Search results for ""author victoria"

This book explores porcelain wares produced by the Reinhold Schlegelmilch Porcelain Factory [marked R. S. Prussia], of Suhl, Germany, and sold to America from 1888 through 1900. The wonderfully molded and decorated plates and platters, tea sets, pitchers, clocks, and decorative objects are described with over 760 beautiful color images. An entire chapter is devoted to the company's charming toy china sets. Displayed are wares formed from a variety of molds (including Fleur-de-Lis and Melon) and patterns (outline transfer, King George, and Coraline patterns, to name a few). Newly discovered mold patterns are included, along with a history of the company's early operations, wholesale and trade catalog pages illustrating wares exported to the United States, the manufacturer's marks employed during this early period, a bibliography, and several appendices. This book will guide all collectors of Victorian porcelain to recognize the early pieces marked R. S. Prussia.

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This book explores porcelain wares produced by the Reinhold Schlegelmilch Porcelain Factory [marked R. S. Prussia], of Suhl, Germany, and sold to America from 1888 through 1900. The wonderfully molded and decorated plates and platters, tea sets, pitchers, clocks, and decorative objects are described with over 760 beautiful color images. An entire chapter is devoted to the company's charming toy china sets. Displayed are wares formed from a variety of molds (including Fleur-de-Lis and Melon) and patterns (outline transfer, King George, and Coraline patterns, to name a few). Newly discovered mold patterns are included, along with a history of the company's early operations, wholesale and trade catalog pages illustrating wares exported to the United States, the manufacturer's marks employed during this early period, a bibliography, and several appendices. This book will guide all collectors of Victorian porcelain to recognize the early pieces marked R. S. Prussia.

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This fascinating selection of photographs illustrates the extraordinary transformation that has taken place in Dunfermline over the past century. The book offers an insight into the daily lives and living conditions of local people and gives the reader a glimpse of familiar places during a period of unprecedented change. Many aspects of Dunfermline’s recent history are covered, famous occasions and individuals are remembered and the impact of national and international events is witnessed. The book provides a striking account of the changes that have taken place on the streets of the town and records the process of transformation. Drawing on detailed local knowledge of the community, and illustrated with a wealth of black and white photographs, this book recalls what has changed in Dunfermline in terms of buildings, traditions and ways of life. It also acknowledges and celebrates the character and energy of local people from the Victorian age to the twenty-first century.

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Living work of art, consumer commodity, scientific hero and environmental menace: the humble goldfish is the ultimate human cultural artefact. A creature of supposedly little memory and short lifespan, it has universal appeal. In ancient China, goldfish were saved from predators in acts of religious reverence and selectively bred for their glittering grace. In the East, they became the subject of exquisite art, regarded as living flowers that moved, while in the West, they became ubiquitous residents of the Victorian parlour. Cheap and eminently available, today they are bred by the millions for the growing domestic pet market, while also proving to be important to laboratory studies of perception, vision and intelligence. In this illuminating homage to the goldfish, Anna Marie Roos challenges the cultural preconceptions of a creature often thought to be common and disposable, as she blends art and science to trace the surprising and intriguing history of this much-loved animal.

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This timely book fills a lacuna in the extensive literature on Churchill's life and times. It covers his long relationship with Africa during the most important period in Anglo-African history, from nineteenth-century imperial rule to independence and the emergence of modern Africa. Churchill first went to Africa during the British re-conquest of Sudan in 1898 and would spend almost the next sixty years dealing with Africa as soldier, journalist, government minister, and finally prime minister. Churchill's story is one of transition from the height of late-Victorian British imperialism to the acceptance of African nationalism in the middle years of the twentieth century. He helped to shape British colonial policy in Africa from the first decade of the twentieth century through the Second World War and colonial Kenya's Mau Mau crisis of the 1950s. Few British leaders were as closely involved with Africa as was Churchill.

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When we talk about technology we always talk about the future - which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories, Lizzie O'Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O'Shea constructs a "usable past" that can help us determine our digital future. What, she asks, can the Paris Commune tell us about earlier experiments in sharing resources-like the Internet-in common? Can debates over equal digital access be guided by Tom Paine's theories of democratic, economic redistribution? And, how is Elon Musk not a visionary but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians? In engaging, sparkling prose, O'Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and what potential exists for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our digital present. Future Histories is for all of us-makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites-who find ourselves in a brave new world.

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The Tyne Bridge, opened in 1928 by King George V, is one of Britain's most iconic structures, a Grade II* listed building. Linking Newcastle and Gateshead, this symbol of Tyneside and the region is also a monument to the Tyne's industrial past. Paul Brown's popular history explores what the bridge means to the people of North-East England, and its deep connection with their heritage. Brown recounts the story of the bridge's predecessors, from the Roman Pons Aeliusthe first crossing over the Tyneto the Victorian era. He then brings to life the individuals who built the modern bridge: Ralph Freeman, the structural engineer who also designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge; Dorothy Buchanan, the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, who produced drawings and calculations; John Carr, the boatman who bravely rescued workers from the Tyne on dozens of occasions; and the scaffolder Nathaniel Collins, the only man not to survive construction of the arch, who fell from

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A mysterious tale of crime, witchcraft and the supernatural. The House of the Seven Gables is a gloomy New England mansion, reeking of past sins and malevolent threats. The Pyncheon family that lives there has inherited the curse of centuries-old accusations of witchcraft, and is haunted by the ghosts of the sinful dead who still live within the terrifying shadows of the imposing house. A truly ingenious blend of the supernatural and the romantic, Hawthorne weaves a gothic tale that threatens to impale the family and the local townsfolk with its destructive power. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and fantasy to science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic. Each book features a brand new biography and glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

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Since Victorian times, the MCC had embraced the amateur ideal that cricket was more than a game. It was the very essence of camaraderie and good sportsmanship. Yet for all their evangelising, the game's privileged elite were part of a British establishment which revelled in its national prestige and imperial hegemony. And winning at cricket was essential to maintaining that stature. Ambassadors of Goodwill assesses the MCC's attempt to marry these conflicting objectives and foster goodwill within the Empire via long, formal overseas tours. After the war, the amateur ideal suffered when Len Hutton was appointed England's first professional captain. His uncompromising leadership brought success on the field but discord off it. Managers were installed to restore diplomatic harmony but, with the growing upheavals of the late 60s, cricket became increasingly associated with nationality, race and professional cynicism. Ray Illingworth's controversial win in Australia in 1970/71 clearly signalled the MCC's waning influence.

