 1854. As an autumnal evening draws to a close, crowds of passengers rush onto the soon to depart London to Brighton Express. A man watches from shadows nearby, grimly satisfied when the train pulls out of the station. Chaos, fatalities and unbelievable destruction are the scene soon after when the train derails on the last leg of its journey. What led to such devastation, and could it simply be a case of driver error? Detective Inspector Colbeck, dubbed the 'railway detective' thinks not. But digging deep to discover the target of the accident takes time, something Colbeck doesn't have as the killer prepares to strike again.

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December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. Although a disastrous derailment is averted, the passengers are alarmed. Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion, alights to investigate further, but the angry altercation with the driver is cut short by a shot from a sniper, straight through Hubbleday's head. Christmas is coming all too soon and Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are under pressure to solve the case quickly. However, with enemies in the shadows behind the seasonal trip, and with strong criticism from the local constabulary, the hunt for a cold-blooded killer is far from straightforward.

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Contents: I. Religion, evolution, and the novel; 1. 1888 and a look backwards; 2. George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler: three types of search; II. George Eliot: the search for a religious tradition; 1. George Eliot and science; 2. George Eliot and the "higher criticism"; 3. George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and tradition; III. Middlemarch: the balance of a progress; 1. "Heart" and "mind": two forms of progress; 2. "Modes of religion" (a); 3. Modes of religion" (b); 4. The "metaphysics" of Middlemarch; IV. Daniel Deronda: tradition as synthesis and salvation; 1. Middlemarch and the two "worlds" of Daniel Deronda; 2. Hebraism as nationality; 3. Hebraism as religious belief; V. Walter Pater: the search for a religious atmosphere; 1. Pater's "imaginary portraits"; 2. Pater's "religion of sanity"; VI. The "atmospheres" of Marius the Epicurean; 1. The pilgrimage of Marius (a); 2. The pilgrimage of Marius (b); 3. The Christian death of a pagan; VII. Samuel Butler: the search for a religious crossing; 1. The creation of a faith (1859-1872); 2. The consolidation of a faith (1873-1886); VIII. Reality and Utopia in The way of all flesh; 1. The "past selves" of Ernest Pontifex; 2. The conversion of Ernest Pontifex; 3. The creed of Ernest Pontifex; Appendixes; Index Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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From traditional seaside holiday treats like candy floss, ice cream and fish ’n’ chips, to the British fascination for baking, the Victorian era has shaped British culinary heritage. Victoria’s austere attitude after an age of Regency indulgence generated enormous cultural change. Excess and gluttony were replaced with morally upright values, and Victoria’s large family became the centre of the cultural imagination, with the power to begin new traditions. If Queen Victoria’s family sat down to turkey on Christmas day, so did the rest of the nation. Food was a significant part of the Victorians’ lives, whether they had too much of it or not enough. The destitute were fed gruel in the workhouses – the words of Dickens’s Oliver are forever imprinted on our minds: ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ The burgeoning street traders spilling over from the previous century devolved into a whole new culture of ‘mudlarks’, trotter boilers and food slop traders, to name but a few. Wealthy Victorians gorged with the newly emerging trend for breakfast, lunch and tea. Public dining became de rigeur, and the outdoor ‘pique-nique’, introduced a new way of eating. Victorians also struggled against many of these trends, with the belief that denial of food was a moral good. This was the era of educating and training in food management, combined with the old world of superstition and tradition, that changed British society forever.

