Cultivating the Victorians Since 1901

2012

With an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses political history, the history of ideas, cultural history, and art history, The Victorian World offers a sweeping survey of the world in the 19th century. The volume offers a fresh evaluation of Britain and its global presence in the years from the 1830s to the 1900s. It brings together scholars from History, Literary Studies, Art History, Historical Geography, Historical Sociology, Criminology, Economics and the History of Law, to explore more than forty themes central to an understanding of the ...

The Year's Work in English Studies, 2012

This chapter has five sections: 1. Cultural Studies and Prose; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Drama; 5. Periodicals and Publishing History. Sections 1 and 2 are by William Baker; section 3 is by Gregory Tate and Martin Dubois; section 4 is by Alexis Easley; section 5 is by David Finkelstein.

The Year's Work in English Studies, 2021

This chapter has five sections: 1. General and Prose, including Dickens; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Periodicals, Publishing History, and Drama; 5. Miscellaneous. Section 1 is by Ana Alicia Garza; section 2 is by Lois Burke; section 3 is by Sally Blackburn-Daniels; sections 4 and 5 are by William Baker. In somewhat of a departure from previous accounts, this chapter concludes with a mixed-genre section that covers Samuel Butler Thomas and

2015

In this chapter we will explore the radical changes that took place during Queen Victoria’s reign by focusing on certain key ideas or larger clusters of thoughts and the reactions that they generated. As we shall see, the Victorian era was a period marked by unprecedented changes, and Victorian thinkers and writers had a mixed reaction towards these shifts. Some of them welcomed change as a sign of progress, while others considered it an indication of decline and nostalgically contemplated past glories. Here are the major key concepts which this chapter investigates as they are organized in units:

An Examination of Victorian Society and its Relation to Culture and Society The Victorian Age was a period of time which approximately lasted from 1820 to 1914. It is the ultimate construction of the social class. During this long reign, the country brought drastic changes into the standard livings of Victorian society, which divided people into three main groups: the upper class, the middle class, and the working class. Exploitation and poverty were part and parcel of this period. The industrial progress of England transformed it into one of the most powerful countries of the world, yet, the society remained ardently poor. Only the upper class was able to benefit from this progress. It was a period of time in which child labour was on the rise. People had to work under poor conditions for low wages. They were unable to afford their basic needs. It caused people both physical and mental suffering. The term "condition of England" refers to a set of novels that were written in response to this enormous wave of change. They sought to address the impacts of the Industrial Revolution and act as mediators for a changing social and political landscape. These novels' primary focus was to explore class distinction, gender roles, and labor relations between the rich and the poor of England. Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times was a prominent example of such text; pointing out the hardships faced by the working class through his attention to poverty, exploitation, and unfair living conditions. These industrial novels were providing both a form of education to middle-class readers-those less aware of and less sympathetic to the plight of the working class-and a reformative message for society. In doing so, these texts mostly shared "some common characteristics: the detailed documentation of the suffering of the poor, the reproduction of working class speech through dialect, criticism of the effects of industrialism" (V.U., 2). While Victorian society was becoming centered around the exploitation of the poor, literature was developing itself as a tool for people to understand these power dynamics and offer solutions to such problems.

1998

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Journal of Victorian Culture, 2007

Journal of Victorian Culture, 2011

Culture (VPC), promises to be a crowd pleaser. The editors invite users 'into the darkened halls, small backrooms and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic and spiritualist séances'. 1 Covering Britain, America and Europe between 1779 and 1930, the breadth of the project is impressive. There are few who would turn down the opportunity to scour its colourful and compelling content of handbills, programmes and posters which depict some of the most sensational diversions of their day. This digital hall of mirrors is organized into three main sections: 'Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic' (2008), 'Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks' (2009), and 'Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment' (2010), each of which was published separately and can be purchased individually, but which make far greater sense in aggregate. The ability to collate documents from a variety of locations and archives is one of the greatest advantages of digital portals and, in order to achieve this diverse coverage, VPC unites an impressive range of libraries and collections: Senate House Library, University of London; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas; the National Archives, Kew; the National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield; the British Library; Lambeth Archives; and the privately owned May Moore Duprez Archive. The material they hold is certainly engaging: spiritualist photography, which, it was claimed, depicted the souls of the departed; handbills advertising Barnum and his most spectacular 'exhibits'; as well as entire volumes on the history and practice of magic, combine to provide users with a varied and yet coherent evidence base for scrutinizing Victorian entertainments. However, the potential value of this material extends far beyond the study of nineteenthcentury popular culture. Every preoccupation, anxiety, ambition and enthusiasm present in Victorian society can be accessed and analysed here. The 'Yellow Peril', sexual deviancy, entrepreneurship, social emulation, Evolution, technological innovation, empire and patriotism are just a few subjects of which our understanding could be enriched by these sources.

Journal of Victorian Culture, 2019

How might those who shared an 1819 birthdate be placed in a broader generational context? We, like the Victorians, speak of generations in indefensibly indistinct and inconsistent ways, and the members of the 1819 cohort have been grouped with various generational bedfellows. Take the poet Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861). For David Newsome, he is one of a generation which followed Thomas Arnold and

In this paper, the main literary branches of Victorian literature, alongside the social, moral and political environment of this epoch will be explained. Throughout these pages, the needs of an era greatly affected by the arriving of the Industrial Revolution will be portrayed through the explanation of how the writers of the most influential literary genres of their time attempted to show their criticism towards the consequences of Industrialism, thus making a previous contextualization of this epoch imperative, so the reader may be able to picture the decadence of a period overcome by extreme poverty and an overwhelming working class prejudiced by an aristocratic minority, through the exemplification of the social and moral environment in works from writers like Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens. The main method conducted for the creation of this paper was the consultation of secondary and tertiary sources such as Internet articles and literary analysis from academics of Higher Education institutions. Throughout this research, it became evident that all three movements (Aestheticism, Realism and Romanticism) shared the common goal of functioning as counter-movements of the Industrial Revolution and of the consequences it brought to British society, therefore making the present analysis necessary to contextualize a period where technology, rational thought and social decadence became a rule.