Search results for ""Author Victoria"

''If a Louis Wain cat were reading this book, he would raise his topper in tribute' The TimesExcellent Hughes reveals a fascinating, forgotten aspect of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain: how the British fell in love with felines' Daily Mail?Some called it a craze. To others it was a cult. Join prize-winning historian Kathryn Hughes to discover how Britain fell in love with cats and ushered in a new era.He invented a whole cat world' declared H. G. Wells of Louis Wain, the Edwardian artist whose anthropomorphic kittens made him a household name. His drawings were irresistible but Catland was more than the creation of one eccentric imagination. It was an attitude a way of being in society while discreetly refusing to follow its rules.As cat capitalism boomed in the spectacular Edwardian age, prized animals changed hands for hundreds of pounds and a new industry sprung up to cater for their every need. Cats were no longer basement-dwelling pest-controllers, but stylish cultural subv

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Kilmarnock is the largest town in Ayrshire and a major centre for the west of Scotland. It expanded hugely during the Industrial Revolution and in recent decades has rebuilt itself extensively, streets and structures built by Victorian planners being replaced with new shopping areas and buildings. Many of the manufacturing industries which had characterised Kilmarnock have closed in this period, from locomotive engineering, carpet making and agricultural machinery with Massey Ferguson, to Saxone shoes and Johnnie Walker whisky. The town has had to generate a new economy in recent years with the centre and housing areas being redeveloped.Lost Kilmarnock presents a portrait of this town in Ayrshire over the last century to recent decades that has radically changed or disappeared today, showing not only industries and buildings that have gone but also people and street scenes, many popular places of entertainment and much more. This fascinating photographic history of lost Kilmarnock will

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Inspired by the swashbuckling travelogues of Victorian diplomat Lord Dufferin, frail surburbanite Tim Moore sets out to prove his physical and spiritual worth before his sceptical Nordic in-laws by retracing Dufferin's epic voyage to Iceland and Spitzbergen. Dufferin's battles with icebergs, polar bears and the deep potations of hospitable Norsemen is a tale of derring-do; Moore's struggle against seasickness, vertigo and over-priced groceries is all too plainly one of derring-don't. As his bid to emulate the Empire tradition of fearless pluck in the face of adversity crumbles before haughty Icelandic skippers, a convoy of Norwegian Vikings and Spitzbergen's Soviet ghost towns, he finds himself transferring his affections to Dufferin's valet Wilson, a man so profoundly gloomy that 'he was seen to smile but once, when told that his colleague, the steward, had been almost thrown overboard'. As Moore says, 'Dufferin seems the personification of Kipling's 'If'. I'm more of a 'But... ' man myself.' FROST ON MY MOUSTACHE is the wretched apologia of a big earl's blouse.

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What was it like to live in Melbourne during the 2020-2021 lockdowns? Capturing the day-to-day struggles of lockdown, the daily news, Dan Andrews’ 11am morning press conferences, the tensions between Victorians and the rest of Australia, Trump’s chaotic America, the conspiracy theories that circulated and battling her own mental health, Sandy Jeffs takes us through the whirlwind of events in imaginative haiku poems. These became her sanity while the world spiralled into madness. First wave fear is back. Before an end was in sight now there is no end. Trying to make sense of an unravelling world that is downright mad. This is not only a book about the pandemic but also about political wins and political failures. From Dan Andrews to Donald Trump. Each day brings news that creates despair or joy: the pandemic numbers and the voting numbers side by side. And as the world is in the grip of COVID madness, sanity is found in poetry.

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This book explores the legal and social consequences of growing up illegitimate in England and Wales. Unlike most other studies of illegitimacy, Frost's book concentrates on the late-Victorian period and the early twentieth century, and takes the child's point of view rather than that of the mother or of 'child-saving' groups. Doing so allows for an extended analysis of criminal and civil cases involving illegitimacy, including less-studied aspects such as affiliation suits, the poor law and war pensions. In addition, the book explores the role of blended, extended and adoptive families, the circulation of children through different homes and institutions, and the prejudices children endured in school, work and home. While showing how the effects of illegitimacy varied both by class and gender, the book highlights the ways in which children showed resilience in surviving the various types of discrimination common in this period. It will appeal to anyone interested in British social history, childhood studies, or legal history.

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Some of the most compelling and enduring creative work of the late Victorian and Edwardian Era came from committed imperialists and conservatives. Their continuing popularity owes a great deal to the way their guiding ideas resonated with modernism in the arts and psychology. The analogy they perceived between the imperial business of subjugating savage subjects and the civilised ego's struggle to subdue the unruly savage within generated some of their best artistic endeavours. In a series of thematically linked chapters Imperium of the soul explores the work of writers Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Rider Haggard and John Buchan along with the composer Edward Elgar and the architect Herbert Baker. It culminates with an analysis of their mutual infatuation with T. E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia - who represented all their dreams for the future British Empire but whose ultimate paralysis of creative imagination exposed the fatal flaw in their psycho-political project.

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Private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson take on another unusual and baffling case in Victorian London when a mummy unwrapping party takes a chilling turn.London, 1895. Although their last high-profile case was a huge success, private detectives Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson know they can''t afford to turn down any work, despite financial assistance from their mentor, Sherlock Holmes.So when the eminent Doctor Enoch Sawyer of St Bart''s Hospital asks Badger if the duo will provide security for a mummy unwrapping party he is hosting, Badger doesn''t hesitate to take the job. After all, how hard can guarding the doctor''s bizarre Egyptian artifacts be? But with Doctor Sawyer running late for his own party, the ''genuine'' ancient sarcophagus of Runihura Saa is unravelled to reveal the remains of . . . Doctor Sawyer! Suddenly, the pair are drawn into a case that''s stranger and twistier than they could ever have imagined.

