Tag: horses

Itinerants and Travellers in the Nineteenth Century

Other

1841 was the year of the second national British census. It was also the year that Charles Dickens completed the serial publication of The Old Curiosity Shop and published it in book form. Less famously, 1841 saw the appearance of a two-volume travelogue called The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain. The author was the little-known George Borrow (1803-1881). In the 1820s and 1830s, Borrow traveled extensively through England, France, Germany, Spain, Morocco, and Russia. His official business,

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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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Victorian Horse Shows: Spectacle, Leisure, Commodity

Victorians on Display

Horse shows, stalwarts of summer rural life, began as a Victorian phenomenon. Materialising in both London and Dublin in 1864 as responses to a sharp decline in the equine population, they coincided with the increasing promotion of leisure as an antidote to the pressures of modern work.[1]  Leisure pursuits were allied to ‘the quickening pulse of commercial enterprise which did much to enlarge and glamourize leisure,’ and horse shows quickly became busy marketplaces catering to pleasure and social ambition.[2] Previously

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