December
he last month of the year begins, and drawing upon material from Peter Galison’s Einstein’s Clocks, The Illustrated London News, and Fun, you webmaster added “The Atlantic Telegraph Cable Breaks and Is Later Recovered,” which includes a discussion of the economic, political, and scientific contexts of undersea telegraphy. Another section of Galison’s book led to “Why blow up the Greenwich Observatory?.”
Landow has also continued to add interesting political and other cartoons from Punch and Fun. Examples include one about the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act, which forbid a widower from marrying his late wife’s sister, and The Last Legacy of the Old Year, Fun’s comment on the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879. Thanks to Peyton Skipwith and Liss Llewellyn Fine Art for sharing with us late Victorian paintings, including Richard Anning Bell’s Sabina, Walter Crane’s Boats in an Italian Harbour, Charles Haselwood Shannon ’s Woman at a Table, and three by William Strang — The Opera Cloak, Barbara Horder, and The Listener.
This month Jacqueline Banerjee added short photo-essays on Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, which Philip Hardwick worked on in the Victorian period, and the St Nicholas chapel, which was rebuilt by the prolific and aptly named Isle of Wight architect, Percy Stone. She also added a brief comment on Tennyson at Freshwater, and a dedicatory poem he wrote there. Then made a gallery for the Brontë sisters, with more than twenty pictures, mostly historic ones, of important people and places associated with them, and a few illustrations of their novels (but there is room for many more!). She also added her five-part previously published essay, "Sources and Outcomes of Adolescent Crises in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
She then turned to Scotland, starting new sections on the Highlands and Islands, and the prolific Scottish architect, Alexander Ross — which so far includes only a few of his hundreds of buildings. The most important is Inverness Cathedral, which has a fine tympanum by Thomas Earp, and also some work by the Scottish sculptor Andrew Davidson. But the new section on Davidson starts outside the cathedral, with his well-known statue of Flora Macdonald on Castle Hill opposite.
Thanks to the Fine Art Society for sharing images and information of numerous important works, including Edward Duncan’s Seaforth House, Simonstown, Thomas Faed’s Mill on the Fleet, Gatehouse of Fleet, John Linnell’s A View Near Hampstead, David Roberts’s Interior of San Giovanni e San Paolo, James Baker Pyne’s The Vales Of Ennerdale And Buttermere, George Richmond’s Study of Soldiers, William Simpson’s The Sakrah, The Sacred Rock, Jerusalem, James Ward’s The Bunch of Grapes Tavern, and James Dawson Watson’s Fireside Thoughts.
Thanks also to Monika Brown, Professor of English, University of North Carolina Pembroke, for sharing her two bibliographies with our readers: “Theoretical Discussions of Historical Fiction in English Criticism, 1830-70” and “Historical Novels Noted in the British Press, 1830-70.” Landow scanned page images from the microfilm copy of the dissertation Professor Brown provided, used software to convert them to text, proof-read them for scanning errors, and finally formatted them in HTMl for the site. Once the 800 or so titles were available on the Victorian Web, Landow then created a dozen bibliographies of titles of works set in specific periods, such as the Ancient World: Egypt, Greece, and Rome, British India and South Asia, and Pirates, Buccaneers, and Privateers. Later, Landow added “Recent Books on Historical Fiction” and an examination why the style G. P. R. James, a once widely popular writer of historical novels, is so unappealing to twenty-first century readers.
On the twenty-fifth the site had 96,554 documents and images.
November
he month began with your webmaster in the second week of a ship voyage down the Rhine and Mosel rivers having moved from Switzerland and France to Germany, the Netherlands, and finally Belgium. The trip has provided interesting comparative examples of Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival architecture in Germany as well as photographs of windmills, such as those used to drain the fens, and examples of some of the inspirations for Pont Street Dutch. Finally, Antwerp’s Cathedral of our Lady provided an example of the brazen serpent in ecclesiastical art.
Philip Allingham, who has almost completed his commentaries on each of George Cruikshank’s hundred illustrations for W. H. Ainsworth’s The Tower of London, announces that Palgrave Macmillan has just published his “A Production of Two Cities and of Four Illustrators” in Dickens and the Virtual City: Urban Perception and the Production of Social Space, which Estelle Murail and Sara Thornton edited.