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This nostalgic look at children's costume, from 1860 to 1920, reveals diverse cultural influences on its manufacture and design. More than 300 historic photographs, fashion plates, and selections from vintage catalogs and magazines, plus 115 color images, show examples of costume and accessories. See infants in period dress plus school-aged and teen fads and trends. Learn about the history of clothing use and development, fabric types, conservation and storage of textiles, and artistic inspiration, all arranged by decade. All types of clothing are represented, including christening gowns; boys’ breeches, knickerbockers, and sack suits; swimwear and underwear; bloomers and blouses; fur, feather boas, and frocks; sailor suits and uniforms; collars and belts; capes and hoods; lingerie and dresses; sweaters and cardigans; overalls; and many more. Whether you are interested in clothing children wore in 1920 or to church in the Victorian era, this reference is a fun and evocative collection.

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Living in sin is the first book-length study of cohabitation in nineteenth-century England, based on research into the lives of hundreds of couples. ‘Common-law’ marriages did not have any legal basis, so the Victorian courts had to wrestle with unions that resembled marriage in every way, yet did not meet its most basic requirements. The majority of those who lived in irregular unions did so because they could not marry legally. Others, though, chose not to marry, from indifference, from class differences, or because they dissented from marriage for philosophical reasons. This book looks at each motivation in turn, highlighting class, gender and generational differences, as well as the reactions of wider kin and community. Frost shows how these couples slowly widened the definition of legal marriage, preparing the way for the more substantial changes of the twentieth century, making this a valuable resource for all those interested in Gender and Social History.

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Scotland's Lost Clubs: Giving the Names You've Heard the Story They Own is the gripping, constantly surprising, intrinsically romantic and all too commonly tragic story of some of Scotland's lost football clubs. You'll be taken on a journey across Scotland, from the Highlands to the English border, with tales of some of the most important names in world football and their impact on the modern game. Learn about the picturesque Victorian seaside town that had no fewer than five clubs, and the team that rescued a league rival who was shipwrecked only to sadly disappear the year Celtic won the European Cup. Discover how a mining village of less than 3,000 inhabitants became world champions but folded 36 years later. Football at its most raw and disorganised was a breeding ground for amazing stories, and Scotland's Lost Clubs captures some of the very best of them. It's essential reading for any Scottish football fan.

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Glory, Glory Lane is the life-affirming history - including a momentous last season - of a world-famous football stadium, home to Tottenham Hotspur for 118 years. A Victorian structure turned wraparound 21st-century all-seater, it became a theatre of dreams for supporters all attracted by teams which played the 'Spurs way' to achieve glory. The Lane gave a stage to a conveyor belt of legends from Cameron to Alli via Nicholson, Blanchflower, Greaves, Hoddle and Klinsmann. It provided unforgettable memories in unforgettable atmospheres - heart-lifting, heart-breaking, nerve-racking. Its story veers from founders obsessed by Harry Hotspur to Harry Kane via Harry Redknapp; through matches, personalities, ground developments and threatened closure, all with first-hand accounts. It's hard to imagine how a new GBP750m stadium can ever replace the edifice which shut its gates for the last time after Spurs played Manchester United in May 2017, having created a daunting legacy.

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Ghosts and spectres, the eerie and the occult. Why is contemporary culture so preoccupied by the supernatural, so captivated by the revenants of an earlier age, so haunted? The concept of Hauntology has evolved since first emerging in the 1990s, and has now entered the cultural mainstream as a shorthand for our new-found obsession with the recent past. But where does this term come from and what exactly does it mean? This book seeks to answer these questions by examining the history of our fascination with the uncanny from the golden age of the Victorian ghost story to the present day. From Dickens to Derrida, MR James to Mark Fisher; from the rise of Spiritualism to the folk horror revival, Hauntology traces our continuing engagement with these esoteric ideas. Moving between the literary and the theoretical, the visual and the political, Hauntology explores our nostalgia for the cultural artefacts of a past from which we seem unable to break free.

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A Radio 4 Book of the Week.'Fascinating . . . filled with lively historical digressions.' New York Times 'Best True Crime of 2022'In 1888 Louis Le Prince shot the world's first motion picture in Leeds, England. In 1890, weeks before the public unveiling of his camera and projector - a year before Thomas Edison announced that the had invented a motion picture camera - Le Prince stepped on a train in France - and disappeared without a trace. He was never seen or heard from again. No body was ever found.Le Prince's family were convinced Edison had stolen Louis's work, and so they sued the most famous inventor in the world. By the time the lawsuit was over, Le Prince's own son was dead under suspicious circumstances - and modern Hollywood was being born.Paul Fischer's new book excavates one of the Victorian age's great unsolved mysteries, and in the process offers a revelatory rewriting of the birth of motion pictures.