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The estranged grandson of a wealthy collector of human curiosities becomes fascinated with teenaged twin sisters, leading them into a web of dark obsessions. A dazzlingly dark gothic novel from the bestselling author of The Somnambulist. 'Makes skilful use of the tropes of Victorian gothic fiction… a story of society’s outsiders seeking acceptance and redemption' Sunday Times Book of the Month ‘Mysterious, sometimes shocking, full of surprises and twists … brimming with Victorian wonders!’ Sean Lusk ‘A magical, macabre masterpiece’ A.J. West ‘Fascinating and immersive’ Anna Mazzola ________________________________Victorian England. A world of rural fairgrounds and glamorous London theatres. A world of dark secrets and deadly obsessions… Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn't grown a single inch since she was five. Coerced into promoting their father's quack elixir as they tour the country fairgrounds, at the age of fifteen the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as ‘Captain’. Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather, Lord Seabrook, a man who has a dark interest in anatomical freaks and other curiosities … particularly the human kind. Resenting his grandson for his mother’s death in childbirth, when Seabrook remarries and a new heir is produced, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name. Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical ‘family’ of performers, freaks and outcasts. But it is Theo’s fascination with Tilly and Keziah that will lead all of them into a web of deceits, exposing the darkest secrets and threatening everything they know… Exploring universal themes of love and loss, the power of redemption and what it means to be unique, The Fascination is an evocative, glittering and bewitching gothic novel that brings alive Victorian London – and darkness and deception that lies beneath… ________________________________ ‘Essie Fox follows in the footsteps of Angela Carter and AS Byatt with an adult fairy tale that delves into the darkest compulsions of human nature … an opium trance of a novel, a vivid fantasmagoria’ Noel O’Reilly ‘Deliciously dark, full of twists and surprises’ Liz Hyder ‘Filled with gothic darkness and glorious hope’ Liz Fenwick ‘Rich, dark and heady … a glorious gothic carnival’ Kate Griffin ‘Truly unexpected and original’ Kate Forsyth ‘Beautifully researched, full of horrors and delights … a chilling, thrilling slice of Victorian gothic’ Bridget Walsh ‘A cast of characters Dickens would be proud of’ Frances Quinn ‘A dizzying potion of a novel’ Polly Crosby ‘A twisty, gothic treat … wild and wonderful cast of characters’ Rebecca John ‘Rich in peril, tempered with strange, theatrical beauty’ Kate Mascarenhas ‘A wonderful, captivating carnival’ Elizabeth Fremantle ‘Haunting and emotive’ Gill Paul ‘A gorgeously gothic slice of Victoriana’ Katherine Clements ‘Beautifully controlled … exceptional storytelling, exquisitely told’ Nydia Hetherington ‘A beautiful, haunting tale peopled by a thrilling set of living, breathing characters … very fine historical fiction’ Emma Carroll ‘So inventive and surprising … beautiful writing, unforgettable characters’ Juliet West ‘A sumptuous, gothic treat that will reel you in and not let you go until the final page. Bravo!’ Caroline Green ‘Essie Fox is the mistress of gothic Victoriana … utterly beguiling and rendered in exquisite detail … a wonderful, captivating carnival of a novel’ Elizabeth Fremantle ‘Wonderfully vivid and touching … extraordinary’ Adele Geras ‘I loved this story of a group of wonderful “others” fighting to find their place and purpose in a glittering, but unforgiving, Victorian England’ Marika Cobbold ‘Atmospheric, gripping and ultimately uplifting’ Karen Coles ‘Richly detailed, beautifully written … a fascinating read’ Michael J Malone ‘The very best kind of gothic’ Lianne Dillsworth ‘Masterful’ Louise Swanson ‘A kaleidoscopic, twisting, devilish novel guaranteed to dazzle and delight. I was utterly beguiled’ Dan Bassett, Bookseller

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'An enthralling read' -- DAILY MAILIn the gripping new novel by the author of The Fourteenth Letter, a lawyer in Victorian London must find a man he got off a murder charge - and who seems to have killed again . . . Victorian London, 1882.Five years ago, crusading lawyer Cage Lackmann successfully defended Moses Pickering against a charge of murder. Now, a body is found bearing all the disturbing hallmarks of that victim - and Pickering is missing. Cage's reputation is in tatters, and worse, he is implicated in this new murder by the bitter detective who led the first failed case. Left with no other alternative, Cage must find Pickering to prove his innocence. Did Cage free a brutal murderer? Or is there something more sinister at work?PRAISE FOR CLAIRE EVANS'A darkly brilliant romp packed with intrigue and romance . . . curl up and prepare to become immersed'Heat'Exuberant plotting and witty prose. Great fun'The Times'Claire Evans has created a cast of deliciously sinister and mysterious characters. A hugely satisfying read'Good Housekeeping'If you enjoyed Kate Mosse's Labyrinth or Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist, then chances are you're going to love this new thriller' Hello Magazine

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How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity is a brilliant exploration of how the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, Simon Goldhill examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, Goldhill demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, Goldhill addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction--specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire--he discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.

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Explore the Victorians who lived in a time of great progress and change. Find out how factories and towns grew incredibly fast, and the British Empire reached its largest size. Discover the advances in transport, industry and architecture, and learn about the lives of both rich and poor.Read about Queen Victoria's long life and reign, the great Victorian buildings, ideas and inventions. Discover the working conditions in the mines and factories and a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild. The Explore! series delves into the most fascinating topics around for children at Key Stage 2, looking at the topic through a variety of subjects including design and technology, geography, art, literacy and numeracy.

