By Lauren Padgett, Leeds Trinity University Post-graduate students, early career researchers and scholars gathered at the Royal Holloway, University of London, for a three day colloquium (Friday 10 – Sunday 12 April). The London Victorian Studies Colloquium promised to be an informal, lively weekend of papers, panels and discussions, and it did not disappoint! Friday Proceedings started with a reading group session on extracts from John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University. Newman’s series of lectures, which conceptualised (and
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JVC
Marieke Hendriksen, ‘Consumer culture, self-prescription and status: Nineteenth-century medicine chests in the Royal Navy’
This post accompanies Marieke Hendriksen’s Journal of Victorian Culture article ‘Consumer Culture, Self-Prescription, and Status: Nineteenth-Century Medicine Chests in the Royal Navy’ (2015), which can be downloaded here. In early September 2012, with my PhD thesis under review and a postdoctoral fellowship lined up for October, I arrived at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, for a five-week research project on the medicine chests in the museum’s collections. From the online collection database I had gathered that there were
Read moreEmily Bowles, ‘Boz, Tibbs, and the Sparkler of Albion: The Many Names of Charles Dickens’
Emily Bowles is a PhD student at the University of York. Her research focuses on Charles Dickens’s self-representation 1857-1870, and representations by Dickens’s friends and family 1870-1939. You can find her on Twitter @EmilyBowles. Charles Dickens knew the power of a name. From the immortally disgruntled Scrooge to the oft-imitated Pickwick Club, everyone is familiar with a Dickens character or two. It is unsurprising, then, that he also experimented with different names and titles for himself, although perhaps the
Read moreSophie Cooper, The Rush for Gold – A Global Quest
Sophie Cooper is a second year PhD student and William McFarlane Scholar at the University of Edinburgh. She is studying Irish communities in Melbourne and Chicago between 1850 and 1890, specifically in relation to situational influences on identity formation and nationalist thought. Sophie tweets using the handle @SophcoCooper and more information can be found on her academia page. When you think of the poor migrants who left the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century, it is usual to think of
Read moreAnn Gagné, A Very Morris Birthday
Dr. Ann Gagné is College Instructor at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada. Her current research explores how touch and ethics relate to education as well as the spatial framing of learning in the nineteenth century which is an extension of themes found in her doctoral dissertation. She is very active on Twitter @AnnGagne and also writes a blog that relates to teaching and pedagogical strategies at www.allthingspedagogical.blogspot.ca On March 21st, 2015 the William Morris Society of Canada celebrated what would have
Read moreLara Rutherford-Morrison, Jack the Ripper Was A Murderous Medieval Monk; Or, I Read The Curse Upon Mitre Square So You Don’t Have To
Lara Rutherford-Morrison earned her PhD in Victorian literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in December of 2013. She is currently an Affiliated Scholar at Concordia University in Montreal and blogs daily for Bustle. Her research considers the ways that contemporary culture reimagines and plays with Victorian literature and history, in contexts ranging from adaptations of Victorian novels in film and fiction to heritage tourism in the U.K. She can be found at her website and on Twitter @LaraRMorrison.
Read moreRohan McWilliam, The Victorians Are Still With Us
Rohan McWilliam is Professor of Modern British History at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He is the author of The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Sensation (London: Continuum, 2007) and is currently writing a history of the West End of London. Contact: rohan.mcwilliam@anglia.ac.uk We seldom lack heirs to G.M.Young. When it comes to the Victorians, every age throws up its portrait of an age.[1] But producing a wide-ranging account of Victorian Britain these days is becoming increasingly difficult. The historical literature is
Read moreAnna Maria Barry, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Celebrating 175 Years of the Original Liverpool Sound
This year marks the 175th anniversary of the Liverpool Philharmonic: the UK’s oldest surviving professional symphony orchestra. The occasion has been marked with a major new exhibition in Liverpool, which I was recently able to visit during a research trip to the city. The exhibition traces the story of the Liverpool Philharmonic from its Victorian roots through to the present day. Documents on display give a fascinating insight into the world of nineteenth-century entertainment and celebrity culture. The exhibition is
Read moreAlyson Hunt, The Great Academic Taboo
Alyson Hunt is a first year part-time PhD candidate in the English Department at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent. Her current research explores the concept of Victorian crime short fiction as a vehicle for social anxieties and considers how dress and clothing illuminates and encrypts these anxieties. She also works as a Research Associate for the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers and is currently working on a series of enterprises as part of a project entitled: From Brontë to
Read moreGeorgina Grant, Smoking and Respectable Femininity
Georgina is a Curatorial Officer for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, based at Blists Hill Victorian Town. She has the responsibility of maintaining, developing and delivering the interpretation of the 52 acre site. Her role is varied, ranging from researching the history of canal vessels to installing Quaker costume displays and giving talks on a traditional Victorian Christmas. Follow Georgina @GeorgyGrant. ‘I never saw a woman – not a basket woman or a gipsy – smoke before!’ Charles Dickens 1846
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