A posting by Dr Karen E McAulay (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) for JVC Online A decade ago, the library at RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) was refurbished. In preparation for the alterations, an old cupboard had to be emptied, and three music manuscripts came to light, each containing Scottish tunes arranged for the flute; and psalm- tunes.[i] Figure 1: James Simpson’s version of ‘Coolon’, in Simpson MS 2 – probably copied from another source The manuscripts had belonged
Read moreCategory: Victorians Beyond the Academy
When Mrs Beeton isn’t right! Making her Creamed Apple Tart
By Lucinda Matthews-Jones (LJMU) This weekend I was giddy with excitement. I was going to spend Sunday baking, something I haven’t done yet this semester. Sunday coincided with the last day of National Baking Week in the UK (15 – 21 October 2012) and last Tuesday also saw the final of the Great British Bake-Off (GBBO) TV show. Surely the baking gods would be on my side! Surely Mrs Beeton would not fail me! Surely I would have a delicious
Read moreReview: The Paradise and Zola’s The Ladies Paradise
Ben Moore (University of Manchester) Ben.moore@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk The current BBC television series The Paradise, based on Émile Zola’s 1883 novel Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies’ Paradise), arrives in the wake of a number of successful British television period dramas, most conspicuously Downton Abbey, whose popularity and critical acclaim suggests that the appetite of UK and US audiences for class-based dramas combining buttoned-up propriety with a hint of sexual and political transgression continues to provide a lucrative market for programme-makers. The
Read moreReview: Ian Hislop’s ‘Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain’
Jennifer Wallis (QMUL) Figure One: Ian Hislop and his many hats! Ian Hislop’s three-part series Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain aims to ‘[explore] emotion and identity over the last 300 years’ – or more pertinently, how (and indeed, if) we British have attempted to tame, bottle up, and alter our emotions. Screening the history of emotions may not be as straightforward as the history of surgery or of World War One, but Stiff Upper Lip is a
Read moreThe Delights of “Living in” and Working in a Cardiff Department Store
Michelle Matthews (Independent Scholar) The industrial revolution has typically been characterised as separating home from work. Yet as the BBC drama ‘The Paradise’ shows, home and work merged in the department store with shop assistants often living over the shop as part of their employment term. Fondly known as ‘Living in’, this practice played a crucial role in the recruitment of staff in a number of professions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the department store it functioned as
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 moreHobsbawm’s Nineteenth Century: An appreciation
Rohan McWilliam President of the British Association of Victorian Studies The passing of Eric Hobsbawm is a huge loss to anyone who cares about the nineteenth century. For that matter, his passing is a huge loss to anyone who cares about the present moment and the future. Hobsbawm bequeathed to many of us the assumption that, if we wished to really probe what is at stake in current affairs, we had to understand the social and economic transformations that took
Read moreA Year on Social Media Part 2: Blogging
Not only have I started to use Twitter this year, but I’ve also started blogging. I enjoy blogging. Like Twitter, it has made me more connected to the academic world beyond institutional borders. This point was recently reinforced to me when I attended BAVS this year and on three separate occasions I had people stop me to talk about recent blog posts I had written. Having said the above, I am aware of my limitations. I don’t think I could
Read moreVibrators, the New Women and One Naughty Queen: Film Review of ‘Hysteria’
by Fern Riddell (King’s College, London) Since 2011, I have waited with bated breath for the release of Tanya Wexler’s new film Hysteria, which stars Rupert Everret as a sexually deviant, technologically gifted billionaire playboy – the Victorian Bruce Wayne of the sex aid industry – Maggie Gyllenhaal as a feisty, do-gooding, chest-beating early suffragette, and Hugh Dancy as a young, forward-thinking, if not always forward-looking, doctor with a great idea. With brilliant support from Jonathan Pryce, Felicity Jones, and
Read moreA Year on Social Media Part 1: Twitter
August bank holiday marked an important milestone for me. It was a year ago that my friends David and Jamie persuaded me that I needed to join Twitter. Of course, I knew about Twitter but was at the time rather dismissive of it. I thought only people like Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown tweeted. When my mother asked me ‘Why aren’t you on Twitter?’ I replied with smug confidence that ‘Twitter isn’t really used by people of my generation; it’s
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