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In Victorian London at the height of the industrial revolution, Horatio Lyle is a former Special Constable with a passion for science and invention. He's also an occasional, but reluctant, sleuth. The truth is that he'd rather be in his lab tinkering with dangerous chemicals and odd machinery than running around the cobbled streets of London trying to track down stolen goods. But when Her Majesty's Government calls, Horatio swaps his microscope for a magnifying glass, fills his pockets with things that explode and sallies forth to unravel a mystery of a singularly extraordinary nature.Thrown together with a reformed (i.e. 'caught') pickpocket called Tess, and a rebellious (within reason) young gentleman called Thomas, Lyle and his faithful hound, Tate, find themselves pursuing an ancient Chinese plate, a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of polite society and a dangerous enemy who may not even be human. Solving the crime will be hard enough - surviving would be a bonus...

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Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there's no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list. Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive colour. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein's special relativity to modern electronics. Along the way, he set up one of the most enduring challenges in physics, one that has taxed the best minds ever since. 'Maxwell's demon' is a tiny but thoroughly disruptive thought experiment that suggests the second law of thermodynamics, the law that governs the flow of time itself, can be broken. This is the story of a groundbreaking scientist, a great contributor to our understanding of the way the world works, and his duplicitous demon.

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A LIGHT-HEARTED, INTIMATE AND EMPHATICALLY FEMINIST HISTORY OF DATING 'A new approach to romance . . . The heroines of Regency novels could teach today's young women a trick or two' Sunday Times'Entertaining and well-researched' The Lady'Pacey, intelligent and authoritative with bags of wit' Law Gazette'A whistle-stop tour of dating through history' History ExtraWhat if Mr Darcy had simply been able to swipe right?Dating has never been easy. The road to true love has always been rutted with heartbreak, but do we have it any easier today? How did Victorians 'come out'? How did love blossom in war-torn Europe? And why did 80s' video-dating never take off? Bursting with little-known facts and tantalising tales of lovelorn men and besotted women, Nichi Hodgson's intriguing history of amorous relationships, from enamoured Georgians to frenziedly swiping millennials (and everyone in between) may leave you grateful that you live - and love - today.

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A heart-warming and moving tale of courage and friendship set in Victorian Liverpool, for fans of Call the Midwife, Daisy Styles and Nadine Dorries. 'Deftly written and moving' Woman's Own__________Liverpool, 1870One act of kindness will change a young woman's life forever . . .On the dirty backstreets of Liverpool, housemaid Maud Linklater witnesses an appalling accident. Rushing young chimney-sweep Alfie to hospital, she helps nurse the boy on the overcrowded ward - and finds herself with a new job. Maud cannot believe her luck at joining trainees Alice and Eddy at the new Nurses' Training School and they form the closest of bonds. Then one day Alfie is abducted. Maud and the girls know the alleyways and slums of Liverpool are no place for a lost little boy. Can these determined women find Alfie before it's too late?'A heartwarming and tear-inducing tale with wonderfully realistic characters' Woman

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Shortly before his death, the Devonshire-born cleric, writer and antiquarian, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) wrote: 'To this day I consider that the recovery of our West Country melodies has been the principal achievement of my life.' Though there have been a number of biographies of this Victorian polymath, none has looked in detail at his role as a leading figure in the English folk song. Most of Baring-Gould's childhood was spent travelling in Europe with his family. Away from the influences of a conventional education he explored the mythology, romances and folklore of northern Europe and took particular delight in the Icelandic sagas. He entered the church at the age of thirty and became a curate in Yorkshire where he accumulated folk tales, riddles and the first of the thousands of traditional songs he collected during his long life. He inherited the Lew Trenchard estate in Devon to become both squire and parson of this little parish. It was in 1888 that a chance remark at dinner prompted his hunt for old songs in the area around his home. From Lew Trenchard he travelled around Devon and Cornwall to meet the singers in their pubs and their cottages and to coax them to part with their old songs. He used his celebrity status as a leading novelist and writer to bring the folk songs of the West Country to a wider audience through his publications, lectures, costume concerts and the first folk opera, Red Spider, based on one of his novels and on songs he had heard. The books of songs that he published have been criticised for the way in which he edited them for publication, striking out coarse material or rewriting songs but, in doing so, he was acknowledging the limits and demands of public taste of his time. Martin Graebe has been fascinated by Baring-Gould for many years, but the re-discovery of a large quantity of his personal papers in 1992 propelled him towards a re-evaluation of Baring-Gould's work on folk song. What he has uncovered is a fascinating collaborative project between Baring-Gould and the musicians, singers and ordinary members of the public in Devon and Cornwall. He also looks at his relationships with other folk song collectors such as Lucy Broadwood, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp. This book will be of interest, not just to enthusiasts for English folk song, but also to those who wish to know more about their place in the lives of the ordinary people of the late nineteenth century.

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Dr. Watson was the chronicler of every Sherlock Holmes adventure published in The Strand magazine between 1887 and 1927. He reported them with honesty in the bluff, army-style of a military doctor, so frank in their account of human behaviour that they were too risque for the morals of Victorian England. George Newnes, the editor, purged each story before its publication. Newnes also replaced Watson's jocular illustrations with Sidney Paget's more innocuous portrayals. Newnes deleted everybody's backgrounds but in these accounts Watson reveals Holmes's family: his father, Professor Julian Cornelius Bortzoy Holmes; his wife, Wendy; his sister, Rachel, as well as Mycroft. Watson also exposes Mrs. Hudson's property empire and he tells us how Professor Moriarty became "the Napoleon of crime." Some of this new material is shocking, even by today's standards! Book 12 synopsis, Dr. Watson returns from a night out with The Strand magazine to find Sherlock Holmes manufacturing a brand new halucinogenic narcotic with his chemistry set. When professional nanny, Miss Violet Hunter, consults the great detective about a job offer in Winchester, Sherlock Holmes believes that his standard of client has hit rock bottom. Nevertheless, he finds her extremely attractive and when she asks for his help in her new position he answers her call without a second thought. After an intoxicating lunch in Winchester, Holmes and Watson supplement their wine intake with ‘chimps’ – the tablet form of the new narcotic – so when they reach the home of Miss Hunter’s employer they are orbiting Jupiter! They experience a myriad of mind-boggling spectacles, uncover a dainty secret about their client and use the Manstopper revolver without the respect it deserves.

