Gabrielle Malcolm (Canterbury Christ Church University) In September of 2012 I had the opportunity to present a public lecture at the Canterbury St Margaret’s Street branch of Waterstone’s Bookshops. I was there to discuss and promote ‘neglected’ Victorians – no, not waifs and paupers, but those poor, forsaken authors that are no longer widely read. Mary Braddon is still, but less and less so every year, included in this canon of the marginalised. My lecture was part of the public
Read moreTag: Railways
“A powerful engine of civilization”: Rowland Hill’s Post Office Reform
In 1837, Rowland Hill set out to reform the way in which a nation communicated with the publication of the pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. It’s a document which I’m sure many Victorianists are familiar with, but I wanted to raise a couple of points that Hill’s pamphlet signals in terms of national belonging and connectedness, as well as its resonances in the British postal service today. Hill set out to address the problem of the Post Office’s unsatisfactory
Read more