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On 2 August 1876, a young policeman named Constable Nicholas Cock was shot dead while walking ‘the beat’ at Whalley Range, Manchester. A few months later, on the evening of 29 November 1876, Arthur Dyson, an engineer, was murdered in his own backyard at Banner Cross, Sheffield. Charles Peace was Victorian Britain’s most infamous cat burglar and murderer. He was a complex character: ruthless, devious, dangerous, charming, intelligent and creative. Mrs Katherine Dyson identified him as the murderer of her husband, and as the police searched the country for him, Peace was living a life of luxury under another identity in London. One of these murders became the most notorious and scandalous case of the Victorian age, with a tale of illicit romance and a nationwide hunt for Britain’s most wanted man; the other was to become a landmark in British legal history. Although no one suspected a link between them, these two sensational murder cases would, in the end, turn out to be tied together in a way that shocked Victorian society to its core.

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This monograph investigates the promotion and consumption of high musical culture among leisured society in Victorian London, by focusing on the activities of the concert manager John Ella and his Musical Union. This monograph investigates the promotion and consumption of high musical culture among leisured society in Victorian London, by focusing on the activities of the concert manager John Ella and his Musical Union [1845-81], an eminent, long-lived institution for chamber music, much fêted across Europe in its day. It combines a biography of Ella with a social-economic history of the Musical Union, its players, repertoire and audiences, and sets them against the gradually shifting contexts for London concerts, chamber music and cultural life. Ella's extraordinary life story, which began in provincial, artisan-class obscurity and ended in the upper echelons of London society, shapes thenarrative. Such themes as entrepreneurship, concert management, taste shaping, music appreciation and elite social networks are discussed throughout, as is the curious interplay between the desire to 'sacralize' chamber music, especially Beethoven's, on the one hand, and the need to survive amid the increasing commercial imperatives of London concert life on the other. CHRISTINA BASHFORD is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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The dramatic history of planet Earth and the rocky road to understanding the past A probing account of the history of the earth and an introduction to the many eccentric characters that have attempted to understand its origins. Full of fascinating anecdotes about 19th century explorers and natural philosophers who first carved up Earth's history just as others were carving up the globe. Unravels the fascinating history of rock strata and the implications they have had on accepted theories on the Earth's life. Considers the future of the earth, and what a repeat of some of the catastrophic events of the earth's past, such as major earthquakes and asteroid collisions, could mean for life today.

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Venture into the woods alongside a pioneering female mycologist. This one-of-a-kind, keepsake volume celebrates the timeless fascination of fungi.Very little is known about M. F. Lewis—not even her first name. Mysterious, prolific, and deeply enamored with the world of mushrooms, she left us a treasure trove of mycological illustrations. For over forty years, from 1860 to 1902, Lewis rambled across England and Wales, recording an astonishing biodiversity of fungi. Her delicately drawn, boldly colored images evoke the strange and powerful beauty of this kingdom. This handsome volume collects hundreds of Lewis's watercolors, contextualized by a foreword from mycologist Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian. It's a must-have for today's mushroom lovers who are curious about the history of mycology and for any admirer of vintage botanical illustration who wants to discover something different.FASCINATING FUNGI: Mushrooms are having a real moment, but they've always captured our imaginations, even in Victorian times. Lewis's gorgeous artwork offers the modern mushroom fan a new way to appreciate their favorite kingdom. VINTAGE AESTHETIC: This lovely clothbound volume evokes the magic of uncovering a treasure in a jumbled vintage bookstore. FEMINIST HISTORY: While little is known of the elusive M. F. Lewis, we can celebrate the legacy that she and other female naturalists of the 19th century left for women in science and art today. ARTFUL SCIENCE: Lewis's illustrated field notes showcase the intersection of art and science at its best.Perfect for: Mushroom hunters, eaters, and admirers Fans of cottagecore and goblincore aesthetics Collectors of vintage books and vintage botanical illustration Collectors of Victorian ephemera Readers of feminist history Environmentalists, scientists, and artists

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How did the emigration of nineteenth-century Britons to colonies of settlement shape Victorian literature? Philip Steer uncovers productive networks of writers and texts spanning Britain, Australia, and New Zealand to argue that the novel and political economy found common colonial ground over questions of British identity. Each chapter highlights the conceptual challenges to the nature of 'Britishness' posed by colonial events, from the gold rushes to invasion scares, and traces the literary aftershocks in familiar genres such as the bildungsroman and the utopia. Alongside lesser-known colonial writers such as Catherine Spence and Julius Vogel, British novelists from Dickens to Trollope are also put in a new light by this fresh approach that places Victorian studies in a colonial perspective. Bringing together literary formalism and British World history, Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature describes how what it meant to be 'British' was re-imagined in an increasingly globalized world.