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THE GREATGAME: THE EPIC STORY BEHIND TODAY’S HEADLINESPeter Hopkirk’s spellbinding account of the great imperial struggle for supremacy in Central Asoa has been hailed as essential reading with that era’s legacy playing itself out today.The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road—both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to twenty miles at some points. Now, in the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is once again talk of Russian soldiers "dipping their toes in the Indian Ocean."The Washington Post has said that "every story Peter Hopkirk touches is totally engrossing." In this gripping narrative he recounts a breathtaking tale of espionage and treachery through the actual experiences of its colorful characters. Based on meticulous scholarship and on-the-spot research, this is the history at the core of today’s geopolitics.

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Three timely one-act plays set in war-torn Syria and Iraq, by 'one of our best new playwrights' (The Times), featuring the epic and bloody adventures of an Iraqi translator, a London schoolgirl and a crackshot sniper.. The Collector is a tale of creeping darkness, set during the Coalition’s occupation of Iraq, as a team of prison guards become brutalised by war. ‘Outstanding new writing… first class’ (Scotsman) Echoes is a bloody story of colonialism – ancient and modern – and the rhyme of history, drawing astonishing parallels between the lives of a Jihadi bride and a Victorian pioneer. ‘A dark and daring look at colonial cruelty… hugely impressive’ (Guardian) Angel is set in a Syrian town, where the apparently indestructible Angel of Kobane – a crackshot sniper with a hundred kills to her name – is all that stands between the town’s citizens and the fearsome approach of ISIS. ‘War reportage at its best – and great theatre’ (The Times) All three plays premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe between 2014 and 2016, and have subsequently toured the UK and globally, including runs in London, around Australia and at New York’s 59E59 Theaters. They have won eleven major international fringe awards, including several Fringe Firsts, and Angel was one of The Times’ Top 10 Best Plays of 2016.

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This book chronicles the development of Greenbank House from its origins in a rural Toxteth Park in the mid 18th century to the present day. Home to the prominent merchant Rathbone family from 1788 until it was donated by them in 1944 to the University of Liverpool, successive heads and other family members played significant roles in advocacy of the abolition of the slave trade, parliamentary and municipal reform, nurse education and district nursing, higher education, and women’s rights. Copiously illustrated with plans, engravings, photographs, and a Rathbone family tree, this fascinating book draws on the archives of the Rathbone family to observe the wider political, social, religious and literary relationships they enjoyed, as well as taking into account the observations of visitors, including John Dalton, the eminent chemist, and John James Audubon, the American naturalist and painter. Recollections of alumni and former University staff contribute to the account of Greenbank’s service as an Annex of Derby Hall of Residence, 1947–63, and then as a popular staff-student club, 1963–88. A grade 2* property, over the last five years Greenbank has undergone a major programme of repair and restoration of its distinctive 18th century, Gothic, and Victorian wings, to provide conference, corporate, and student social use accommodation.

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Settled by successive waves of incomers, Northamptonshire is a typical English shire county with prehistoric camps, Roman towns, Saxon burhs, castles and fortified houses, representing fortification over the centuries, a process punctuated by momentous events including the birth of Richard III and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, both at Fotheringhay Castle; King John's sieges at Northampton, Rockingham and Fotheringhay; the Battle of Northampton placing Edward IV on the throne; and the decisive defeat of Charles I at Naseby. The great ordnance depot at Weedon was (allegedly) chosen as a bolt-hole for George III in the place furthest from Napoleon's likely invasion. The Victorian period saw the army reorganized and the Volunteer Force develop. Both world wars mobilized the population and the county filled up with army camps, airfields and munitions plants. In the Cold War, nuclear missiles were pointed towards Russia. Many signs of all these events are still visible: Northampton's militia armoury in the guise of a mediaeval castle; the genuine castles of Barnwell and Rockingham: the launch-pads of Harrington's THOR missiles; the Ordnance Stores at Weedon Bec; and the banks and ditches of Hunsbury Camp or Little Houghton. This book illustrates and explains these sites.

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Encanto meets Coraline in this “supremely successful, atmospheric” (Kirkus Reviews) middle grade story that deals with family ties, fear of change, and generational trauma as it follows a girl who must convince an old, haunted house to release its hold on her and her family.Eleven-year-old Micah has no interest in moving out of her grandfather’s house. She loves living with Poppop and their shared hobby of driving around rich neighborhoods to find treasures in others’ trash. To avoid packing, Micah goes for a bike ride and ends up at Finch House, the decrepit Victorian that Poppop says is Off Limits. Except when she gets there, it’s all fixed up and there’s a boy named Theo in the front yard. Surely that means Finch House isn’t Off Limits anymore? But when Poppop finds her there, Micah is only met with his disappointment. By the next day, Poppop is nowhere to be found. After searching everywhere, Micah’s instincts lead her back to Finch House. But once Theo invites her inside, Micah realizes she can’t leave. And that, with its strange whispers and deep-dark shadows, Finch House isn’t just a house…it’s alive. Can Micah find a way to convince the house to let her go? Or will she be forced to stay in Finch House forever?