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The New York Times #1 best-selling series. Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience. A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom. The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children. They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all.

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For Birmingham, whose motto is ‘Forward’, change has long been a fact of life. This pictorial history traces some of the dramatic developments that have taken place in the centre of Birmingham during three post-war decades. This collection of over 200 photographs, drawn from the archives held at Birmingham Central Library, recalls a bygone age when trams trundled down Victorian streets and steam trains halted at soot-blackened stations, their passengers emerging to patronise shops and cafés, pubs and hotels, some little changed in decades. The years immediately following the Second World War were more changeable than most, partly because the war itself delayed many plans for the city, and partly because of the need for post-war reconstruction, including that of the ‘Big Top’ bomb site, providing 1950s Birmingham with its first purpose-built shopping and office complex. Accompanied by supporting text, the photographs in this volume show how the foundations of present-day Birmingham were laid.

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Euston Station was the first intercity railway gateway for London and with the famed Doric Arch became a major landmark of that city. Initially built for the London and Birmingham Railway, it became the terminus of the LNWR Premier Line, then HQ of the London Midland and Scottish. The controversial 1960's demolition of the site stimulated the building preservation movement. Latterly we have a challenging on / off love affair with the area through the High Speed Two project. This book contains both a background history of Euston and its environs, combined with a modellers review of building a OO' gauge mid Victorian station complex. A core model of the old station was kindly donated to the Market Deeping Model Railway Club (MDMRC) following the sad act of vandalism of their model railway show in 2019. This in turn served as a stimulus to expand, detail and research during the Covid isolation and lockdown years. This book is the end result of these endeavours. We use the model to underpi

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From tenth-century Japan's Izumi Shikibu, colonial America's Anne Bradstreet, and Victorian England's Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Israel's Yehuda Amichai, Ireland's Paul Muldoon, and Russia's Anna Akhmatova, poets across the centuries and around the world have immortalized this elemental relationship. Among the more than seventy poets in this anthology, Audre Lorde recalls "How the days went / While you were blooming within me"; Jorie Graham muses on her mother's sewing box; Allen Ginsberg says goodbye in "Kaddish"; and Langston Hughes invokes a mother's empowering example: "Don't you fall now- / For I'se still goin', honey, / I'se still climbin', / And life for me ain't been no crystal stair." From Emily Brontë's "Upon Her Soothing Breast" and Seamus Heaney's "Mother of the Groom" to Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song" and Frank O'Hara's "Ave Maria," the more than one hundred poems collected here enshrine the miracle of motherhood and the richness of feeling and experience it inspires.

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Rochester's position on the River Medway, near where it joins the Thames, has meant that it has played an important historical role for centuries. Beyond its Norman castle and cathedral and many ancient buildings, the town is surrounded by fortifications as it was a potential target for invaders, although in 1667 the Dutch were able to raid Rochester and set fire to a large number of English naval ships. The historic character of Rochester remains today with its annual Sweeps Festival and two festivals a year celebrating Dickens, who had lived nearby. The town has the only museum in the country celebrating the Huguenots.AZ of Rochester reveals the history behind the town, its streets and buildings, businesses and the people connected with it. Alongside the famous historical connections are unusual characters, tucked-away places and unique events that are less well known. Readers will discover tales of a Victorian botanical illustrator, a Saxon saint and a celebrated Elizabethan Clerk o

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The first history of all the English cathedrals, from Birmingham and Bury St Edmunds to Worcester and York Minster England’s sixty-two Anglican and Catholic cathedrals are some of our most iconic buildings, attracting millions of worshippers and visitors every year. Yet although much has been written about their architecture, there is no complete history of their life and activities. This is the first such book to provide one, stretching from Roman times to the present day. The History of England’s Cathedrals explains where and why they were founded, who staffed them, and how their structures evolved. It describes their worship and how this changed over the centuries, their schools and libraries, and their links with the outside world. The history of these astonishing buildings is the history of England. Reading this book will bring you face to face with the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Reformation, Civil War, Victorian England, World War Two, and finally modern democracy.

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A woman embarks on an unexpected journey into her past in an engrossing novel about identity, family secrets, and rediscovering the need to belong. Meena Dave is a photojournalist and a nomad. She has no family, no permanent address, and no long-term attachments, preferring to observe the world at a distance through the lens of her camera. But Meena’s solitary life is turned upside down when she unexpectedly inherits an apartment in a Victorian brownstone in historic Back Bay, Boston. Though Meena’s impulse is to sell it and keep moving, she decides to use her journalistic instinct to follow the story that landed her in the home of a stranger. It’s a mystery that comes with a series of hidden clues, a trio of meddling Indian aunties, and a handsome next-door neighbor. For Meena it’s a chance for newfound friendships, community, and culture she never thought possible. And a window into her past she never expected. Now as everything unknown to Meena comes into focus, she must reconcile who she wants to be with who she really is.

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Brighton has grown from a fashionable resort in Georgian times, and a popular place to visit for Londoners once the railways arrived in Sussex in the nineteenth century, to today’s lively conurbation on the south coast. In this book, local historian Christopher Horlock charts the changing face of Brighton from the end of the Victorian era to the present day. Not only are many famous lost landmarks recorded, such as the Chain and West piers, Hanningtons department store and the SS Brighton ice rink, but also industrial premises, churches, schools, theatres and cinemas, plus trams, trolleybuses and branch railways. Lost Brighton presents a portrait of a city and a way of life that has radically changed or disappeared today, showing not just the buildings, streets and industries that have gone or changed, but also a way of life. This fascinating photographic history of lost Brighton will appeal to all those who live in the city or know it well, as well as those who remember it from previous decades.