The Christmas season is a busy one for publishers, and Jacqueline Banerjee reviewed two new books: Kathryn Sutherland's edition of essays, Jane Austen: Novelist in the World and Mimi Matthews's The Pug Who Bit Napoleon. Returning to the Isle of Wight again, she wrote about three historic piers: Yarmouth, Ryde and Sandown. With photographs sent in by Simon Cooke, she also wrote about Henry Wilson's unique Brithdir Church in Wales, Lincoln Cathedral, and G. F. Watts's statue of Tennyson outside the latter. Special thanks to Simon's son Laurence for his contribution here. She added several new paintings, including Ford Madox Brown's Take Your Son, Sir!; Henry Treffry Dunn's watercolours of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Bedroom at Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Theodore Watts-Dunton in Rossetti's drawing room; Millais's Mariana, which we only had a small version of before; William Orpen's The Mirror and John Phillip's Partial Copy of "Las Meninas" [by Velásquez]. She also added sketches of the Ghent altarpiece by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Towards the end of the month, JB added another review — of "Death in the Ice," the exhibition about the lost Franklin expedition at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, as well as the book by Gillian Hutchinson, Sir John Franklin's Erebus and Terror Expedition. She also put in Prince Frederick's Barge at the same museum; the Town Church, Guernsey (to help bring some memorial sculpture together); St James's Church, Yarmouth; and some other interesting buildings on the Isle of Wight, such as the old pumping station in Ventnor. Another contribution was a new section on the stained glass firm of Ward and Hughes, which is already filling up thanks to some batches of lovely photos from contributing photographer Colin Price — lots more to come here!
Many thanks to Amitav Banerjee for reviewing William Dalrymple and Anita Anand's Ko-hi-Noor about the famous and contentious diamond, and Madeleine Emerald Thiele for her review of the current National Gallery exhibition, "Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites."
Andrzej Diniejko, our Contributing Editor from Poland, contributed “Oscar Wilde’s Vision of Aesthetic Socialism.”
Simon Cooke reviewed of Jenny Uglow's Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense and later in the month contributed “Richard Doyle and the Great Sea-Serpent.” As the month ended he added three book bindings by William Ralston.
Tony Schwab contributed “The Value of Goodness: On Re-reading Oliver Twist.” Colette Keaveny has written an introduction to the Glasgow Style and an brief essay on Ann Macbeth.
Artur Weber translated Diane Greco Josefowicz’s "The Wave Theory of Light” into Portuguese.
Thanks to James Snyder for pointing out a gaff on one of the essays on Wilde.
On the twenty-seventh the site had 96,197 documents and images.
October 2017
s the month began your webmaster added three more sculptors to the sculpture section — J. Delahunt, Thomas Tyrell, and Charles Palmer — plus works by several others, including Charles de Sousy Ricketts (Salome in the Lap of Herodias and Centaur and Baby Faun),
Ruby Levick (Seaweed),
Edith C. Maryon (The Messenger of Death), and William Reynolds-Stephens (MacDonald, Colossal Bronze Frog, and The Scout at War),
In addition Landow added C. Lewis Hind’s illustrated article about Ricketts from The Studio and a brief biography of William Calder Marshall from the
Annual Report of the Royal Scottish Academy. Still looking without success for examples of work by the sculptor Crook, encountered enough material to create sections on the painter Anna Airy (of whom Crook did a portrait bust), James McBey, and Arthur J. Gaskin.
He also added photograph and description of a London men’s club named after Thomas Carlyle.
After idly pulling H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set criticism off one of his book shelves, your webmaster added “‘Human life is a seeking without a finding’: Conrads’s philosophy of life” and “Mencken on Joseph Conrads’s dark humor” to our section on that author.
After Robert Freidus sent along a DVD packed with his photographs of architecture and sculpture, your webmaster opened a section on Draper’s Hall with links thus far to fifteen works of architectural sculpture by Edward Wyon, four by John Francis, a version of John Gibson’s Tinted Venus, and six paintings by Herbert J. Draper. After Landow returns from cruising down the Rhine and Moselle, the project will continue.
Still on the Isle of Wight (in mind, at least), Jacqueline Banerjee wrote about the unique royal church of St Mildred's — the estate church for Osborne, which Prince Albert played a large part in designing. Its interior is full of memories of the royal family. She also wrote about the stained glass in its transepts by John Hardman, and (realising we hadn't included it yet) Sir Alfred Gilbert's statue of Queen Victoria in Winchester Castle — as well as Harry Furniss's irreverent cartoon about it! Looking up Queen Victoria's life, she included some new episodes from it, such as the laying of the foundation stone of the Royal Albert Hall. She also added Millais's well-known painting, Hearts are Trumps, before moving on to Scotland, where her autumn trip provided material for the Glenfinnan Viaduct, and for a new section bringing together older as well as fresh work on Scottish railways (not yet complete).
Recently we included Viveka Hansen's interesting piece, "Jet and Dressed in Black," about the use of jet beads for mourning costumes.
