By Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick How do you see yourself: as a Victorianist, or as a nineteenth-centuryist? This was a question that came to mind several times throughout the summer as I attended two conferences that both raised questions about periodisation, categorisation and researcher identity. At Neo-Victorian Cultures: the Victorians Today (Liverpool John Moores University, July 2013), the issue of our contemporary engagement with, and exploration of, the Victorian past initiated conversations about the distinctive qualities of ‘neo-Victorian’ as opposed
Read moreAuthor: Charlotte Mathieson
Brontë by Polly Teale
By Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick In May 2013, the Capitol Theatre in Manchester staged a production of the play Brontë, by Polly Teale. Originally staged by Shared Experience in 2005 (of which you can view a short trailer online), the play explores the life and writing of the Brontës through key episodes from their lives and scenes from their writing. I went to watch the production with fellow Victorianist and life-writing specialist Amber Regis, and in this filmed conversation
Read moreLocal/Global Dickens: seminar at “The Global and the Local” June 2013
Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick As part of The Global and the Local, the NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA conference held in Venice from 3rd-6th June 2013, I took part in one of the seminars that provided the opportunity for participants to put forward a short position paper on a chosen topic. The seminar on “Dickens: Local and Global” was led by Eileen Gillooly (Columbia University) and featured the following papers: Sharmaine Browne, “The Railroad as Architect in Dombey and Son” Beth Drumm, “Consigned
Read moreCelebrating Dickens in 2012
Charlotte Mathieson (University of Warwick) Throughout 2012, the University of Warwick joined many institutions and organisations around the world in marking the bicentenary of Charles Dickens. Celebrating Dickens brought together researchers and students from the University to celebrate Dickens’s life and times, contributing audio and video podcasts, blogs, discussion points, a feature-length documentary and an interactive map, all of which was made available as a mobile App. The project was marked by the diverse range of content: literary scholars talked about
Read moreThe Lure of the Underground: London Transport Museum and the Tube at 150
It won’t have escaped the notice of readers of this blog that January saw the 150 year anniversary of the London Underground: the first underground line running from Paddington to Farringdon opened on 9th January 1863, marking the beginning of London’s expansive subterranean network of railway lines. Having studied Victorian mobilities for some years now, it came as some surprise to me to realise that I hadn’t yet visited the London Transport Museum, and with a range of new events
Read more“A powerful engine of civilization”: Rowland Hill’s Post Office Reform
In 1837, Rowland Hill set out to reform the way in which a nation communicated with the publication of the pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. It’s a document which I’m sure many Victorianists are familiar with, but I wanted to raise a couple of points that Hill’s pamphlet signals in terms of national belonging and connectedness, as well as its resonances in the British postal service today. Hill set out to address the problem of the Post Office’s unsatisfactory
Read moreMapping the Victorian Novel
This week in my research I came across Maps of the Classics, a website where a selection of novels – mostly English, European, and American nineteenth-century novels – have been plotted onto interactive maps. Texts featured include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, The Mill on the Floss, and Anna Karenina. On each map, locations are helpfully marked with short explanations of their appearance in the text, and fictional locations have been mapped onto the real locations on which they are thought
Read moreReview: Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold. Birmingham, Tindal Street Press: 2011 (2008), 438 pages, £7.99 paperback, ISBN 978-1-906994-15-0 “My husband’s funeral is today. And I’m sitting here alone in my upstairs room while half London followed him to his grave.” So begins Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress, a novel which traces the story of Dorothea Gibson following the death of her estranged husband, famous author Alfred Gibson. Narrated from Dorothea’s perspective, the novel sees her look
Read moreWalking “Dickens’s London”
Charlotte Mathieson explores “Dickens’s London” through a series of walking tours about Dickens’s literary and biographical connections to the city.
Read more