At Novel Readings I write about my reading, teaching, and research, much but not all of which is Victorian. Blogging is a way to make my academic work more transparent and accessible, and an opportunity to experiment with different kinds of critical writing. Novel Readings has become an indispensable part of my intellectual life, not only for the intrinsic challenges and rewards of writing for it, but because of the community of other readers and writers it has brought me
Read moreCategory: Victorians Beyond the Academy
Bloggers Fair: Mark Blacklock’s ‘The Fairyland of Geometry’
All-too-infrequently updated, The Fairyland of Geometry is a blog on which I post material surrounding my PhD research into the late-nineteenth-century engagement with the idea of higher-dimensioned space. The thesis aims to understand and describe how this engagement altered the spatial imaginary of the period by examining the passage of the idea across disparate cultural terrains, departing from August Mobius’s 1827 paper on barycentric calculus, in which he tentatively speculated a fourth dimension of space as a useful idea in
Read moreBloggers Fair: Amber Regis’ ‘Looking Glasses at Odd Corners’
I started my blog, Looking Glasses at Odd Corners, in October 2011. Its title is an obscure reference to a Virginia Woolf essay on ‘The Art of Biography’ (1939), a phrase that encapsulates my approach to life-writing: ‘Biography will enlarge its scope by hanging up looking glasses at odd corners.’ [1] As a Victorianist, my research is concerned with the recovery and recognition of playfulness, experiment and diversity in nineteenth-century auto/biography. I delve into the ‘odd corners’, shining a light
Read moreI Believe in Sherlock Holmes: Sherlockian Fandom Then & Now
By Jeanette Laredo “You really do, don’t you?” Sherlock’s voice was quiet, not a whisper but more like he was talking to himself than to John, “Even after everything. You still… believe in me.” —from “I Believe in Sherlock Holmes,” a Sherlockian fanfic by Cennis I was on my way to a job talk, weaving through the crowd of students that poured out from the corridors leading to the lecture hall, when my eye caught a flash of that unmistakable
Read moreMrs. Beeton’s Valentine’s Day Bake-Off: Lisa’s Half-Pay Pudding
The Challenge || Lisa’s Half-Pay Pudding || Lucie’s Brandy Pudding || Ryan’s Savoy Cake Unlike my estimable colleagues, I lack a flair for the culinary arts. In my household, I’m the dishwasher not the chef. However, for you, Dear Readers, and the spirit of academic and culinary inquiry, I was willing to roll up my sleeves, open up Mrs. Beeton’s ubiquitous book, and see if I couldn’t at least create something recognizable and edible. Given these goals, I poured through
Read moreMrs. Beeton’s Valentine’s Day Bake-Off: Lucie’s Pouding au Cognac (Brandy Pudding)
The Challenge || Lisa’s Half-Pay Pudding || Lucie’s Brandy Pudding || Ryan’s Savoy Cake Sunday 4th February 2011 Yesterday, we, the editors of JVC online, decided that we would bake a Valentine’s treat from Mrs Beeton’s Household Management for our respective partners. I am very excited for several reasons. Firstly, British readers will already know that the ‘bake off’ has become a part of our mental landscape (well, at least mine) with the BBC’s The Great British Bake Off, a
Read moreMrs. Beeton’s Valentine’s Day Bake-Off: Ryan’s Savoy Cake
The Challenge || Lisa’s Half-Pay Pudding || Lucie’s Brandy Pudding || Ryan’s Savoy Cake Like Lucie, the idea of the Valentine’s Day Bake-Off was one that was incredibly appealing to me. For though the particularities of food competitions differ slightly between Britain and the U.S., we here in the States have also embraced the format with aplomb. I count myself among that “we” and can admit that my weekend veg-outs and semi-frequent bouts with insomnia have made me well-versed in
Read moreIn Search of Dickens’ Workhouse
By Rohan McWilliam To King’s College London on 23 February for the launch of Ruth Richardson’s new book, Dickens and the Workhouse, produced in an extremely handsome edition by Oxford University Press (don’t even think of reading it on a Kindle). The Anatomy Theatre at Kings is packed out for the party and Ruth delivers a wonderful speech making clear that the book is the product of her lifelong love of Dickens. Dickens and the Workhouse (I’ve now read the
Read moreMrs. Beeton’s Valentine’s Day Bake-Off: The Challenge
The Challenge || Lisa’s Half-Pay Pudding || Lucie’s Brandy Pudding || Ryan’s Savoy Cake At the beginning of February (over a skype conference call), we decided to start writing some co-edited themed blog entries. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it seemed fitting that for our first co-edited blog we should bake a dessert for our respective partners from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management – lucky them! Mrs Beeton was- and continues to be- a familiar name. However,
Read moreA Man of Charms: Edward Lovett Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection
Edward Lovett (1852-1933) was an amateur folklorist who, from the age of 8, was an avid collector of charms and amulets. Despite his ‘amateur’ status, Lovett was widely considered to be a leading authority in British folklore and superstitious tradition. Lovett’s reputation was borne out of the many excursions he made to working-class districts of London. He visited shops, dockyards and costmongers looking for discarded or lost objects. It seems only fitting that nearly a hundred years later, his rather
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