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When Josephine Butler died in 1906, she was declared by Millicent Fawcett to have been ‘the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century’. With impassioned speeches and fiery writing, Butler’s campaigns for women’s rights shook Victorian society to its core and became a force for change that has shaped modern Britain. As well as campaigning for women’s suffrage and for married women’s property rights she was a tireless advocate of women’s access to higher education and of equality in the workplace. Her greatest achievement was to change social attitudes to women and children forced into prostitution, and to expose the sex-trafficking business – both of which resulted in new, more humane legislation. But how did the physically frail wife of a schoolmaster become a leading social reformer? In this brief introduction Jane Robinson explores Butler’s fascinating life and describes how her progressive politics, her anger at injustice and her passionate Christianity combined to create a vibrant legacy that lasts to this day.

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The original editions of Curiosities of Bristol contained every surprising fact the Victorian reader could wish to know about the city’s history. For the first time in more than 150 years, this fascinating volume collects together the complete run of this extremely rare publication. Every page is bursting with strange tales of local interest: antiquities and relics, folklore and magic, strange deaths, wicked murders and the complete history of events such as the Bristol Riots of 1831, many of which are infamous. Also including a visitor’s guide to the city, and with the addition of beautiful contemporary plates from Skelton’s 1850 masterpiece Etchings of the Antiquities of Bristol, this book will delight residents, visitors and lovers of curious tales alike.

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Creatively and intellectually there is no other species that has ever come close to equalling humanity’s achievements, but nor is any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict constitutes the chief threat to our own survival. Human history can be seen as a catalogue of cold-hearted murders, mindless blood-feuds, appalling massacres and devastating wars, but, with developments in forensic science and modern psychology, and with raised education levels throughout the world, might it soon be possible to reign in humanity’s homicidal habits? Falling violent crime statistics in every part of the world seem to indicate that something along those lines might indeed be happening. Colin and Damon Wilson, who between them have been covering the field of criminology for over fifty years, offer an analysis of the overall spectrum of human violence. They consider whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed and they explore the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental change: that we are about to become truly civilised. As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history – from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, touching on key moments of change and also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age – they explore the latest psychological, forensic and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence. To begin with, they examine questions such as: Were the first humans cannibalistic? Did the birth of civilisation also lead to the invention of war and slavery? Priests and kings brought social stability, but were they also the instigators of the first mass murders? Is it in fact wealth that is the ultimate weapon? They look at slavery and ancient Roman sadism, but also the possibility that our own distaste for pain and cruelty is no more than a social construct. They show how the humanitarian ideas of the great religious innovators all too quickly became distorted by organised religious structures. The book ranges widely, from fifteenth-century Baron Gilles de Rais, ‘Bluebeard’, the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history, to Victorian domestic murder and the invention of psychiatry and Sherlock Holmes and the invention of forensic science; from the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which up to 36 million died to the First and Second World Wars and more recent genocides and instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’, and contemporary terrorism. They conclude by assessing the very real possibility that the internet and the greater freedom of information it has brought is leading, gradually, to a profoundly more civilised world than at any time in the past.

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‘Beautiful and poignant' The Art Newspaper ‘Absorbing... a magnificent book' Mail on Sunday The first illustrated book on mudlarking that tells the captivating stories of forgotten people through objects recovered from the river Thames. Combining insights from 200 eclectic objects discovered on the Thames foreshore, meticulous historical research and contextual illustrations, Mudlark’d uncovers the hidden histories of forgotten people from all over the world. Beginning in each case with a particular find, Malcolm Russell tells the stories of the people who owned, made or used such objects, revealing the habits, customs and crafts not only of those living in London but also of those passing through, from continental Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. In the 18th and 19th centuries London was the busiest port in the world, exchanging goods, ideas, people and power with every continent. The Thames long acted as London’s water source, shipyard, thoroughfare and rubbish dump. Its banks have been densely packed with taverns, brothels, markets and workplaces, and scavengers – known as mudlarks - have scoured them since at least the 18th century. Consequently, the Thames today offers a repository of intriguing objects that evoke ways of life long forgotten. A delicate bone hair pin uncovers the story of Roman ornatrices - enslaved hairdressers. A counterfeit coin reveals the heritage of millions of Australians. Glass beads expose the brutal dynamics of the transatlantic slave trade. Clay tobacco pipes uncover the lives of Edwardian women parachutists and Victorian magicians. A scrap of Tudor cloth illuminates the stories of Dutch and French religious refugees. The book also includes a primer, giving step-by-step advice on how to mudlark on tidal rivers and how to identify commonly made finds.

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Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years—from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques—have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream. Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the book explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to improve society through reproductive control. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions—did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?—revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.

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Creative genius, war artist, adventurer, lover. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe Aberdeenshire-born painter and printmaker James McBey (1883-1959). McBey was a Scottish superstar amongst the creative spirits that fuelled the Etching Revival of the late nineteenth century and Etching Boom of the early twentieth century, and in an historical context, was the acknowledged heir to Whistler and Rembrandt. But after his death in Tangier, Morocco, in 1959, his renown as one of Britain’s most accomplished artists – who took the art world by storm – faded from public consciousness. Born illegitimately in the tiny parish of Foveran, Aberdeenshire, in the late Victorian era, he was brought up by his blind mother and elderly grandmother amid the rigid Presbyterian confines of Scotland’s north-east. Tragedy, dreary work as a bank clerk and a craving for success on his own terms all precipitated his leaving Aberdeen to live the life of an artist in London where he quickly became one of the most-talked about creatives of his generation. At the heart of this biography – the first ever to be published on McBey – is his time as a war artist in the Middle East during the Great War – where he would meet and paint T. E. Lawrence – his many love affairs, marriage to the beautiful American, Marguerite Loeb, and his enduring passion for Morocco. Drawing on his many diaries and letters and artistic creations, this is the story of one man who – clever, kind, intrepid, dashing, insecure and flawed – triumphed against the odds.