Thanks to Ian McCormick of Leeds University for providing a bibliography, which has been added to our material on prostitution and to Richard Griffiths, who provided information about one of Arthur George Walker’s funerary sculptures. Thanks to Wayne Kavanagh, an undergraduate at the Open University, for notifying us about a typo. Thanks also to Namdev Ravkale for providing information about The Victoria Terminus, Bombay (now Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) and correcting an error.
Announcements: Marty Gould, Marie Curie Fellow, Brunel University, announces a symposium, “Dickens Adapting, Dickens Adapted.” Professor Cian Duffy of the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden announces a conference on Wilde, Beardsley, and the Fin de Siècle.
On the twenty-third the site had 95,752 documents, images, and sound files.
September 2017
our webmaster began the month by adding a cartoon from Fun on the subject of the way the pollution in late-Victorian England destroyed sculpture and architecture. Punch provided John Tenniel’s Wilberforce Secundus, whose commentary on Sunday schools combines allusions to Dickens's Bumble and to William Wilberforce, a prominent leader of the antislavery movement. Still drawing on wonderful internet resources provided by the Internet Archive and the Hathi Digital Library Trust, Landow created a section of more than twenty cartoons from Punch and commentary about the campaign for the Second Reform Bill of 1867.
After Katherine Harris contacted us about her grandfather, the father Thomas Mewburn Crook, Landow created a section on the sculptor, made a timeline based on the information in Harris’s site, and added a portrait of Crook from the National Portrait Gallery and thirty examples of his work. Looking through online versions of The Academy and Architecture Review for more of his work, Landow hasn't found any thus far but he did come across and add images of two works by William Reid Dick (Silence and The Kelpie), three by Richard Garbe (Mother and Child, Adolescence, and Mask in Black Marble) and another three by Charles Hartwell (The Kilpin of the Burn, V.C. Le Caleau, 1914, and The Last of Dee). In addition, he added two drawings of Claude W. Ferrie’s the Western Synagogue in London.
In the course of creating commentaries for Cruikshank’s two Hogarthian temperance series, The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children, Philip Allingham contributed a brief discussion of bawdy Victorian songs. He next created a material on Matthew “Monk” Lewis for the Previctorian section of the site.
Returning to the Isle of Wight, Jacqueline Banerjee added several new pictures to an earlier piece on the exterior of Osborne House, and wrote about several of Baron Marochetti's sculptures there, Princess Victoire, Duchesse of Nemours, Princess Gouramma of Coorg and Maharajah Duleep Singh. Coming across Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm's rather unflattering bust of Henry Cole at the National Portrait Gallery, she also added that, and at Art UK she found William McTaggart's lovely painting, Dora. Then she went back to Osborne, writing about the interiors of the Pavilion, Main Wing and Durbar wing, and the house's magnificent terraces, its walled garden, the royal children's Swiss Cottage, museum and Victoria Fort and Albert Barracks there, as well as the Queen's bathing machine at Osborne beach. She also added some buildings by John Johnson, including Bootle Town Hall and the Gravesend Clock Tower. At the end of the month the online journal Cercles shared with us her review of Benjamin Dabby's Women as Public Moralists in Britain: From the Bluestockings to Virginia Woolf.
Many thanks to Ellen Moody for her very positive review of Nick Holland's In Search of Anne Brontē, and to new contributor Madeleine Emerald Thiele for an equally appreciative review of the current Leighton House Exhibition, "At Home in Antiquity" (evidently a must-see). Thank you also to Samantha Ellis for writing in to correct a couple of "errors or misunderstandings" in references to her own recent biography of Anne Brontë, Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life. It is great to see this author getting her due at last.
Andrzej Diniejko continued his critical discussions of Benjamin Disraeli’s novels with Tancred as an Imperial Utopia.
Simon Cooke introduced a new illustrator — Warwick Goble — sending in documents and images for seven of his illustrations for H. G. Well’s War of the Worlds.
Thanks to Andy Rose of the Madelely Town Council for sharing photographs and captions for the Anstice Memorial Workmen’s Club and Institute by John Johnson. Dr. Divya Athmanathan, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, contributed, “The ‘secret of the bedstead’: Unraveling the domestic machinery in Wilkie “A Collins’s Terribly Strange Bed” (1852).” Charles DePaolo, a frequent contributor, contributed “Joseph Lister, James Syme, and Victorian Medical Education.” Brook Chalmers of Asgard Secure Steel Storage in Bradford shared a timeline of passenger service in Bradford and images of the former trolley barn/
Lynly Loh’s team at Down To Five translated David Cody’s’s “Child Labor” as “Buruh Kanak-Kanak.”
