Reform – Journal of Victorian Culture Online

Arsenic and Old Wallpapers

December 14, 2023 Jo Banham Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians on Display

“My wallpapers are killing me; one of us must go!” Oscar Wilde’s infamous last words are usually construed as a rueful comment on the ugliness of the decorations in his Paris hotel bedroom. Yet they could also be interpreted literally, and applied to the thousands of Victorians who fell victim to the deadly pigments in their wallpapers. Even from the vantage point of the recent pandemic, the nineteenth century was a hazardous time to be alive: subject to regular outbreaks

Michael J. Turner, Defending ‘the principle of representation’: Andrew Bisset, The English Civil War, and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

November 6, 2015 lucinda matthews-jones Published in JVC

This post accompanies Michael J. Tuner’s ‘Journal of Victorian Culture’ article. Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset, The English Civil War, and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England. This article can be read here. In my article I explore trends in Victorian historiography, and in particular the political uses made of the past, using the histories published by a relatively little-known practitioner named Andrew Bisset (1803-1891). Bisset was a Scottish-born, Cambridge-educated lawyer who turned increasingly