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A facsimile collection of six books which are extracts and/or collection of cartoons from the Victorian satirical magazine FUN published during its peak time in the 1870s and 80s. Decribed as ‘Funch’ or ‘the poor man’s Punch’, FUN became the most successful rival of Punch, and gained popularity among the people in the lower-middle class. Important source of information for any researchers and students interested in the Victorian social life and the media history.

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The Body Economic revises the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Britain by demonstrating that political economists and the writers who often presented themselves as their literary antagonists actually held most of their basic social assumptions in common. Catherine Gallagher demonstrates that political economists and their Romantic and early-Victorian critics jointly relocated the idea of value from the realm of transcendent spirituality to that of organic "life," making human sensations--especially pleasure and pain--the sources and signs of that value. Classical political economy, this book shows, was not a mechanical ideology but a form of nineteenth-century organicism, which put the body and its feelings at the center of its theories, and neoclassical economics built itself even more self-consciously on physiological premises. The Body Economic explains how these shared views of life, death, and sensation helped shape and were modified by the two most important Victorian novelists: Charles Dickens and George Eliot. It reveals how political economists interacted crucially with the life sciences of the nineteenth century--especially with psychophysiology and anthropology--producing the intellectual world that nurtured not only George Eliot's realism but also turn-of-the-century literary modernism.

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In the dead of night in a notorious area of Victorian London's East End known as St Giles a factory girl stumbles over the bloody bodies of two City gentlemen. When Detective John Evan finally arrives at the scene, he is confronted by a most difficult investigation. First he must identify the men. Then he must find out why men of means and social standing would go to such a sordid area. Most importantly, who are their assailants? And how could they escape unharmed and unnoticed? Mercifully the younger victim is not quite dead. Having sustained terrible internal injuries, he's later released home from hospital severely traumatised and unable to speak - to be told that the other victim, his father, is dead, and Hester Latterly has been employed to help nurse him back to full recovery. With too many obstacles impeding his progress, Evan finally enlists the aid of his old friend, William Monk, who, together with Hester's help, must unravel one of his most complex and shocking cases yet.

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The Victorians risked more than just delays when boarding a steam train . . .Victorian inventors certainly didn't lack steam, but while they squabbled over who deserved the title of 'The Father of the Locomotive' and enjoyed their fame and fortune, safety on the rails was not their priority. Brakes were seen as a needless luxury and boilers had an inconvenient tendency to overheat and explode, and in turn, blow up anyone in reach.Often recognised as having revolutionised travel and industrial Britain, Victorian railways were perilous. Disease, accidents and disasters accounted for thousands of deaths and many more injuries. While history has focused on the triumph of engineers, the victims of the Victorian railways had names, lives and families and they deserve to be remembered . . .

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Facts meet fiction in this exciting, intricate Victorian detective story!Jane Pinny has moved to the very grand Lytton House to be a Maid Of All Work. And being a Maid Of All Work means that she has to do... well, ALL the work, obviously! Cleaning, dusting, scrubbing, washing - there's SO much to do in a Victorian country house. But when a priceless jade necklace belonging to the lady of the house disappears, Jane turns accidental detective (with the help of her best friend, a pigeon called Plump...) - can she solve the mystery of the missing jewels before it's too late?Perfect for fans of Horrible Histories, filled with amazing facts and historical trivia, with an exciting story and brilliant illustrations, you won't be able to put this SECRET DIARY down!Read the other books in the series:The Secret Diary of John Drawbridge, Medieval Knight in TrainingThe Secret Diary of Thomas Snoop, Tudor Boy SpyThe Secret Diary of Kitty Cask, Smuggler's Daughter

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Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman who commits Matrimony, dealt with alike by your law?"So ends the "little allegory" in conversational form with which Frances Power Cobbe opens the 1868 essay that gives this collection its title. Cobbe was a widely read essayist of remarkable lucidity and power; her pieces display incisive wit and remarkable focus as she returns repeatedly to "the woman question," but it was typical of the time that when Cobbe died she was described in the Wellesley Index to Victorian periodicals as a "miscellaneous writer."Cobbe was not alone; as much as 15 per cent of the essays in Victorian periodicals were written by women, yet even the best of these pieces were allowed by the male-dominated world of scholarship to disappear from print. This anthology makes available again some of the best Victorian writing by women. The second edition has been revised and updated; additions include a chronology and an essay by Frances Power Cobbe on the education of women.