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'There's something about the Whiteknights area that makes people stay here.' - From the Foreword by Fiona Talkington, BBC Radio 3 Presenter and long-term resident Two hundred years ago, the aptly named 'Southern Hill' that rises steeply from the edge of the river plain south of Reading was part of Whitley and largely farmland. However, its vistas, fresh air and proximity to the town led prominent Victorians to invest in and develop the area and their contributions have shaped it into the 'village within a town' that it is today. Schools, the University, hotels and a care home now occupy many of the sites originally owned by the town's famous industrialists and their elegant homes have been co-opted for community use which gives the area its unique aura of egalitarian refinement. Celebrated in the annual walking tour of artists' studios, the creative heart of the district beats stronger than ever and this book brings together 28 artists to respond in their own way and their own medium to the place we call 'Whiteknights'. And to give context to the artwork, local historians paint a fascinating picture of the Whiteknights estate that became the University campus, the buildings, the streets and the people who lived here. This joint venture from the Whiteknights Studio Trail, celebrating 20 years, and Two Rivers Press, publishing in the area for 25 years, pays tribute to the heritage we are privileged to be part of.

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To the impartial observer Britain does not appear to have any mountains. Yet the British invented the sport of mountain climbing and for two periods in history British climbers led the world in the pursuit of this beautiful and dangerous obsession. Unjustifiable Risk is the story of the social, economic and cultural conditions that gave rise to the sport, and the achievements and motives of the scientists and poets, parsons and anarchists, villains and judges, ascetics and drunks that have shaped its development over the past two hundred years. The history of climbing inevitably reflects the wider changes that have occurred in British society, including class, gender, nationalism and war, but the sport has also contributed to changing social attitudes to nature and beauty, heroism and death. Over the years, increasing wealth, leisure and mobility have gradually transformed climbing from an activity undertaken by an eccentric and privileged minority into a sub-division of the leisure and tourist industry, while competition, improved technology and information, and increasing specialisation have helped to create climbs of unimaginable difficulty at the leading edge of the sport. But while much has changed, even more has remained the same. Today's climbers would be instantly recognisable to their Victorian predecessors, with their desire to escape from the crowded complexity of urban society and willingness to take "unjustifiable" risk in pursuit of beauty, adventure and self-fulfilment. Unjustifiable Risk was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker prize in 2011.

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Winner, LGBT Studies Lammy Award presented by Lambda Literary Neither queer theory nor queer activism has fully reckoned with the role of race in the emergence of the modern gay subject. In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Pérez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer histories—the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy— Pérez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence. Describing an enduring homonationalism dating to the “birth” of the homosexual in the late 19th century, Pérez considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized, but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Anne Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—Pérez proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism. A Taste for Brown Bodies argues that practices and subjectivities that we understand historically as forms of homosexuality have been regulated and normalized as an extension of the US nation-state, laying bare the tacit, if complex, participation of gay modernity within US imperialism.

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How do we understand Christmas? What does it mean? This book is a lively introduction to the study of popular culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social and historical contexts of Christmas in the UK, USA and Australia, covering such topics as fiction, film, television, art, newspapers and magazines, war, popular music and carols. Chapters explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural activities surrounding Christmas (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its relationship to a set of basic values (the idealised construct of the family), social relationships (community), and the ways in which ideological discourses are used and mobilised, not least in times of conflict, terrorism and war. Packed with examples ranging from Charles Dickens' seminal text, A Christmas Carol, Coca-colonisation and Santa Claus, Victorian cartoons and Christmas cards, to Dr Who, The Office, 'A Fairy Tale of New York', 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)', and such dystopian films as Jingle All the Way and All I Want For Christmas, the case studies offer an incisive account of the ways in which Christmas relates to social change, and how such recent events as 9/11 and the continuing conflict in Iraq focus attention on traditional themes of community and family. Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture offers students and scholars alike an opportunity to explore the hidden agendas of the world's most popular festival and what it means to the outsider looking in.

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Nicholas Frankel presents a new and revisionary account of Wilde’s final years, spent in poverty and exile on the European continent following his release from an English prison for the crime of “gross indecency” between men. Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years challenges the prevailing, traditional view of Wilde as a broken, tragic figure, a martyr to Victorian sexual morality, and shows instead that he pursued his post-prison life with passion, enjoying new liberties while trying to resurrect his literary career.After two bitter years of solitary confinement, Frankel shows, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 determined to rebuild his life along lines that were continuous with the path he had followed before his conviction, unapologetic and even defiant about the crime for which he had been convicted. England had already done its worst. In Europe’s more tolerant atmosphere, he could begin to live openly and without hypocrisy.Frankel overturns previous misunderstandings of Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the great love of his life, with whom he hoped to live permanently in Naples, following their secret and ill-fated elopement there. He describes how and why the two men were forced apart, as well as Wilde’s subsequent relations with a series of young men. Oscar Wilde pays close attention to Wilde’s final two important works, De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, while detailing his nearly three-year residence in Paris. There, despite repeated setbacks and open hostility, Wilde attempted to rebuild himself as a man—and a man of letters.

