This page is updated regularly. Please refresh the screen to see the latest news.
February 2025
ebruary strikes again, with its blasts of cold air. However, we extend a warm welcome to our readers, and are very happy to report that we already have an abundance of new work on the desktop (if not yet online). Note that the deadline for submissions to the Conference of the International Walter Pater Society at Cornell (7 February) has now passed, but, thanks to our editorial assistant Nigel Finch, new conferences have already been added, so check out our listing, and note especially that submissions for Patrick Leary's generous Field Development Grant (The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals) need to be in by 15 March. That's not far ahead, either!
Readers might like to know that our Managing Editor, Diane Josefowicz, continues to liaise with our technical team on future improvements to the website, to take charge of the conference listings, and to arrange for book reviews; while our History Editor, Dory Agazarian, is also working behind the scenes to build up our podcast project, "What the Dickens?!" Have a listen to the entertaining and informative episodes that Dory has already presented, and don't forget we also have list of recommended podcasts from other sources.
In amongst her own editing duties, JB finished two new book reviews at the turn of the last month. One is of Joan Grant's booklet, It's not Notting Hill, It's Ladbroke Grove, which discusses some Victorian buildings in that part of London. This inspired new accounts of the Elgin pub, with its wonderful interior, and St Charles' Hospital (built for the "sick poor"), both still serving the community in their very different ways. The other review is of Nicholas Olsberg's hugely impressive and very enjoyable The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times. This in turn entailed some new work, notably, on Butterfield's chapel and New Big School projects at Rugby.
Coming across a wonderful old print of the Greenwich Railway Viaduct (opened 1836, the first elevated train service in the world!), JB also wrote a piece on that, and was intrigued to see a little windmill sitting beside the new structure, in a rural landscape. Some people complained about the loss of nature then. What would they say if they saw the area now? On another topic entirely, JB discussed John Tenniel's Punch cartoon, The Haunted Lady, or 'The Ghost' in the Looking-Glass, a comment on the exploitation of seamstresses who catered for the rich and fashionable, and its sometimes tragic results.
Our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke, started the month with a real scoop: Richard Doyle's quirky illustrations from a very rare little book, The Christening Procession of Prince Taffy (1842), starting with this funny but touching one of Queen Victoria carrying her new first-born at arm's length on a cushion, ahead of her own mother, her wet and dry nurses, etc. (the wet nurse being suitably well endowed). So this is how the future Edward VII entered the public stage!
Also rare is a new set of mainly colour "Character Sketches" by the Dickens illustrator Fred Barnard. These are being put online by our Contributing Editor for Canada, Philip Allingham. The latest depicts Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness from The Old Curiosity Shop, and Philip has written a comprehensive essay about the various illustrators' versions of this quintessentially Dickensian pair. Many more have followed since then, perhaps the most dynamic being this one (left) of Barnaby Rudge, with his pet raven, Grip. Each is beautifully reproduced and, of course, since this is Philip's area, fully discussed. Why not cycle though them, starting (where better?) with the unforgettable Mrs Gamp? Just follow the "Next," either in the arrows at the top of the page, or in the blue tile at its foot.
We are really fortunate with our new material this month: art historian Dennis T. Lanigan has just opened a section on the artist and activist Barbara Bodichon. Apart from discussing some lovely examples of her watercolours, such as View from my window: Maentwrog, Snowdonia, Wales, he has written a very informative essay on three drawings of Lizzie Siddal by Bodichon herself, Anna Mary Howitt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from Lizzie's trip to Hastings for her health — poignant enough in view of her already all-too-apparent frailty. Many thanks to Dennis's fellow art-historian, Scott Buckle, for proof-reading the section and making some helpful suggestions here.
Informative in a completely different area is an essay dedicated to Rita Wood, who suggested the topic, but, sadly, is no longer here to see it online — Susan Major, a new contributor, has written about Scoria Bricks in the Back Alleys of York. Scoria production was started in the mid-Victorian period by Joseph Woodward, who saw a unique recycling opportunity in the accumulation of industrial waste.... yet another example of the Victorians' ingenuity and can-do mentality.
Back to Dickens (who is never very far from the mind in Victorian studies): Peter J. Capuano kindly won permission from Cornell University Press to share with us two extracts of his recent book, Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination: The Inimitable and Victorian Body Language. One is on Bleak House, the other on Our Mutual Friend. These are especially interesting for the light they throw not only the novels but on their author, and for the way they show how digital tools can aid close reading of the text. Michelle Allen-Emerson's review of the whole book helps to put these extracts in context: we're grateful to Review 19 for letting us reprint such reviews here.
Many thanks, too, to Shirley Nicholson for some much-needed proof-reading (do please volunteer for this useful task, if you have time and inclination!) and also for identifying two of our previously unattributed Punch cartoons, one of them a great personal favourite: "Welcome!" celebrates opening day at the (then) brand new National Portrait Gallery, where Victorianists can go to feel at home among old friends.
Correspondence: Sarah Dean writes to inform us of her new website (www.richardansdell.co.uk) about her great-great-grandfather, the artist Richard Ansdell RA, best known for his paintings of animals. We also heard from Keith Wood about the latest updates to his state-of-the-art VR simulation of the Great Exhibition, which now includes another steam locomotive and Newcastle ornithologist John Hancock's taxidermy specimens. For more details, see here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2618260/view/526459570713788802.