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The Salvation Army is well known for its work with the poor and disadvantaged. There is, however, much more to the story of the Salvation Army than their highly commendable good works. They have been so closely identified with a programme of social action that their wider history has been marginalized. This history includes a period of astonishing levels of opposition and religious persecution which the Army faced in its early years. Many Salvationists were badly injured in violent street riots against them while at the same time facing imprisonment as the force of the law was brought to bear on their evangelism. Among all those places in Britain where the Salvation Army was persecuted, that in the south-coast town of Eastbourne during the 1880s and 1890s stands out as worthy of attention. The Sussex seaside resort played a hugely important part in the wider anti-Salvation Army narrative as it was in Eastbourne that opposition was among the most violent and protracted. Significantly and surprisingly, the vehemence and savagery was supported by the local Council and Mayor. The narrative of The Mob and The Mayor is chronological and entirely evidence based. It includes: Eyewitness accounts; newspaper reports; Parliamentary papers; Eastbourne Council & Watch Committee Meetings Minutes; and Salvation Army documents. Britain was at times at war with itself as the country came to terms with urban poverty resulting from the Industrial Revolution. The persecution of the Salvation Army at the Victorian seaside sheds a wider light on the struggles to promote social betterment for all.

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The Strand is one of London's most iconic streets - today the bustling and thriving home of West End theatres and the luxurious Savoy hotel; in the Victorian era, the Strand was a much more seedy and destitute part of the city. Barry Anthony here explores the criminal and socially subversive behaviour which abounded in and around the Victorian Strand. He introduces us to a vast range of personalities - from prostitutes, confidence tricksters, vagrants and cadgers to the actors, comedians and music hall stars who trod the boards of the Strand's early theatres.

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This collection will draw attention to new ideas in both Victorian studies and in the emerging area of literature and the environment. Adopting a broad interpretation of the term ‘environment’ the work aims to draw together new approaches to Victorian texts and cultures that conceptualise and are influenced by environments ranging from rural to urban, British to Antipodean, and from the terrestrial to the aquatic.With the pressures of industrialism and the clustering of workers in urban centres, the Victorians were acutely aware that their environment was changing. Torn between nostalgia for a countryside that was in jeopardy and exhilaration at the rapidity with which their surroundings altered, the literature and culture produced by the Victorians reflects a world undergoing radical change. Colonization and assisted emigration schemes expanded the scope of the environment still further, pushing the boundaries of the ‘home’ on an unprecedented scale and introducing strange new worlds. These untamed physical environments enabled new freedoms, but also posed challenges that invited attempts to control, taxonomize and harness the natural world. Victorian Environments draws together leading and emerging international scholars for an examination of how various kinds of environments were constructed, redefined, and transformed, in British and colonial texts and cultures, with particular attention to the relationship between Australia and Britain.

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The third edition of the Victorian Era volume of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature includes a number of changes and new additions, including the complete texts of In Memoriam A.H.H., The Importance of Being Earnest, Carmilla, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Contexts sections on 'Work and Poverty,' 'Women in Society,' 'Sexuality in the Victorian Era,' 'Nature and the Environment,' 'The New Woman,' and 'Britain, Empire, and a Wider World.' The third edition also offers expanded representation of writers of color, including Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Toru Dutt, Mary Ann Shadd, and Rabindranath Tagore.

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In the autumn of 1888, a series of grisly murders took place in Whitechapel in London's East End, the Abyss, the Ghetto, the City of Eternal Night. The Whitechapel murderer, arguably the first of his kind, was never caught but the killings gave rise to the best known pen-name in criminal history - Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel killer was terrifyingly real but Jack was the creation of Fleet Street, the gallows humour of a newspaper hack whose sole aim in life was to sell newspapers. And where the Dear Boss' letter, with its trade name' signature led, thousands followed. This book is not about the world's first serial killer but about the sick, the perverted, the twisted souls who put pen to paper purporting to be the killer or suggested ever more lurid ways in which he could be caught. Innocent men were put in the frame by Victorian trouble-makers who would be perfectly at home with today's Internet trolls, pointing cruel fingers in almost perfect anonymity. The book takes the lid off Victorian mindsets, exposing a dark and unnatural place as topsy-turvy as that inhabited by the killer himself.