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Long before the satirical comedy of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the comic operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were the hottest send-ups of the day's political and cultural obsessions. Gilbert and Sullivan's productions always rose to the level of social commentary, despite being impertinent, absurd, or inane. Some viewers may take them straight, but what looks like sexism or stereotype was actually a clever strategy of critique. Parody was a powerful weapon in the culture wars of late-nineteenth-century England, and with defiantly in-your-face sophistication, Gilbert and Sullivan proved that popular culture can be intellectually as well as politically challenging. Carolyn Williams underscores Gilbert and Sullivan's creative and acute understanding of cultural formations. Her unique perspective shows how anxiety drives the troubled mind in the Lord Chancellor's "Nightmare Song" in Iolanthe and is vividly realized in the sexual and economic phrasing of the song's patter lyrics. The modern body appears automated and performative in the "Junction Song" in Thespis, anticipating Charlie Chaplin's factory worker in Modern Times. Williams also illuminates the use of magic in The Sorcerer, the parody of nautical melodrama in H.M.S. Pinafore, the ridicule of Victorian aesthetic and idyllic poetry in Patience, the autoethnography of The Mikado, the role of gender in Trial by Jury, and the theme of illegitimacy in The Pirates of Penzance. With her provocative reinterpretation of these artists and their work, Williams recasts our understanding of creativity in the late nineteenth century.

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The personal journals examined in Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent are not the witty, erudite, and gracefully written exercises that have drawn the attention of most biographers and literary scholars. Prosaic, ungrammatical, and poorly spelled, the fifteen surviving volumes of Henry Trent's hitherto unexamined diaries are nevertheless a treasure for the social and cultural historian.Henry Trent was born in England in 1826, the son of a British naval officer. When he was still a boy, his father decided to begin a new life as a landed gentleman and moved the family to Lower Canada. At the age of sixteen Trent began writing in a diary, which he maintained, intermittently, for more than fifty years. As a lonely youth he narrates days spent hunting and trapping in the woods owned by his father. On the threshold of manhood and in search of a vocation, he writes about his experiences in London and then on Vancouver Island during the gold rush. And finally, as the father of a large family, he describes the daily struggle to make ends meet on the farm he inherited in Quebec's lower St Francis valley.As it follows Trent through the different stages of his long life, Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent explores the complexities of class and colonialism, gender roles within the rural family, and the transition from youth to manhood to old age. The diaries provide a rare opportunity to read the thoughts and follow the experiences of a man who, like many Victorian-era immigrants of the privileged class, struggled to adapt to the Canadian environment during the rise of the industrial age.

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When Isaac Newton published the "Principia" three centuries ago, only a few scholars were capable of understanding his conceptually demanding work. Yet this esoteric knowledge quickly became accessible in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Britain produced many leading mathematical physicists. In this book, Andrew Warwick shows how the education of these "masters of theory" led them to transform our understanding of everything from the flight of a boomerang to the structure of the universe. Warwick focuses on Cambridge University, where many of the best physicists trained. He begins by tracing the dramatic changes in undergraduate education there since the 18th century, especially the gradual emergence of the private tutor as the most important teacher of mathematics. Next he explores the material culture of mathematics instruction, showing how the humble pen and paper so crucial to this study transformed everything from classroom teaching to final examinations. Balancing their intense intellectual work with strenuous physical exercise, the students themselves - known as the "Wranglers" - helped foster the competitive spirit that drove them in the classroom and informed the Victorian ideal of a manly student. Finally, by investigating several historical "cases", such as the reception of Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, Warwick shows how the production, transmission and reception of new knowledge was profoundly shaped by the skills taught to Cambridge undergraduates. Drawing on a wealth of new archival evidence and illustrations, "Master of Theory" examines the origins of a cultural tradition through which the complex world of theoretical physics was made commonplace.

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The thrilling second novel in the acclaimed series The Brightstorm Chronicles! The Brightstorm twins are back for another adventure! Eudora Vane has organized an explorer fleet to search the last known destination of missing adventurer Ermitage Wrigglesworth. Harriet Culpepper and the crew of the Aurora join the mission, but they don't believe that Eudora has good intentions. What is she really looking for? Arthur is determined to find out, and when disaster strikes and the Brightstorm twins are separated, will he and Maudie be able to find their way back to each other? The long-awaited sequel to Brightstorm, which was selected as the first Booksellers Association Children's Book of the Season, won the West Sussex Children's Story Book Award, was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Awards and the Waterstones' Children's Book Prize, and longlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award. Perfect for fans of books by Peter Bunzl, Abi Elphinstone, and Alex Bell. PRAISE FOR BRIGHTSTORM: "A pacy tale of lies and greed versus loyalty" Observer "Hardy has drunk from the same cup as Philip Reeve and Philip Pullman. This is a skilful, gripping and hugely enjoyable account of the bonds that keep families together." Literary Review "Full of surprises and keeps you desperate to find the truth" National Geographic Kids "An unputdownable Victorian adventure with vivid characters that travels at lightning speed" BookTrust's Great Books Guide "A highly entertaining old-school adventure" The Bookseller

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Conrad in Italy provides international students and researchers with a variety of critical approaches. Richard Ambrosini surveys Conrad's reception within the Italian academy. Franco Marenco's essay on "Heart of Darkness" outlines Conrad's centrality in English Modernism. Alessandro Serpieri deals with Conrad's impressionistic treatment of space in The Secret Agent and other texts. Giuseppe Sertoli focuses on Conrad's debt to the Comtesse de Boigne's Memoires and to James's Portrait of a Lady in the writing of Suspense. Fausto Ciompi investigates the isotopy of dream in Lord Jim and other early novels. Elio Di Piazza reads the The Mirror of the Sea as an inquiry into British and Russian empires. Maria Teresa Chialant's study of "Amy Foster" and "Tomorrow" accounts for the interest of Italian critics in Conrad's minor works. Francesco Marroni unfolds the moral structure of "The Secret Sharer". Nicoletta Vallorani tackles the theme of the double in "The Secret Sharer" from the perspective of the art of photography. Luisa Villa illuminates the complex structure of Chance in the light of Conrad's re-elaboration of the Victorian multi-plot novel. Mario Domenichelli proposes a reading of Conrad's cooperation with Ford. The Inheritors is the subject of Mario Curreli's essay on Conrad's debt to H.G. Wells, Zangwill, and Drumont, while it places the issue of fourth-dimension in the context of European colonialisms. Marialuisa Bignami's survey of Conrad's influence on Primo Levi and Marilena Saracino's intertextual analysis of "Heart of Darkness" and Luigi Guarneri's Tenebre sul Congo are two exercises in dialogic reading which confirm Conrad's well-established reception in Italian culture.