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A complete history and theory of internet daemons brings these little-known—but very consequential—programs into the spotlight We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality.Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users.Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight.

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‘If there is one thing we can learn from John Ruskin, it is that each age must find its own way to beauty’ writes Lars Spuybroek in The Sympathy of Things, his ground-breaking work which proposes a radical new aesthetics for the digital era. Spuybroek argues that we must 'undo' the twentieth century and learn to understand the aesthetic insights of the nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin, from which he distils pointers for the contemporary age. Linking philosophy, design, and the digital, with art history, architecture, and craft, Spuybroek explores the romantic notion of ‘sympathy’, a core concept in Ruskin's aesthetics, re-evaluating it as the driving force of the twenty-first century aesthetic experience. For Ruskin, beauty always comprises variation, imperfection and fragility, three concepts that wholly disappeared from our mindsets during the twentieth century, but which Spuybroek argues to be central to contemporary aesthetics and design. Revised throughout, and a new foreword by philosopher Brian Massumi, this is a new edition of a seminal work which has drawn praise from fields as diverse as digital architecture and speculative realism, and will continue to be influential as it wrests Ruskin’s ideas out of the Victorian era and reconstructs them for the modern age.

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Every pier, from the grandest to the most modest, has its own story. In this collection of one hundred beautiful paintings, Paul Tracey combines his skill as a draughtsman with his creative flair as an artist to capture the very essence of these structures and to provide snapshots of their individual stories. Many piers were originally built as wharfs for ships to load and unload goods. Then, as the railways expanded and people were able to travel further afield for trips and holidays, they became destinations in their own right: places to promenade, to meet and to be entertained. Innovative Victorian engineering created piers that could better withstand the vigours of the sea yet still provided elegant spaces to be enjoyed. This historical development was mirrored around the world. Researched and executed over five years, 100 Piers includes historic postcards, concert programmes and newspaper articles about the piers. Many piers are no longer in their prime, some have gone completely, lost to the tides of time. But through the paintings, with their dynamic lines, varying perspectives and bold colour combinations, Tracey successfully captures the vibrancy and vitality of these structures. His work ensures their place in history is not forgotten and that the many piers which remain may continue to be cherished as much as ever.

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An intrepid young woman journeys across Victorian London and beyond in search of the truth behind the presumed death, and reappearance one icy evening, of her brother-in-law, in this gripping and mysterious gothic horror. Perfect for fans of The Haunting of Hill House and readers of Sarah Waters. London 1893. Judith lives a solitary life, save for the maid who haunts the family home in which she resides. Mourning the death of her brother-in-law, Sam, who drowned in an accident a year earlier, she distracts herself with art classes, books and strange rituals, whilst the rest of her family travel the world. One icy evening, conducting a ritual in her garden she discovers Sam, alive. He has no memory of the past year, and remembers little of the accident that appeared to take his life. Desperate to keep his reappearance a secret until she can discover the truth about what happened to him, Judith journeys outside of the West London Jewish community she calls home, to the scene of Sam's accident. But there are secrets waiting there for Judith, things that have been dormant for so long, and if she is to uncover all of them, she may have to admit to truths that she has been keeping from herself.

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The inspirational genius of Germany explores the neglected issue of the cultural influence of Germany upon Britain between 1850 and 1939. While the impact on Britain of German Romanticism has been extensively mapped, the reception of the more ideologically problematic German culture of the later period has been neither fully explained or explored. After the 1848 revolutions, Germany experienced a period of political and economic growth which not only saw it achieving Unification in 1871 but also challenging the industrial and imperial supremacy of Britain at the dawn of the twentieth century. Matthew Potter uses images, art criticism, and the public writings and private notes of artists to reconstruct the intellectual history of Germanism during a period of heightened nationalism and political competition. Key case studies explore the changing shape of intellectual engagements with Germany. It examines the German experts who worked on the margins of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, the engagements of Victorian 'academics' including Frederic Leighton, G.F. Watts, Walter Crane and Hubert Herkomer as well as avant-gardists like the Vorticists, the reception of Arnold Böcklin and Wassily Kandinsky by the Britons during the dawn of modern art, and the last gasp of enthusiasm for German art that took place in defiance of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

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The picture below of a Castle class locomotive, since preserved, illustrates Kevin McCormack's first love: the Great Western Railway and the Western Region of British Railways. Living almost all his childhood on the Western in Ealing, it was perhaps inevitable that this was his favourite region, and he came to admire the copper-capped chimneys, brass safety value covers and brass nameplates and cabside number plates of its larger locomotives as well as the tall chimneys and large domes of its characteristic smaller engines. He had a particular liking for the diminutive 14XX 0-4-2 tanks that used to work the Ealing Broadway-Greenford push and pull services and when a fund was set up to preserve one, Kevin was quick to add his support, joining what became the Great Western Society and becoming its secretary in the late 1960s/early 1970s. In 1973, Kevin cemented his interest in the GWR by acquiring a Victorian family saloon railway carriage, which had been converted into a Thameside bungalow. Remarkably, the coach was largely original inside and the exterior well preserved as it was virtually encased within the house.Restoration has therefore been a comparatively easy task and the vehicle is displayed at the Great Western Society's base at the Didcot Railway Centre.