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The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory, Concise Edition is less than half the length of the full anthology, but preserves the main principles of the larger work. A number of longer poems (such as Tennyson's In Memoriam) are included in their entirety; there are generous selections from the work of all major poets, and a representative selection of other work; the work of Victorian women poets features very prominently; and a substantial selection of poetic theory is included to round out the volume.

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Throughout the nineteenth century the British Empire was the subject of much writing; floods of articles, books and government reports were produced about the areas under British control and the policy of imperialism. Mid-Victorian Imperialists investigates how the Victorians made sense of all the information regarding the empire by examining the writings of a collection of gentlemen who were amongst the first people to join the Colonial Society in 1868-69. These men included imperial officials, leading settlers, British politicians and writers, and Beasley looks at the common trends in their beliefs about the British Empire and how their thoughts changed during their lives to show how Mid-Victorian theories of racial, cultural and political classification arose.

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In 1872, a young archaeologist at the British Museum made a tremendous discovery. While he was working his way through a Mesopotamian ‘slush pile’, George Smith, a self-taught expert in ancient languages, happened upon a Babylonian version of Noah’s Flood. His research suggested this ‘Deluge Tablet’ pre-dated the writing of Genesis by a millennium or more. Smith went on to translate what later became The Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest and most complete work of literature from any culture.Against the backdrop of innovative readings of a range of paintings, novels, histories and photographs (by figures like Dickens, Eliot, James, Dyce, Turner, Macaulay and Carlyle), this book demonstrates the Gordian complexity of the Victorians’ relationship with history, while also seeking to highlight the Epic’s role in influencing models of time in late-Victorian geology.Discovering Gilgamesh will be of interest to readers, students and researchers in literary studies, Victorian studies, history, intellectual history, art history and archaeology.

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An experienced Chartered Surveyor, Ian Rock has refurbished numerous older properties as well as designing and developing new houses. He has contributed articles on residential property issues to The Observer, and was formerly a Publisher with EMAP magazines and Associate with Countrywide Surveyors. He has previously written several Haynes books: 1930s House Manual, Home Extension Manual, Loft Conversion Manual, Period Property Manual, Build Your Own House and Home Buying and Selling Manual as well as the first edition of the Victorial House Manual.|Written in a friendly and accessible style, yet technically comprehensive. How your house was built – its age and history. How to add value. New edition includes updated rules and regulations and guidance on environmental issues. Packed with entertaining snippets – everything from anthrax in the walls and ingress of sewer rats to why cats are bad news for certain roofs. Each chapter is devoted to a key part of the house: roofs, walls, windows, ceilings, etc. In the comprehensive style of a Building Survey, with full-colour photos and some step-by-step projects for repairs. Defects, causes and solutions: how to identify, solve and prevent all common defects found in Victorian houses, with some common scams exposed|Many of Britain’s four million Victorian and Edwardian houses were shoddily built and often require ‘essential repairs’. Problems like rising damp, timber decay, bowed roofs and subsidence are well known, but how can you tell if your house has major defects or is just typical for its age? Forget ‘makeovers’: this new edition of the Victorian House Manual, which has been extensively updated, shows where to look for danger signs, what’s ‘normal’ and what isn’t, and how to fix common defects. Equipped with this book, you can talk the same language as builders and property professionals. ? Written in a friendly and enjoyable style, and yet technically comprehensive. ? How your house was built – its age and history. What adds value? ? Packed with entertaining snippets – everything from anthrax in the walls and ingress of sewer rats to why cats are bad news for some roofs. ? Each chapter is devoted to a key part of the house: roofs, walls, windows, ceilings, etc, in the comprehensive style of a Building Survey, with full-colour photos and some step-by-step projects for repairs. ? Defects, causes and solutions: how to identify, solve and prevent all common defects found in Victorian houses, with some common scams exposed.

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Born in England in 1857, Agnes Mary Frances Robinson contributed to cultural and literary currents from nineteenth-century Victorianism to twentieth-century modernism; she was equally at home in London and Paris and prolific in both English and French. Yet Robinson remains an enigma on many levels.This literary biography integrates Robinson's unorthodox life with her development as a writer across genres. Best known for her poetry, Robinson was also a respected biographer, history writer, travel writer, and contributor of reviews and articles to the Times Literary Supplement for nearly forty years. She had a romantic friendship with the writer Vernon Lee and two happy – and celibate – marriages. Her salons in London and Paris were attended by major literary and artistic figures, and she counted amongst her friends Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, John Addington Symonds, Gaston Paris, Ernest Renan, and Maurice Barrès.Reflecting a decade of research in international archives and family papers, A. Mary F. Robinson reveals the extraordinary woman behind the popular writer and critically acclaimed poet.

