JVC Online Blog

North American Democracies in the Victorian Era: The Political Satire of Th. Ch. Haliburton

Other

Throughout 2020, the world has been watching American democracy appearing to unravel as its Covid-19 pandemic spiralled out of control; the responsibility for public health measures devolved from the federal level to state level, then to county level, and ultimately down to individuals who pushed back in the name of freedom and challenged lockdowns in courts, and attempted to take over the US Capitol. Prudently, on March 31 Canada closed its southern border and is continuing to monitor the increasingly

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The JVC Graduate Student Essay Prize

Published in JVC

We are pleased to announce the next JVC Essay Prize competition. The aim of the prize is to promote scholarship among postgraduate research students working on the Victorian period in any discipline in the UK and abroad.  The Journal inaugurated the prize in 2007, and our past winners include Louise Lee, Tiffany Watt-Smith, Bob Nicholson, Tom Scriven, Roisín Laing and Lucy Whitehead, whose essays appear in issues 13.1 (2008), 15.1 (2010), 17.3 (2012),  19.1 (2014),  21 4 (2016) and 24.

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Panacea, poison and psychopharmacology: the lure of laudanum

Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy

In the first half of the nineteenth century, many opiate preparations were marketed towards females. In fact, many were branded using the names of women, for example: ‘Mrs Winslow’s soothing syrup’ and ‘Mrs Bailey’s quieting syrup.’ Hardly surprising then that opium, particularly laudanum, was a popular choice for women for most of the century. The mass production of opiates in this way shows how society gave credence to the idea that opium and laudanum were able to relieve most ailments.

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Wish You Were Here: Victorian women pioneers of travel photography

Other, Victorians on Display

In September 1835, Constance Talbot wrote to her husband asking if he would be taking his small experimental “mousetrap” cameras on a visit to Wales. She remarked, “It would be charming for you to bring home some views.”[1] Four years later, William Henry Fox Talbot announced his invention of Photogenic Drawing at the Royal Society, London, and started the extraordinary creative phenomenon we know now as positive / negative photography. We all take photography for granted: it’s an indispensable, ubiquitous

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Sarojini Naidu, Cultural Exchange and Anti-Imperialism

Other

Sarojini Naidu was a nineteenth century poet and political activist. Her upbringing was, in a sense, privileged because she was born into a middle-class family of well-educated Brahmins. Her father was a scientist and her mother a Bengali poet, so she also had strong literary ties. This gave her the space and opportunity to write and develop her English poetry and yet this was not the sum of her ambition. She used her connections, English education and social standing to

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Credit to any Country: E. H. Bostock and Scotland’s first Zoo & Variety Circus

Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians on Display

If one thinks of Scotland and zoos, the Edinburgh Zoo automatically springs to mind. This zoological park opened in 1913 and is world-famous for its captive breeding programme and conservation work. However, it was certainly not the first zoo in Scotland. This credit must go to the Scottish Zoo and Variety Circus, established in Glasgow in 1897 by Edward Henry Bostock. Born in 1858 in Buckinghamshire, Bostock came from a family of menagerie owners. Collections of wild and exotic animals

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Joseph Hillier: The forgotten ‘Gentleman of Colour’ of the Victorian Circus

Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians on Display

The Victorian era was the golden age of the circus. A popular form of entertainment for the masses, it embraced all classes of society; from the lowly paid factory worker to the aristocracy, and even royalty. Everybody seemed to love the circus. By the time that Queen Victoria became monarch of the United Kingdom, the circus had been in existence for almost 70 years. From its humble roots with Philip Astley on the banks of the river Thames in London,

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Julia Stephen: From Freshwater Bay To The Lighthouse

Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians on Display

Pity has no creed. We are bound to these sufferers by the tie of sisterhood and while life lasts we will help, soothe, and, if we can, love them. Women are not all blind followers of men. They have power to think as well, and they will not weaken their power of helping and loving by fearlessly owning their ignorance when they should be convinced of it. Women should not reject religion merely because they desire to please men. Man

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The Industrial Devolution podcast

Digitizing the Victorians, Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy

The Industrial Devolution podcast is a new project by Dr. Tobias Wilson-Bates that seeks to think through many of the systems, practices, and aftereffects of the nineteenth century. In its first episode, Dr. Pearl Chaozon-Bauer and Dr. Sabrina Gilchrist lend their expertise to an exploration of the role dance plays in Jane Austen’s Emma (1815). By examining the text, the project seeks to explore how dance scenes’ narrative gravity was not only a product of good writing, but also a

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‘[T]he Dickensesque run mad’: Continuities and Ruptures in the History of the ‘Dickensian’

Book Reviews, Other, Television Shows, Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians in Film

This blog post reflects on Dickens’s legacy as captured in the term ‘Dickensian’, from early uses of the term to what the events of 2020 might mean for study of his afterlife. It also introduces a new open access edited collection, Dickens After Dickens (White Rose UP, 2020), which explores some of the forms in which Dickens’s influence has manifested from the nineteenth century to the present, from his influence on writers including Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, William Faulkner and Donna Tartt

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