January 2025
Season's Greetings and best wishes from us all for a very happy and fulfilling New Year! As our Managing Editor, Diane Josefowicz, sends 2024 down into the archives, let's hope 2025 will enrich our website and make it even more diverse and rewarding. On a personal note, entering her fifth year as Editor-in-Chief, JB would like to express her gratitude to all who have continued to contribute, or started to contribute, during that time, as well as to the other members of the Foundation and Editorial Boards for their support. Following George Landow's highly knowledgeable and energetic leadership has been a challenge as well as a privilege, and the fact that the site is still growing and thriving is largely down to his inspiration. Thank you, George, as ever.
This may be the place to mention one of George's initiatives, which we plan to develop. He had started making some tours of different areas of the website, such as this one, of London buildings. Do try it! More will follow. And, as usual, please remember to check out the latest calls for papers. The topic of the 57th Annual VSAO (Victorian Studies Association of Ontario) Conference is particularly timely: "Victorian Conviviality and Entertainments" (and note that the deadline for submissions is 24 January).
Despite the distractions of the holiday period, several projects have continued or even come to fruition. Thanks to the good folk at St Augustine's of Hippo, Edgbaston, JB was able to add their splendid church to the new section on J. A. Chatwin, and Emeritus Churchwarden Stephen Hartland kindly sent in a highly entertaining newspaper clipping, in which a visitor extols both the area and the church, while slyly poking fun at local pretentions. This church's fine musical tradition reminded her of Henry Woodyer's St Martin's Church in Dorking, which has a memorial to Ralph Vaughan Williams, so that came in for some new attention (thanks to David Dixon for his photographs of the interior).
Another very rewarding project was completed soon afterwards: Philip Jackson sent in a series of five articles from the Lady's Pictorial profiling its women contributors, thus putting names (and sometimes faces) to them, and giving details about their careers. These could be incorporated into JB's new alphabetically arranged index to editors and journalists, making them easier to find. This is a brilliant new addition to the study of both the periodicals themselves, and women's huge contribution to this field. JB also added a review of Brigid Allen's joint biography of Emily Eden and her brother Lord Auckland. Emily accompanied her brother to India where he served as Governor-General, and was implicated in the disastrous aftermath of the First Afghan War. But, as her writings suggest, Emily was a fascinating character in her own right, and both siblings deserve re-assessment now.
Next, the Pre-Raphaelite Society allowed our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke (who established our link with it), to select and format for our website two of the essays from the latest issue of their journal. One is Cecilia Rose's intriguing and prize-winning essay. "A Secret Preoccupation: John William Waterhouse and the Occult." Thanks to Simon, we can now see how women's demonstrations of their esoteric powers went beyond séances and table-rapping, and inspired some of Waterhouse's most admired paintings. The other article that Simon selected, intriguingly entitled "An Elephant, a Rhino, and a Mickey Finn," is Kirsty Stonell Walker's examination of the effects of chloral on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's life and relationship with his model, Fanny Cornforth. Complex relationships come under scrutiny again, this time in literature, in Simon's own review of Katie R. Peel's recently published Readers and Mistresses: Kept Women in Victorian Literature.
In true Victorian spirit, Philip Allingham has been fully immersed in his local pantomime season, but has sneaked a little time to improve on some of the twenty-year-old scans in the Dickens gallery. One that shows Dickens standing nonchalantly in his porch at Gadshill is especially evocative. Other improvements were to his material on the Household Edition: the cover and frontispiece of the final volume are particularly handsome, but many more of the illustrations have now been rescanned and more fully considered. Another notable example is Fred Barnard's illustration of the wretched end of a degenerate, washed up on the bank of the Thames, in Sketches by Boz, an interesting example of the "Found Drowned" trope found in The Old Curiosity Shop (Quilp's death) and elsewhere. Philip also rescanned and added new material to illustrations of Michael Black's novel Three Feathers, which led JB to open a new section on this novelist (who was seen as the equal of Trollope and others in his time), with a short biography of him and an introduction to the novel itself.
Most exciting of all is the whole extended section on the artist William Dyce, with more than 20 paintings comprehensively discussed by Dennis Lanigan, all carefully proofread by Scott Thomas Buckle. This is a major contribution, because Dyce was influenced by or directly involved in so many of the important strands of nineteenth-century culture, from the German Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites in art, to High Church Tractarianism, to scientific studies in astronomy and geology, and to photography. But paintings like Pegwell Bay and Christabel also stand alone as some of the most memorable masterpieces of the age.
Another holiday treat was to hear from our French translator, Sabrina Laurent, who added a number of James Tissot's paintings to our French section (where they certainly belong as well), including a poignant depiction of the ailing Mrs. Newton asleep in a Conservatory Chair [Mrs. Newton endormie sur une chaise dans la véranda].
More recently (mid-month) Laurent Bury has reviewed a new book in the promising new field of reception studies: Medievalism and Reception, edited by Ellie Crookes and Ika Willis. Several chapters discuss the way the Victorians responded to the Middle Ages, offering new approaches to the literature (including some works by women historians and novelists) and wider culture of the period.
With the end of the month already approaching, DJ has brought in an exciting new piece on Victorians and the Discovery of X-Rays by Nicole Lobdell, which is knowledgable, thought-provoking and enjoyable to read — exactly the qualities we seek to present. There's more than meets the eye here, indeed: had you ever thought, for instance, how this new discovery tied in with the Victorians' deep fascination with the unseen?
Correspondence: we were very sad to learn that Rita Wood, whom Simon introduced to us in 2019, and who built up our section on York architects, passed away at the end of last year. She had been unwell for a long time, but continued to contribute until very near the end, and we shall miss her greatly. Just to give you an idea of her work, here is her piece on the beautiful Chapter House at York Minster (as is apparent here, Rita loved and was especially knowledgable about church tiles).
Last modified 24 January 2025