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Retrospectively, we see the time of the 1910s being invaded with the images of the First World War, and yet in the early years of that decade people were focussed on events at home, whether King George V's coronation or the women involved in the suffragette movement. Another major event was the loss of the ocean liner Titanic in 1912. Then in 1914, the Great War devastated the tranquil life of post-Edwardian Britain, as recruiting posters rallied the youth of the Empire to the defence of France. "The 1910s Scrapbook" brings a new focus to this pivotal moment of the twentieth century, a time more often seen through the media of black and white film footage or sepia photographs. Over 1,000 colourful images tell the tale of ordinary people - their courage and humour, their patriotism and fortitude in the face of Zeppelin air raids, rationing and the decimation of a generation. This Scrapbook adds to our knowledge of the recent past, and is a companion volume to those covering the Victorian era, and the 1930s and 1950s. It also draws parallels and comparisons with the Second World War as seen in The Wartime Scrapbook. Above all, this book is a testament to those involved in the conflict of the Great War.

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The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802 1873) is one of the most celebrated paintings of the nineteenth century. It was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2017. In this new book, the first to focus in detail on this iconic picture, Christopher Baker explores its complex and fascinating history. He places Landseer's work in the context of the artist's meteoric career, considers the circumstances of its high-profile commission and its extraordinary subsequent reputation. When so much Victorian art fell out of fashion, Landseer's Monarch took on a new role as marketing image, bringing it global recognition. It also inspired the work of many other artists, ranging from Sir Bernard Partridge and Ronald Searle to Sir Peter Blake and Peter Saville. Today the picture has an intriguing status, being seen by some as a splendid celebration of Scotland's natural wonders and by others as an archaic trophy. This publication will make a significant contribution to the debates that it continues to stimulate. The painting will tour to four Scottish venues in late 2017 and early 2018 (Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, 6 October - 19 November 2017; Perth Museum and Art Gallery, 25 November 2017 - 14 January 2018; Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, 20 January - 11 March 2018; Kirkcudbright Galleries, 25 March - 12 May 2018).

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This is the first book in over a century to examine the important work of the watercolour artist and illustrator Frederick Walker (1840–1875) and his closest artistic allies. He was greatly admired (and collected) by Vincent van Gogh and was described by Millais as ‘the greatest artist of the century’ and yet his premature death at the age of 35 cut short his promising career. Walker, together with his close friends George John Pinwell (1842–1875) and John William North (1842–1924), forged new artistic identities that sought the perfection of the world around them and the distillation of beauty from seemingly mundane subjects.Donato Esposito focuses successive chapters on the lives and works of each of the core members of Walker’s group, charting their unconventional journey from a loosely bound collective rooted in the London-based black-and-white world of commercial illustration to a renowned grouping known as the Idyllists, respected and eagerly collected by galleries and private individuals in Europe, America and Australia.The book, which reproduces many of the Idyllists’ works in colour for the first time, represents a vital contribution to the literature on Victorian art and restores the Idyllists to their rightful place in the history of British 19th-century art.

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During the tumultuous closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the prospect of democracy loomed and as intensified global economic and strategic competition reshaped the political imagination, British thinkers grappled with the question of how best to organize the empire. Many found an answer to the anxieties of the age in the idea of Greater Britain, a union of the United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and southern Africa. In The Idea of Greater Britain, Duncan Bell analyzes this fertile yet neglected debate, examining how a wide range of thinkers conceived of this vast "Anglo-Saxon" political community. Their proposals ranged from the fantastically ambitious--creating a globe-spanning nation-state--to the practical and mundane--reinforcing existing ties between the colonies and Britain. But all of these ideas were motivated by the disquiet generated by democracy, by challenges to British global supremacy, and by new possibilities for global cooperation and communication that anticipated today's globalization debates. Exploring attitudes toward the state, race, space, nationality, and empire, as well as highlighting the vital theoretical functions played by visions of Greece, Rome, and the United States, Bell illuminates important aspects of late-Victorian political thought and intellectual life.

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WINNER OF TWO GOLDEN GLOBES, STARRING EMMA STONE, FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE FAVOURITE Winner of the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize A life without freedom to choose is not worth having. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realised when he finds the drowned body of the beautiful Bella, who he brings back to life in a Frankenstein-esque feat. But his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for his creation . . . But what does Bella think? This story of true love and scientific daring whirls the reader from the private operating-theatres of late-Victorian Glasgow through aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria and a Parisian bordello, reaching an interrupted climax in a Scottish church. ________________________ 'A magnificently brisk, funny, dirty, brainy book' London Review of Books 'Visionary, ornate and outrageous' The Independent 'Witty and delightfully written' New York Times 'A brilliant marriage of technique, intelligence, and art.' Kirkus Reviews 'The greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott' Anthony Burgess 'Those who, like me, are unsure if they are Alasdair Gray fans or not, ought to fall on Poor Things with delight, and not just because of the almost excessive beauty of its appearance' Philip Hensher, Spectator

