Michael Nott received his PhD from the University of St Andrews. He provides commentaries for the Developing Photopoetry project, and is currently working on his first monograph, a critical history of photopoetry. He tweets, occasionally, @michaeljnott Among the treasures of the Photographically Illustrated Poetry Collection at the University of St Andrews is Eleanora (1860), an anonymous poem about the courtship of the titular heroine by a knight called Raymond during the Hundred Years’ War. The St Andrews copy is
Read moreCategory: Victorians on Display
Rachel Carroll, “Sugar’s The Past”: Black British History in ITV’s Jericho (2016)
Rachel Carroll is Reader in English at Teesside University. She is the author of Rereading Heterosexuality: Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction (2012) and editor of Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities (2009) and (with Adam Hansen) Litpop: Writing and Popular Music (2014). Her essays on black Britain and literary adaptation have been published in Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (2014) and Adaptation (2015). In the early months of 2016 American audiences from Washington to New York were able
Read moreAlyson Hunt, ‘Dressed to Kill’ Study Day Review
Arriving outside the sleek glass architecture of the Aldham Robarts library on an overcast Saturday morning to be greeted by the Liverpool John Moores sports teams excitedly gathered outside inexplicably wearing underwear on top of their clothes, I wondered if the long drive North had affected me more than I had anticipated. Thankfully, a rather more sedate welcome signalled the start of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association study day, an interdisciplinary event entitled Dressed to Kill: Fashion in Victorian Fiction
Read morePatricia Zakreski, Making a Black Ball Gown: Fashion and Social Change in the 1870s
Patricia Zakreski is Lecturer in Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Representing Female Artistic Labour, 1848–1890: Refining Work for the Middle-Class Woman (Ashgate, Farnham, 2006). She is co-editor of ‘What is a Woman to Do?’ A Reader on Women, Work and Art, c. 1830–1890 (Peter Lang, Oxford, 2011) and Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain (Ashgate, Farnham, 2013). Her current project includes articles and
Read moreEmily Bowles, “What’s to-day, my fine fellow?”: Classifying and Dating Tony Jordan’s ‘Dickensian’
Emily Bowles is a PhD candidate 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. She is also a postgraduate representative for the Northern Nineteenth Century Network and assistant administrator for the Women’s Life Writing Network. You can find her on Twitter @EmilyBowles I had been keeping an eye out for Dickensian since October 2014, when rumours of it echoed around the Dickens Day Conference in Senate
Read moreGeorgina Grant, ‘The Fair Toxophilites’: Women and Archery
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 ‘Much might be said why archery, as a lawn game, should be preferred to croquet by ladies…’ The Witchery
Read moreLauren Padgett, Review: ‘Curating the Nineteenth Century’, Colloquium of the Nineteenth-Century Studies, 28 November 2015, University of Leicester
Lauren Padgett is a PhD student at Leeds Trinity University. Her doctoral research explores representations of Victorian women in contemporary museum displays in the Yorkshire and Humber region. Lauren has a BA in History and English and a MA in Museum Studies, and worked in museums for several years. On Saturday 28th November, 2015 was the second meeting of the Colloquium of Nineteenth-Century Studies, hosted at the University of Leicester. The theme was ‘Curating the Nineteenth-Century’. The day consisted of
Read moreRuth 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
Read moreAnn Gagné, ‘Turner Returns to the Art Gallery of Ontario’
Ann Gagné is a 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 Toronto’s love affair with J.M.W Turner began in 2004 when the Art Gallery
Read moreRuth 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
Read more