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Fairy stories, especially from the rich tradition of Ireland where the supernatural grew from the legends of the Celts, are the magic stories of everyday folk seeking solutions to the challenges of the day. This spritely new collection brings together the fables and stories of banshees, kings, trembling farmers, tricksters and beloved princesses. ‘Smallhead and the King's Sons’ (a Cinderella story) and ‘The Haughty Princess’ (recalling Grimm’s ‘Kings Thrushbeard’) are amongst the many delightful tales of hope and reckless determination. Fairy tales bring the myths of ancient times into the Victorian and Modern eras, where superstition and the supernatural still exist. Rooted in the past, such fairy stories bring morals and lessons for the young, and wise words for the old. They are a reminder of the power of the natural world and offer suggestions for our inner fears of the dark and the shadows. These tales provide a link between the myths and legends of the Celts, and the modern tales of dark monsters, of vampires and bewitchment, of the dark voices hidden in the earth, and the stars. FLAME TREE 451: From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.

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Writer Harry Pearson takes a warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports to find out how and why they have survived and to meet the characters who keep them going. When Victorian public schoolmasters and Oxbridge-educated gentlemen were taming football, codifying cricket, bringing the values of muscular Christianity to the boxing ring and the athletics field, games that dated back to the pagan era clung on in isolated pockets of rural Britain, unmodified by contemporary tastes, shunned by the media and sport’s ruling elites. Here they remain, small, secret worlds, free from media scrutiny and VAR controversies, wreathed in an arcane language of face-gaters, whack-ups, potties, gates-of-hell and the Dorset flop; as much a part of the British countryside as the natterjack toad and almost as endangered. No Pie, No Priest! travels through Britain in search of the nation’s traditional rural sports, seeking out the championship of Knur and Spell (a Viking forefather of golf) on the West Yorkshire moors; watching Irish Road Bowling in County Armagh (once a surprising interest of England cricket captain Mike Brearley), Popinjay at Kilwinning Abbey in Ayrshire, the Aunt Sally competitions of Oxfordshire, and taking in world championship Stoolball (often considered the dairymaid’s form of cricket) and Toad-in-the-Hole in West Sussex.No Pie, No Priest! combines sports reporting, travelogue and history, and features a cast of bucolic eccentrics and many deeply impenetrable regional accents.

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In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing ‘an art without a history’. ‘No-one’, it went on, ‘has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.’ Until now. Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity. The earliest tattoos yet identified belonged to Ötzi, the ‘iceman’, whose mummy allows us a brief glimpse into the prehistory of the practice. We know that over the more than five thousand years since he was tattooed, countless cultures have performed this ancient practice, and people in every corner of the world have been tattooed. For the most part, these fascinating histories remain stubbornly untold, and the secrets of Siberian princesses, Chinese generals and Victorian socialites have been hidden on the skin, under layers of clothing and under layers of history. Now with access to a wealth of new and unreported material, this book will roll up its sleeves and reveal the artwork hidden beneath them. In Painted People, Dr Matt Lodder, one of the world’s foremost experts on tattooing, tells the stories of people like Arnaq, who was tattooed in keeping with her cultural and religious traditions in sixteenth-century Canada, and Horace Ridler, who was tattooed as a means to make money in 1930s London. And in between these two extremes, he describes tattoos inked for love, for loyalty, for sedition and espionage and for self-expression, as well as tattoos inflicted on the unwilling, to ostracise. Taken together, these twenty-one tattoos paint a portrait of humanity as both artist and canvas.

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Britain fought three major wars, and two minor ones, with the Asante people of West Africa in the nineteenth century. Only the Sudanese and Zulu campaigns saw a greater loss of life, both for the British and the indigenous population. Like the Zulus, the Asante were a warrior nation who offered a tough adversary for the British regulars - they were respected for their martial skills and bravery. And yet these wars have rarely been written about and are little understood. That is why Stephen Manning's vivid, detailed new history of this neglected colonial conflict is of such value. In the war of 1823-6 the British were defeated - the British governor's head was severed and his skull was taken to the Asante king who made a cast of gold and this trophy was paraded once a year during an Asante ceremony. The years 1873-4 witnessed the brilliance of Sir Garnet Wolseley in overcoming the logistical problems of sending a large British expedition deep into the jungle where it faced not only a formidable foe but a climate so unforgiving that the region became known as 'The White Man's Grave'. Finally, the 1900 campaign culminated in the epic siege of the British fort in Kumasi which must rank as one of the great Victorian escapades alongside the more famous sieges of Peking and Mafikeng. Stephen Manning's account, which is based on Asante as well as British sources, offers a fascinating view from both sides of one of the most remarkable and protracted struggles of the colonial era.

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The more red-faced and bearded or impulsive a man, the more dark, calm, cool and quiet should his wife be; and vice versa. Those very fleshy should not marry those equally so, but those spare and slim. A spare man is much better adapted to a fleshy woman than a round-favored man. Two very beautiful persons rarely do or should marry; nor two extra homely. Learn all this and much, much more in Marriage and Love, a gem of Victorian wisdom on courtship and marriage, immoral conduct, and what to look for in a spouse. The ideal funny gift book for newlyweds or brides-to-be, it includes a potpourri of advice on such matters as wooing and courting; determining the character of a potential mate by hair color, eye color, nose type, laugh, and height; tips on encouraging—and avoiding—sex with your husband; how to dress up, spruce up, and be on the alert; and, of course, the acceptable length and frequency of unavoidable sexual encounters. Includes essential advice on: *Wooing and courting*Determining the character of a potential mate by hair color, eye color, nose type, laugh, and height*Tips on avoiding sex with your husband*The evils of novels and the theater*The dangers of over-corseting*• HowHow to dress up, spruce up, and be on the alert. ("Don’t wait too long to get one much more perfect than you are; but settle on some one soon."} • Appropriate night-wear for the wedded couple• The acceptable length and frequency of unavoidable sexual encounters