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At the height of the Gilded Age, America's wealthiest families began to build luxurious summer cottages away from the grit and grime of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in idyllic locales such as, Newport, Southampton, Tuxedo Park, and Lenox. Another place the new American aristocracy settled was in the peninsula of Belle Haven, Connecticut. The New York Times called it, "the flower garden of Greenwich, and, indeed, of the whole Connecticut shore". Victorian Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Connecticut focuses on the first great flowering of Belle Haven, from 1884-1929 - a period where the Gilded Age's most renowned architects designed masterpieces in many styles, all for the movers and shakers of the day. Each chapter tells the story of a house, an architect, and the predominant owner. While some of these houses are, sadly, gone or unrecognisably changed, this book does the job of visually preserving them in their original glory.

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A richly illustrated and provocative discussion of Victorian culture through an exploration of common household goods

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As prominent members of the Victorian cultural and artistic world, Sir Charles and Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, along with their nephew Charles Locke Eastlake, enjoyed the friendship and support of influential figures including Prince Albert, Sir Thomas Lawrence, J. M. W. Turner, and Sir Robert Peel. This fascinating original biography brings the unique personality of each of the Eastlakes into sharp focus while also exploring their important contributions during the early days of the National Gallery. Charles Eastlake, an artist and connoisseur, was chosen to be not only the President of the Royal Academy from 1850, but also the National Gallery's first Director in 1855. With his capable wife, a literary critic and art historian in her own right, he traveled throughout Europe acquiring significant paintings for the Gallery and implementing important changes to their display and description. Nephew Charles, an architect and popularizer of the Arts and Crafts style, was Keeper at the National Gallery from 1878 to 1898. Art for the Nation tells the remarkable story of the Eastlake family's devotion to art and to the National Gallery during its crucial formative years.Published by National Gallery Company / Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:National Gallery, London(07/27/11-10/30/11)

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Be upstanding for the Queen! Experience a golden age in British history with this leading reference title for children, which celebrates peace, progress, and prosperity during the reign of Queen Victoria.Eyewitness Victorians is an essential part of the best-selling Eyewitness series. This comprehensive visual guide for younger readers explores how the Industrial Revolution changed the world forever. Watch vast railway networks take shape, large-scale factories hard at work, and the nationwide move from farming communities to populated cities. Learn the differences between life upstairs and downstairs in the houses of Victorian England to decide whether you would have liked to grow up in this fascinating era.This updated edition is more interactive and informative than ever before, with new infographics, statistics, facts, and timelines designed to educate and entertain. A giant fold-out wall chart of Victorian history provides a useful reference tool for classrooms and bedrooms alike.

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The discovery of a cache of thousands of letters and dozens of diaries brings to light the untold story of Mrs. Tennant and her glittering social world Gertrude Tennant’s life was remarkable for its length (1819–1918), but even more so for the influence she achieved as an unsurpassed London hostess. The salon she established when widowed in her early fifties attracted legions of celebrities, among them William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Thomas Huxley, John Everett Millais, Henry James, and Robert Browning. In her youth she had a fling with Gustave Flaubert, and in her later years she became the redoubtable mother-in-law to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. But as a woman in a male-dominated world, Mrs. Tennant has been remembered mainly as a footnote in the lives of eminent men.This book recovers the lost life of Gertrude Tennant, drawing on a treasure trove of recently discovered family papers—thousands of letters, including two dozen original letters from Flaubert to Tennant; dozens of diaries; and many other unpublished documents relating to Stanley and other famous figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. David Waller presents Gertrude Tennant’s life in colorful detail, placing her not only at the heart of a multigenerational, matriarchal family epic but also at the center of European social, literary, and intellectual life for the best part of a century.

