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
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Mrs. 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
Read more“Can you show me the places?”: Dickens 2012 and literary tourism
Dr Charlotte Mathieson, Associate Fellow Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick The bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth on 7th February 2012 has prompted a wide range of celebratory responses across the world, with some prominent themes emerging in the proceedings: unsurprisingly, an emphasis on film adaptations and a biographical focus on Dickens’s life and works feature highly; and in Britain, neither is it unexpected to find events around the notion of “Dickens’s London” recurring throughout the
Read moreCharles Dickens at the Morgan Library
Jessica DeCoux City University of New York There are a few things you might want to keep in mind when visiting the Morgan Library and Museum’sM exhibit “Dickens at 200.” The first, and perhaps most important, is that the operative word in the institution’s name is “library.” While the Morgan owns an extensive collection of drawings, paintings and art objects, it is primarily an archive of written and printed materials: manuscripts, first editions, rare books and pamphlets, and printed music,
Read moreVictorian Game Night
Susan E. Cook Southern New Hampshire University If I take out a loan now, I’ll have enough money to build a coal mine. The coal I produce will enable me to build rail to my cotton mill and eventually sell the cotton I produce to the distant market. Or I can build a foundry, use the iron I produce to build another cotton mill, and then produce and sell cotton through other people’s ports, capitalizing on their infrastructure. It’s Friday
Read moreThe Value of Victorian Studies and the Future of the University
Regenia Gagnier is Professor of English at the University of Exeter and President of the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS). Her most recent book is Individualism, Decadence and Globalization: on the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920 (Palgrave 2010) She is Editor in Chief of Literature Compass http://literature-compass.com and its Global Circulation Project http://literature-compass.com/global-circulationproject/ This post is one part of a four-part discussion on the value of Victorian studies. To read the other posts, visit http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/2011/10/07/the-value-of-victorian-studies/. Before turning to
Read moreThe Future of Victorian Studies: The Postgraduate Perspective
Sarah Parker is a doctoral student at University of Birmingham. She recently submitted her PhD thesis, entitled ‘The Lesbian Muse: Homoeroticism, Contemporary Muse Figures and Female Poetic Identity’. Her article ‘A Girl’s Love’: Lord Alfred Douglas as Homoerotic Muse in the Poetry of Olive Custance’ is published Women: A Cultural Review (Vol 22, Issue 2-3). This post is one part of a four-part discussion on the value of Victorian studies. To read the other posts, visit http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/2011/10/07/the-value-of-victorian-studies/. Firstly, I must
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