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A history and tour of this exceptionally beautiful designed landscape in North Yorkshire. Dubbed "the Wonder of the North" in 1732, the National Trust's Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Estate (now a World Heritage Site) encompasses one of the largest, most magnificent and beautiful designed landscapes ever created. This richly illustrated volume charts the landscape's history from the first arrival of prehistoric hunters, via medieval monasticism, the Dissolution of the monasteries, eighteenth-century aestheticism and scandal, and the first ages of mass tourism, to the present day. At the heart of the story lies the rise and fall of England's largest Cistercian monastery and how that shaped the origins of the Aislabie family's breathtaking gardens. Their Studley Royalwas at the forefront of every emergent landscape gardening fashion between 1670 and 1800. The book also describes the dramatic history of the family and the monumental scale of their achievements in this field, extending over many dozens of square miles of North Yorkshire - far beyond the limits of the garden as it is seen today (reduced to serve the more limited needs of Victorian day-trippers). The Wonder of the North brings social and garden history together with archaeology to reveal Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal - too often seen as "just" a ruined medieval monastery - as one of the world's greatest artistic creations. Mark Newman has been the National Trust's archaeological adviser for Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal estate since 1988. He was also resident there, living in Fountains Hall from 1988-1995.

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In this well-researched book, Philip Massolin takes a fascinating look at the forces of modernization that swept through English Canada, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. Victorian values - agrarian, religious - and the adherence to a rigid set of philosophical and moral codes were being replaced with those intrinsic to the modern age: industrial, secular, scientific, and anti-intellectual. This work analyses the development of a modern consciousness through the eyes of the most fervent critics of modernity - adherents to the moral and value systems associated with Canada's tory tradition. The work and thought of social and moral critics Harold Innis, Donald Creighton, Vincent Massey, Hilda Neatby, George P. Grant, W.L. Morton, Northrop Frye, and Marshall McLuhan are considered for their views of modernization and for their strong opinions on the nature and implications of the modern age. These scholars shared concerns over the dire effects of modernity and the need to attune Canadians to the realities of the modern age. Whereas most Canadians were oblivious to the effects of modernization, these critics perceived something ominous: far from being a sign of true progress, modernization was a blight on cultural development. In spite of the efforts of these critics, Canada emerged as a fully modern nation by the 1970s. Because of the triumph of modernity, the toryism that the critics advocated ceased to be a defining feature of the nation's life. Modernization, in short, contributed to the passing of an intellectual tradition centuries in the making and rapidly led to the ideological underpinnings of today's modern Canada.

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Nellie Dowell was a match factory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals. Muriel Lester, the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, longed to be free of the burden of money and possessions. Together, these unlikely soulmates sought to remake the world according to their own utopian vision of Christ's teachings. The Match Girl and the Heiress paints an unforgettable portrait of their late-nineteenth-century girlhoods of wealth and want, and their daring twentieth-century experiments in ethical living in a world torn apart by war, imperialism, and industrial capitalism. In this captivating book, Seth Koven chronicles how each traveled the globe--Nellie as a spinster proletarian laborer, Muriel as a well-heeled tourist and revered Christian peacemaker, anticolonial activist, and humanitarian. Koven vividly describes how their lives crossed in the slums of East London, where they inaugurated a grassroots revolution that took the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to achieving economic and social justice for the dispossessed. Koven shows how they devoted themselves to Kingsley Hall--Gandhi's London home in 1931 and Britain's first "people's house" founded on the Christian principles of social sharing, pacifism, and reconciliation--and sheds light on the intimacies and inequalities of their loving yet complicated relationship. The Match Girl and the Heiress probes the inner lives of these two extraordinary women against the panoramic backdrop of shop-floor labor politics, global capitalism, counterculture spirituality, and pacifist feminism to expose the wounds of poverty and neglect that Christian love could never heal.

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Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. He rose from humble beginnings and achieved fame with music that to this day is beloved by audiences in England, and his work has secured an enduring legacy worldwide. Leading scholars examine the composer's life in Edward Elgar and His World, presenting a comprehensive portrait of both the man and the age in which he lived. Elgar's achievement is remarkably varied and wide-ranging, from immensely popular works like the famous Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1--a standard feature of American graduations--to sweeping masterpieces like his great oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. The contributors explore Elgar's Catholicism, which put him at odds with the prejudices of Protestant Britain; his glorification of British colonialism; his populist tendencies; his inner life as an inspired autodidact; the aristocratic London drawing rooms where his reputation was made; the class prejudice with which he contended throughout his career; and his anguished reaction to World War I. Published in conjunction with the 2007 Bard Music Festival and the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth, this elegant and thought-provoking volume illuminates the greatness of this accomplished English composer and brings vividly to life the rich panorama of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Rachel Cowgill, Sophie Fuller, Daniel M. Grimley, Nalini Ghuman Gwynne, Deborah Heckert, Charles Edward McGuire, Matthew Riley, Alison I. Shiel, and Aidan J. Thomson.

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"I do not say you are it, but you look it, and you pose at it, which is just as bad," Lord Queensbury challenged Oscar Wilde in the courtroom which erupted in laughter accusing Wilde of posing as a sodomite. What was so terrible about posing as a sodomite, and why was Queensbury's horror greeted with such amusement? In Oscar Wilde Prefigured, Dominic Janes suggests that what divided the two sides in this case was not so much the question of whether Wilde was or was not a sodomite, but whether or not it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. For many, intimations of sodomy were simply a part of the amusing spectacle of sophisticated life.Oscar Wilde Prefigured is a study of the prehistory of this "queer moment" in 1895. Janes explores the complex ways in which men who desired sex with men in Britain had expressed such interests through clothing, style, and deportment since the mid-eighteenth century. He supplements the well-established narrative of the inscription of sodomitical acts into a homosexual label and identity at the end of the nineteenth century by teasing out the means by which same-sex desires could be signaled through visual display in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Wilde, it turns out, is not the starting point for public queer figuration. He is the pivot by which Georgian figures and twentieth-century camp stereotypes meet. Drawing on the mutually reinforcing phenomena of dandyism and caricature of alleged effeminates, Janes examines a wide range of images drawn from theater, fashion, and the popular press to reveal new dimensions of identity politics, gender performance, and queer culture.