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James Chuter Ede (1882-1965) served the longest term of office as Home Secretary in the last 200 years, three weeks more than Theresa May. He is the only senior member of Attlee's legendary 1945 cabinet not yet to have found a biographer. His contribution to that government - and in Robert Harris's words, 'We still live in the society shaped by Clement Attlee' - although largely unsung, was immense. Alongside towering achievements such as Bevan's NHS, his own measures, in administrative, legal and social reform, did much to set the seal on Labour's reforming programme, including the Criminal Justice Act 1948, paving the way for the abolition of capital punishment. Previously, working with RA Butler, he provided a major contribution to the Education Act 1944\. Equally interesting for historians and readers of history is how Ede's life and career present a political, cultural and social account, in his journey from Victorian family life with a Liberal background, through Cambridge and the Unitarian religion, to Labour politics, working in education and local government. He represented suburban Mitcham and then industrial South Shields in Parliament, where his performances were legendary in an age of oratory - low-key, yet cutting and decisive. This will be an important contribution to the burgeoning interest in the historiography of post World War II Labour Britain.

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Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award'A novel of fate and free will, forensic detection and blind love, crime and its justifications . . . finely tuned yet extravagantly complex' Evening StandardA cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death. So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. This seems the stuff of dreams, until a chance discovery convinces Glyver that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. And he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he now knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. Thirty years in the writing, The Meaning of Night is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

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Many commentators tell us that, in today's world, everyday life has become selfish and atomised—that individuals live only to consume. But are they wrong? In Me, Me, Me, Jon Lawrence re-tells the story of England since the Second World War through the eyes of ordinary people—including his own parents— to argue that, in fact, friendship, family, and place all remain central to our daily lives, and whilst community has changed, it is far from dead. He shows how, in the years after the Second World War, people came increasingly to question custom and tradition as the pressure to conform to societal standards became intolerable. And as soon as they could, millions escaped the closed, face-to-face communities of Victorian Britain, where everyone knew your business. But this was not a rejection of community per se, but an attempt to find another, new way of living which was better suited to the modern world. Community has become personal and voluntary, based on genuine affection rather than proximity or need. We have never been better connected or able to sustain the relationships that matter to us. Me, Me, Me makes that case that it's time we valued and nurtured these new groups, rather than lamenting the loss of more 'real' forms of community—it is all too easy to hold on to a nostalgic view of the past.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE FOR BEST PUBLISHED NOVEL 2022 A Telegraph Best Book for Summer 2022 'Highly recommended' MICK HERRON 'A great adventure. Dripping with atmosphere and exotic life' WILLIAM BOYD 'A riveting page-turner, rich with fascinating period detail' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ___________1867. King's Road, Chelsea, is a sea of plant nurseries, catering to the Victorian obsession with rare and exotic flora. But each of the glossy emporiums is fuelled by the dangerous world of the plant hunters – daring adventurers sent into uncharted lands in search of untold wonders to grace England's finest gardens.Harry Compton is as far from a plant hunter as one could imagine – a salesman plucked from the obscurity of the nursery growing fields to become 'the face that sold a thousand plants'.But one small act of kindness sees him inherit a precious gift – a specimen of a fabled tree last heard of in The Travels of Marco Polo, and a map.Seizing his chance for fame and fortune, Harry sets out to make his mark. But where there is wealth there is corruption, and soon Harry is fleeing England, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing up the Yangtze alongside a young widow – both in pursuit of the plant that could transform both their lives forever.

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A survey of the rituals of the year in Victorian England, showing the influence of the Middle Ages. What does a maypole represent? Why eat hot cross buns? Did Dick Whittington have a cat? All these questions are related to a larger one that nineteenth-century Britons asked themselves: which was more fun: living in their own time, or living in the Middle Ages? While Britain was becoming the most industrially-advanced nation in the world, many vaunted the superiority of the present to the past-yet others felt that if shadows of past ways of life haunted the present, they were friendly ghosts. This book explores such ghosts and how real or imagined remnants of medieval celebration in a variety of forms created a cultural idea of the Middle Ages. As Britons found, or thought that they found, traces of the medieval in traditions tied to times of the year, medievalism became not only the justification but also the inspiration for community festivity, from Christmas and Boxing Day through Maytime rituals to Hallowe'en, as show in the writings of amongst many others Keats, Browning and Dickens.

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A comprehensive look at the academic criticism of Jane Austen from her time down to the present. Among the most important English novelists, Jane Austen is unusual because she is esteemed not only by academics but by the reading public. Her novels continue to sell well, and films adapted from her works enjoy strong box-officesuccess. The trajectory of Austen criticism is intriguing, especially when one compares it to that of other nineteenth-century English writers. At least partly because she was a woman in the early nineteenth century, she was longneglected by critics, hardly considered a major figure in English literature until well into the twentieth century, a hundred years after her death. Yet consequently she did not suffer from the reaction against Victorianism thatdid so much to hurt the reputation of Dickens, Tennyson, Arnold, and others. How she rose to prominence among academic critics - and has retained her position through the constant shifting of academic and critical trends - is a story worth telling, as it suggests not only something about Austen's artistry but also about how changes in critical perspective can radically alter a writer's reputation. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University, Reading, Pennsylvania.

