Sophie Cooper is a third year PhD student and William McFarlane Scholar at the University of Edinburgh. She is studying Irish communities in Melbourne and Chicago between 1850 and 1890, specifically in relation to situational influences on identity formation and nationalist thought. Sophie tweets using the handle @SophcoCooper and more information can be found on her academia page If E___ be really a living thing of a warm heart – all elevated sentiments & deep womanly passions – not a
Read moreTag: Love
Odd Objects from Victorian Britain: The Ceramic Lovefeast Mug
by Ruth Mason (University College London) Ruth is a PhD student in the Geography Department at University College London. Her research focuses on the designed spaces and material culture of Wesleyan Methodism in London between 1851 and 1932 and what they can reveal about contemporary congregational experiences of Methodism. Alongside other graduates from the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum’s History of Design MA, Ruth is a founding member of the Fig.9 experimental History of Design Collective.
Read moreVictorian Valentines: From Sentiment to Satire
Alice Crossley In 2013, the rituals of St. Valentine’s Day, often marked by romantic meals a deux, dozens of red roses, and garish greeting cards, are heavily commercialised. Some might suppose that little of the nineteenth-century quaint ritual and whimsy remains visible in the modern-day marking of this date. In fact, it really was the Victorians who initiated the mass production of valentines. Their promotion of increasingly innovative paper and lace fabrications were a visible and fashionable aspect of the
Read moreMatrimonial Advertising: A Very Brief Madness?
By Jennifer Phegley Mrs. Punch: “A man ought to be punished for writing such idiotic love-letters.” Mr. Punch: “Logical as ever, my adored . . . but it is in the fitness of things that a love letter should be idiotic. Love is a brief (very brief) madness.” “On Love Letters.” Punch (December 11, 1869): 236. As Mr. and Mrs. Punch’s conversation indicates, love letters were a central part of courtship that could easily go awry. In this scene, Mr.
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