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Through the impact of shops like Habitat and IKEA, and of the countless glossy magazines, books and catalogues that focus on the concept of 'interior design', we have all become familiar with the idea of our homes and public interiors containing items of modern furniture and decor. Yet design historian and critic Penny Sparke shows that, unlike designed buildings and artefacts, the fixed idea of the 'modern interior' has only ever been an abstract and idealized concept, promoted through exhibitions, retail contexts and the mass media, and that it rarely exists in an absolute form. "The Modern Interior" provides a persuasive account of the forces, conflicts and debates that have underpinned the emergence of something we now effortlessly refer to as the 'modern interior'. Offering fascinating and eloquent insights into the work of international designers including C.R. Mackintosh, Adolf Loos, Josef Frank, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Lilly Reich, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Philippe Starck, and Charles and Ray Eames, Sparke focuses on the realities as well as concepts of the modern interior, whether in the hands of professional decorators and designers, or in those of its amateur inhabitants. By doing so, she deftly unravels the shift from Victorian to modern style, and demonstrates that the easy transition to the modern interior so frequently portrayed is little more than a mythology. "The Modern Interior" is essential reading for all students of modern design, architecture and culture, as well as anyone interested in why the interior spaces we inhabit look the way they do.

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In Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir, Alexandra Teague explores cycles of family trauma and both the dangerous and recuperative powers of fantasy. Teague attempts to understand and contextualize her “feral Victorian” family in terms of trauma and mental health, but also with deep love and humor. How did people who prided themselves on making everything from scratch take annual trips to Disney World? What did it mean that Teague’s mother claimed to have psychic abilities? How did her sensitive youngest nephew end up talking in a voice that wasn’t his own? Why did Teague, the daughter of educated non-conformist parents, marry as a teenager (with her parents’ blessing) and spend seven years in an abusive relationship? How do family legacies of grief and dysfunction and creativity intersect? How do any of us make meaning or escape our circumstances without replicating the fantasies or escapism with which we’ve been raised? Teague is carefully attuned to the vagaries of geographical cultures, and she weaves her family’s history and weighty explorations of trauma and psychology not just with pop culture but with the specific cultures of the places she and her family pass through: the Bay Area, a tiny college town in the Inland Northwest, a Southwest ghost town, a Texas city, an Arkansas hippie bubble, and Central Florida suburb. Spinning Tea Cups will appeal to readers interested in American cultural studies, those concerned with the ongoing crisis of mental illness in this country, and those who simply love strange, quirky, richly told stories.

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***Pre-order Hannah Dolby's next Historical rom-com, How to Solve Murders Like a Lady, now! Perfect for fans of cosy mysteries and female detectives*** *** Violet Hamilton is a woman who knows her own mind. Which, in Victorian Hastings, can make things a little complicated... At 28, Violet's father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing. Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk. Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton's vanishing before it's too late? A delightfully joyful, funny and gripping historical novel, perfect for fans of The Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting and The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. *** 'Glorious... it's funny from the start.' – The Daily Mail 'Delightfully quirky, joyful and original... it will help you bounce exuberantly into spring' – Adele Parks 'If you loved Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, you'll love to snuggle up with this novel!' – Chat *** A delightfully joyful, funny and gripping historical novel, perfect for fans of The Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting and The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels.

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When Joanna Wolfarth was pregnant with her first child, she assumed she would breastfeed, as her mother had fed her. Yet she was unprepared for the startling realities of new motherhood. Then, just four weeks after the birth, she found herself back in hospital with an underweight baby, bewildered by inconsistent advice and overcome with feelings of guilt and isolation.Months later, her cultural historian's impulse led her to look to the past for guidance. What she discovered, neglected in the archives, amazed and reassured her. By piecing together cultural debris - from fragments of ancient baby bottles to eighteenth-century breast pumps, from the Palaeolithic Woman of Willendorf figurine to the poignantly inventive work of Louise Bourgeois and from mythical accounts of the creation of the Milky Way to advice found in Victorian medical manuals - Joanna began to understand how feeding our babies can be culturally, economically and physiologically determined as well as deeply personal and emotive.Using the arc of her own experience, Joanna takes us on an intimate journey of discovery beyond mother and baby, asking how the world views caregivers, their bodies, their labour and their communal bonds. By bringing together art, social histories, philosophy, folk wisdom and contemporary interviews with women from across the world, Milk reveals how infant feeding has been represented and repressed, celebrated and censured. In doing so, Joanna charts previously unexplored territory and offers comfort and solace to anyone who has fed or will feed a child.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR.SUNDAY TIMES SPORT BOOK OF THE YEAR. From its late-Victorian flowering in the mill towns of the northwest of England, football spread around the world with great speed. It was helped on its way by a series of missionaries who showed the rest of the planet the simple joys of the game. Even now, in many countries, the colloquial word for a football manager is not 'coach' or 'boss' but 'mister', as that is how the early teachers were known, because they had come from the home of the sport to help it develop in new territories. In Rory Smith's stunning new book Mister, he looks at the stories of these pioneers of the game, men who left this country to take football across the globe. Sometimes, they had been spurned in their own land, as coaching was often frowned upon in England in those days, when players were starved of the ball during the week to make them hungry for it on matchday. So it was that the inspirations behind the 'Mighty Magyars' of the 1950s, the Dutch of the 1970s or top clubs such as Barcelona came from these shores. England, without realising it, fired the very revolution that would remove its crown, changing football's history, thanks to a handful of men who sowed the seeds of the inversion of football's natural order. This is the story of the men who taught the world to play and shaped its destiny. This is the story of the Misters.

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