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January 2026
arm New Year Greetings from the Victorian Web! As Dickens puts it at the end of his Christmas book, The Chimes, "May the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!" Our Managing Editor, Diane Josefowicz, has now sent 2025 down into the archives: we trust that you'll find much in our ever-expanding website to interest and inspire you as 2026 unfolds.
Two good sources of inspiration, both overseen by Diane as well, are our conference notices/calls for papers, and our book reviews. Note especially that the deadline for abstracts for the Thomas Hardy Conference in Dorset this summer was extended to 25 January. It does pay to keep your eyes open for such extensions. As for reviews, here's one not to be missed: Christian Gallichio discusses The Nineteenth-Century Novel and the Pre-Cinematic Imagination, by Alberto Gabriele. This develops the idea that optical toys and tools like the zoetrope or the microscope helped propel the novel form towards modernism — a critical approach that produces some strikingly original analyses, for instance, in Gabriele's final chapter, of George Eliot's Middlemarch.
Technological advance affected all spheres of production, some more obviously than others. For example, JB brought in a contemporary account of the maritime engineer, Andrew Laing, whose work on turbines powered the Mauretania early in the next century, and helped turn Newcastle into a powerhouse of shipbuilding. The achievements of Laing and other local shipbuilders would be commemorated in some of A.K. Nicholson's dynamic stained glass in Newcastle Cathedral. Later in the month, JB added Count Gleichen's terracotta bust of Mary Seacole, the Jamaican nurse now celebrated for her work in the Crimea. Florence Nightingale's reputation has fallen somewhat as Seacole's has risen, and JB also took a look at the issues involved here.
Feeling a bit flat after the holidays? Our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke, has the answer: his new illustrated essay examines Max Beerbohm's irreverent take on some of the most popular artists of the Victorian period, "Mocking the Pre-Raphaelites: The Comic Art of Max Beerbohm." You may be familiar with some of the individual cartoons, but this round-up definitely has a cumulative effect!
Meanwhile, fittingly for this time of year (and for his own love of acting), our Contributing Editor for Canada, Philip Allingham, has been revising and adding to his work on theatrical adaptations of Dickens's works. The list of these has grown, and one important addition, recently finalised, is "Films and Plays from A Tale of Two Cities." With the panto season ending, Philip turned back to his more usual work, on the Dickens illustrators. Of special interest here is his updated note on Phiz's wrapper design for the monthly serialisation of A Tale of Two Cities. Updating is essential in an area where scholarship is so active, and most recently he has been improving his scans and commentaries on Fred Barnard's illustrations of key moments in the same novel.
As so often, one of our most active and valued contributors, Dennis T. Lanigan, had been hard at work promoting one of the less fêted Pre-Raphaelites, one whose kindly personality would have been impossible for Max Beerbohm to lampoon: Thomas Matthews Rooke, whose paintings can sometimes ambush you with their colour and vision. Herod's Feast is just one example. Dennis also contributed a drawing by the sculptor Thomas Woolner, and a commentary on this unexecuted design for the Cawnpore (Kanpur) Memorial in India.
Despite a recent emphasis on updating existing pages, we now have 136,654 documents and images as compared with 132,386 just over a year ago (December 2024).
Correspondence: A particular pleasure over the festive season was some well-informed input from Michael Riley on the background and sequence of construction at Queen Victoria's home on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House. Stuart Orr also brought to our attention some interesting research on the Julius Beer Mausoleum at Highgate Cemetery, which overturned some attributions in its listing text and other trusted sources. Another useful comment, this time on the admission of women students to the Victorian art school, Cary's (previously known as Sass's), came from Dr. Gilles Weyns. We welcome all such corrections, updates and additional information.
Last modified 26 January 2026