JVC

Oliver Betts, How Civilized Were the Victorians?: A Reply

Oliver Betts is Research Fellow at the National Railway Museum in York. Having completed his PhD on the working-class idea of home 1870-1914 at the University of York, he is now writing a history of the interplay between railways, society, and human geography in South London 1850-1940. He tweets at @DrOliBetts This post responds to Peter K. Andersson’s Journal of Victorian Culture article ‘How Civilised were the Victorians’. This article can be downloaded here. Working in a National Museum with

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CFP: “Vicarious Victorians: Transmitting Experience in the Nineteenth-Century”, 30 April 2016

Victorian Studies Association of Ontario Toronto, Ontario Saturday 30 April 2016 The theme of the 2016 VSAO conference is “Vicarious Victorians: Transmitting Experience in the Nineteenth-Century.” Professors Rachel Ablow (U Buffalo) and Jules Law (Northwestern U) will serve as our two plenary speakers. We invite proposals that interpret the theme of vicariousness – across spaces, eras, bodies, genres, and media – in broad, interdisciplinary, and imaginative ways. Papers might address: • virtual tourism, armchair imperialism • simulations, dioramas, panoramas, maps

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Ruth Slatter, Odd Victorian Objects: Christmas Trees

Although Christmas trees had been brought to England before the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837, it was Prince Albert’s influence on the Queen that first led to these material things becoming essential components of an English Christmas. Originating in Germany, with legendry links to St Boniface who introduced the Germans to Christianity, Albert encouraged his young wife to adopt this festive tradition after they were married in 1840. Setting an example that was then quickly copied first by

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CFP: Corpses, Cadavers and Catalogues: The Mobilities of Dead Bodies and Body Parts, Past and Present, 17th-18th May 2016

Venue: Barts Pathology Museum and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, London Organisers: Kristin Hussey (QMUL) and Sarah Morton (Keble College, Oxford) Advisory Panel: Dr. Tim Brown (QMUL) and Dr. Beth Greenhough (Keble College, Oxford) Deadline for Abstracts: January 15th, 2016 An interest in the dead body, and particularly its shifting meanings, mobility and agency can be seen in recent works of museology, geography and history of medicine (Hallam, 2007; Maddrell and Sidaway, 2010; Alberti, 2011; Young

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Clare Walker-Gore, ‘A Girl Who Wasn’t Born Neat’: Disability, Gender Trouble and ‘What Katy Did’

Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did has never been out of print since it was first published in 1872. Along with Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women and L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, it’s one of a handful of North American classics which have remained popular with young female readers on both sides of the Atlantic – and, upon re-reading, it’s not difficult to see why. Written in a jaunty, accessible style, heavy on dialogue, light on description, and featuring a

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Peter K. Andersson, Real Victorians and False Margins

This post accompanies Peter K. Andersson’s Journal of Victorian Culture 2015 ‘How Civilised were the Victorians’. This article can be downloaded here. An increasing interest in  “history from below” among Victorian scholars can be detected when looking at the contents of periodicals and books. The Journal of Victorian Culture is at the forefront of this evolution with articles on blood-sports, rat-catchers and the material culture of everyday city life. But although an ambition to encompass the “voiceless masses” has never

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Michael J. Turner, Defending ‘the principle of representation’: Andrew Bisset, The English Civil War, and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

This post accompanies Michael J. Tuner’s ‘Journal of Victorian Culture’ article. Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset, The English Civil War, and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England. This article can be read here. In my article I explore trends in Victorian historiography, and in particular the political uses made of the past, using the histories published by a relatively little-known practitioner named Andrew Bisset (1803-1891). Bisset was a Scottish-born, Cambridge-educated lawyer who turned increasingly

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Clare Walker-Gore, Dickens and Disability at Christmas, or Why Tiny Tim did NOT die

Whether or not we are inclined to accept F.G. Kitton’s provocative claim that Dickens was “The Man Who ‘Invented’ Christmas”,[1] there is no doubt that Christmas is a happy time of the year for the Dickens enthusiast. Suddenly, Dickens is everywhere – or rather, A Christmas Carol is. On stages and screens up and down the country, Scrooge will be saying “Bah humbug”, as Dickens’s place in the cultural imagination is annually reasserted. For the scholar of Dickens and disability,

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Ruth Slatter, Odd Victorian Objects 3: Brent Museum, ‘The Library’, Willesden Green

Willesden Green Library was initially opened in 1894 following a poll of the local ratepayers. The library itself could therefore be the subject of this third instalment of ‘Odd’ Victorian Objects in Victorian Britain. However, this post is not going to focus on this building’s heritage, but a new addition to its recent re-development: The Brent Museum. Located on the third floor of the new library in Willesden Green, the museum provides an overview of the history of the borough

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Lauren Padgett, ‘A Fatal Mistake’: The Bradford Lozenge Poisoning, 1858

As children this Halloween fill their plastic pumpkins and goody bags full of sweets, they should be thankful that although today sweets are bad your health, they are no longer deadly like they were around Halloween in Bradford, 1858. The first two deaths, two boys aged nine and eleven, had been reported on the morning on Sunday 31st of October, 1858. Other deaths followed, along with hundreds of people suffering from a ‘sudden and violent illness’. The only thing connecting

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