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Soldier, hero, and politician, the Duke of Wellington is one of the best-known figures of nineteenth-century England. From his victory at Waterloo over Napoleon in 1815, he rose to become prime minister of his country. But Peter Sinnema finds equal fascination in Victorian England’s response to the duke’s death. The Wake of Wellington considers Wellington’s spectacular funeral pageant in the fall of 1852—an unprecedented event that attracted one and a half million spectators to London—as a threshold event against which the life of the soldier-hero and High Tory statesman could be re-viewed and represented. Canvassing a profuse and dramatically proliferating Wellingtoniana, Sinnema examines the various assumptions behind, and implications of, the Times’s celebrated claim that the Irish-born Wellington “was the very type and model of an Englishman.” The dead duke, as Sinnema demonstrates, was repeatedly caught up in interpretive practices that stressed the quasi-symbolic relations between hero and nation. The Wake of Wellington provides a unique view of how in death Wellington and his career were promoted as the consummation of a national destiny intimately bound up with Englishness itself, and with what it meant to be English at midcentury.

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As the Victorian era passed into the Edwardian and Roaring Twenties, a market developed for bisque and china naughty novelties and figurines of women in revealing outfits. These little lovelies include bathing beauties, who came clad in swimsuits of real lace or stylish painted beach wear, as well as mermaids, harem ladies, and nudies, who wear only an engaging smile. Also produced were flippers (innocent appearing figurines who reveal a bawdy secret when flipped over) and water squirters. Most were manufactured in Germany from the late 1800s through the 1930s, often showing remarkable artistry and imagination. This photographic study showcases an extraordinary variety of figurines, and the in-depth text will help collectors and dealers discover the rich history behind them. Manufacturing techniques, marks, and manufacturers are discussed, including Galluba and Hoffman, William Goebel, Hertwig and Company, Schafer and Vater, and more. Decorative details, size, and current value are provided for each figurine. A delightful reference for bathing beauty and doll collectors, Art Deco aficionados, and all who enjoy things naughty and mischievous.

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The Complete Language of Flowers is a comprehensive encyclopedia providing the meanings, powers, facts, and folklore for over 1,001 flower species. Now in a pocket-size edition for easy, on-the-go reference. Along with a beautiful visual depiction, each entry provides the flower’s scientific and common names, characteristics, and historic meanings and powers from mythology, medieval legends, folklore, and flower poetry. For centuries, symbolic flower meanings have fascinated readers, writers, poets, and suddenly smitten couples alike. Extremely popular during the Victorian era, these floriographies flourished and versed the public on the hidden meaning of popular flowers such as: Purple Tulip—Eternal love Amaryllis—Adventurousness; Enthusiasm; Passion Daisy—Beauty and innocence; Cheer; Childlike playfulness Sunflower—Ambition; Constancy; Devotion Together with stunning full-color illustrations and two indexes, one for searching by common flower name and the other organized by meaning, this beautiful reference is a must-have for gardeners, florists, and flower enthusiasts. Whether you’re looking to arrange the perfectly bespoken wedding bouquet or to understand what the yellow rose you just received from an admirer means (friendship), this updated floriography is a visual delight.

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Tales of the enchanting ‘Thousand and One Nights’ have entered the folklore of the entire world but their origins lie in the Arabic and Indian oral traditions of the early middle ages. Their power to entice lies in the tenacity of the storyteller Scheherazade who weaves a new tale each night, to save herself from execution. Popular characters such as Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad the sailor have become part of the Arabian Nights, added in later years, but told within the intriguing structure of the original. Such additions by were made by translators and collaborators from many European and Eastern sources but it was Richard Burton’s edition that brought these popular folk tales to the attention of a Victorian era readership eager to explore new cultures. It is Burton’s edition that forms the basis of this new collection, with stories that survive still from the original featured here too: ‘The Merchant and the Genie’, ‘The Fisherman and the Genie’, ‘The Porter and the Three Ladies’, ‘The Three Apples’.

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An intimate, accessible history of British intellectual development across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the story of one family This book recounts the story of three Cambridge-educated Englishmen and the women with whom they chose to share their commitment to reason in all parts of their lives. The reason this family embraced was an essentially human power with the potential to generate true insight into all aspects of the world. In exploring the ways reason permeated three generations of English experience, this book casts new light on key developments in English cultural and political history, from the religious conformism of the eighteenth century through the Napoleonic era into the Industrial Revolution and prosperity of the Victorian age. At the same time, it restores the rich world of the essentially meditative, rational sciences of theology, astronomy, mathematics, and logic to their proper place in the English intellectual landscape. Following the development of their views over the course of an eventful one hundred years of English history illuminates the fine structure of ways reason still operates in our world.

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The scientific discovery that chaotic systems embody deep structures of order is one of such wide-ranging implications that it has attracted attention across a spectrum of disciplines, including the humanities. In this volume, fourteen theorists explore the significance for literary and cultural studies of the new paradigm of chaotics, forging connections between contemporary literature and the science of chaos. They examine how changing ideas of order and disorder enable new readings of scientific and literary texts, from Newton's Principia to Ruskin's autobiography, from Victorian serial fiction to Borges's short stories. N. Katherine Hayles traces shifts in meaning that chaos has undergone within the Western tradition, suggesting that the science of chaos articulates categories that cannot be assimilated into the traditional dichotomy of order and disorder. She and her contributors take the relation between order and disorder as a theme and develop its implications for understanding texts, metaphors, metafiction, audience response, and the process of interpretation itself. Their innovative and diverse work opens the interdisciplinary field of chaotics to literary inquiry.

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'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.'Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneering feminist horror story scandalized nineteenth-century readers with its portrayal of a woman who loses her mind because she has literally nothing to do.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). Gilman's work is available in Penguin Classics in The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland and Selected Writings.

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