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In the summer of 1845, Frederick Douglass, the young runaway slave catapulted to fame by his incendiary autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, arrived in Liverpool for the start of a near-two-year tour of Britain and Ireland he always called one of the most transformative periods of his life. Laurence Fenton draws on a wide array of sources from both sides of the Atlantic and combines a unique insight into the early years of one of the great figures of the nineteenth-century world with rich profiles of the enormous personalities at the heart of the transatlantic anti-slavery movement. This vivid portrait of life in Victorian Britain is the first to fully explore the ‘liberating sojourn’ that ended with Douglass gaining his freedom – paid for by British supporters – before returning to America as a celebrity and icon of international standing. It also follows his later life, through the American Civil War and afterwards. Douglass has been described as ‘the most influential African American of the nineteenth century’. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women’s rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted most of his time, immense talent and boundless energy to ending slavery. On April 14, 1876, Douglass would deliver the keynote speech at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington’s Lincoln Park.

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After a brilliant military career in India, General Thaddeus Carlyon finally meets death not in the frenzy of battle, but at a London dinner party, in what appears to be a freak accident. But the General's beautiful wife readily confesses that she killed him - a story she clings to even under the shadow of the gallows. Investigator William Monk, nurse Hestor Latterly and Oliver Rathbone, counsel for the defence, work feverishly to break down the silence of the accused and her husband's proud family; and with the trial only days away they inch towards the appalling heart of the mystery.

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An engaging account of the life of a nineteenth-century priest. The Revd Benjamin Armstrong, for many years vicar of the market town of East Dereham, Norfolk, is best-known for what have been described as "one of England's greatest clerical diaries", eleven volumes spanning his whole adult life, between 1850 and 1888. This first full biography puts his story into the context of the period in which he lived: a time of turmoil in the church, with its conflict between high and low forms of service, and theological arguments, stirred up not least by controversies over Darwin's theories of creation. It also vividly portrays rural life at a time of great change, when society became more fluid, railways allowed the economy to grow and develop, and thevote was extended. We see this through the eyes of Armstrong himself, a fine example of the then "new-style" Church of England clergy who lived in their parishes, took more services than their predecessors, supported their schools and showed a genuine concern for the well-being of their parishioners. By the time he retired, church life in Dereham had been transformed, with congregations typically of 1,000 at each of the Sunday services. Armstrong also served on various Local Boards, as well as setting up the Literary Institute, the Rifle Volunteers and supporting musical and cultural events. He also had a full social life; his friends included prominent townspeople and the local clergy, gentry and aristocracy -- and there are incisive pen portraits of many of his associates and their eccentricities. These activities are set against the background of his family life, with its moments of tragedy and worry, including the death of a young child and the elopement of another. Dr SUSANNA WADE MARTINS is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia. Her previous publications includeThe East Anglian Countryside: Changing Landscapes 1870-1950 with Tom Williamson (2008), Coke of Norfolk, 1754-1842 (2009) and The Conservation Movement in Norfolk - A History (2015).

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A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A rich and exuberant group biography of the first geologists, the people who were first to excavate from the layers of the world its buried history. These first geologists were made up primarily, and inevitably, of gentlemen with the necessary wealth to support their interests, yet boosting their numbers, expanding their learning and increasing their findings were clergymen, academics – and women. This lively and eclectic collection of characters brought passion, eccentricity and towering intellect to geology and Brenda Maddox in Reading the Rocks does them full justice, bringing them to vivid life. The new science of geology was pursued by this assorted band because it opened a window on Earth’s ancient past. They showed great courage in facing the conflict between geology and Genesis that immediately presented itself: for the rocks and fossils being dug up showed that the Earth was immeasurably old, rather than springing from a creation made in the six days that the Bible claimed. It is no coincidence that Charles Darwin was a keen geologist. The individual stories of these first geologists, their hope and fears, triumphs and disappointments, the theological, philosophical and scientific debates their findings provoked, and the way that as a group, they were to change irrevocably and dramatically our understanding of the world is told by Brenda Maddox with a storyteller’s skill and a fellow scientist’s understanding. The effect is absorbing, revelatory and strikingly original.

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Home is where the horror is…Jilted thriller writer Lady Violet Thorn has withdrawn to the Suffolk market town of Montford with two servants and her leading character, the adventuress Ruby Gibson, for company.Violet’s peace is disturbed when a stranger asks her for help, claiming that a friend is being kept prisoner in her own home. Her visitor seems so afraid that Violet, despite her scepticism, is persuaded to investigate.A woman is killed outside Violet’s house, then another murdered in the town and, as the deaths mount up, she becomes convinced that they all lead to one place: the increasingly forbidding Haglin House, and whoever lives there…M.R.C. Kasasian returns with a fresh, witty and totally enthralling take on the classic crime genre, perfect for fans of Anthony Horowitz, M. C. Beaton and Oscar De Muriel.

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