On the twenty-fifth the site had 95,096 documents, images, and sound files.
August 2017
s the month began, your webmaster transcribed three of
Punch’s parodies — “So from the Castle Gate,” a send-up of William Morris, “On Margate Sands,” a parody of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” and “Margate Sands,” supposedly W. E. Henley's version of the same subject. Landow next added fifteen works by Leonard Raven-Hill that demonstrate the wide range of his Punch illustrations, after which he created a section on the fairy and fantasy illustrations of Thomas Maybank.
Returning after many years to the Great Exhibition of 1852, Landow drew upon The Illustrated London News for Joseph Paxton’s lecture explaining his experiments with glass architecture that provided the basis of the Crystal Palace. The same periodical provided twenty illustrations for a new section on the building’s construction. Near the end of the month Landow again drew upon the The Illustrated London News for images and comments on two works of sculpture — John Bell’s Eve and
Philip V. Allingham contributed a biography of the humorist Douglas Jerrold, and Landow added four portraits of the author from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Allingham then wrote detailed essays on each of George Cruikshank’s Hogarthian nine-part temperance series, The Bottle. Beginning with the first plate. The Bottle is brought out for the first time: The husband induces his wife "Just to take a drop". As part of this large project he also wrote “Charles Dickens, His Illustrators, and Representing Violence toward Women.” His next project: Cruikshank’s multi-part series The Drunkard. Allingham next wrote similar commentaries containing critical analyses by him and other scholars for Cruikshank’s eight-part sequel, The Drunkard's Children, ending with one of the artist’s most famous illustrations, which depicts the daughter’s suicide. This second Cruikshank project also produced “Transportation as Judicial Punishment in Nineteenth-Century Britain” and “‘Transported for Life’ in Cruikshank and Dickens.”
Early in the month, Jacqueline Banerjee went to the Isle of Wight. It was a kind of busman's holiday, as there is so much of Victorian interest there. On returning, she first wrote about its railways, including their history, the notable nineteenth-century locomotives still running on the island's heritage line, like the Freshwater, their coaching stock and so forth. Taking a break from the IOW she added a local historic passenger boat, the Yarmouth Belle, and Richard Dadd's portrait of one of his physicians, Sir Alexander Morison, together with another unusual pastoral scene, Wandering Musicians. Later she looked at a new (for us) sculptor, John Francis, who worked with Prince Albert on a couple of projects, one of which was a sculpture of his favourite greyhound, Eos. Then she wrote about Guglielmo Marconi, and the beginning of wireless telegraphy at the very end of the Victorian period.
Dr. B, who run sour Twitter feed, points that that we now have 5,100+ followers on Twitter.
Simon Cooke created a section the graphics section on the great Victorian wood-engraver, Joseph Swain, contributing a biography, critical essay, including a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and a list of museum holdings of Swain’s proofs, prints, and wood-blocks, after which he wrote a biography of William Harcourt Hooper, one of Swain’s staff.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey contributed a photo essay on the Memorial for Brigadier Malcolm McNeill in St Mary’s Madras (Chennai) and photographs of the church, which is not only the earliest Anglican church in India but claims to be the first east of Suez, built in 1680.
Dominic Crawford Collins has contributed an introduction to My Secret Life plus other materials, including bibliographies of its publishing history and recent criticism.
John Lehman, founder of the Coat of Arms Database, commissioned Jack Turton to write for us “The Social and Cultural Significance of Victorian Heraldry” and then shared severa; detailed explanations of individual coats of arms.
Thank for Diane L. Ritter for correcting scanning errors in the science section.
On the twenty-eighth the site had 94,751 documents and images.
July 2017
s the month began, your webmaster created new sections for two illustrators — Bernard Partridge and
Georgina Bowers. The next two weeks were devoted to the writings and drawing of J. J. Stevenson, one of the most famous practitioners of Norman Shaw’s so-called Pont Street Dutch style for blocks of flats and large homes. In addition to transcribing and editing Stevenson’s chapter on architecture in Renaissance England from House Architecture, he added more than thirty of H. W. Brewer’s beautiful illustrations for that book and a dozen of Stevenson's own.
Philip V. Allingham completed work on Cruikshank’s fairy tale illustrations and his adaptations of fairy tales after which he added a transcription of the artist’s response to Dickens’s criticism of his literary work.
Battling the unusual heat in the London area (and with your webmaster's encouragement), Jacqueline Banerjee wrote about three North Wales train companies with Victorian beginnings: the Ffestiniog Railway, the Llangollen Railway and the Welsh Highland Railway, all now running "Heritage" train services. Then, after receiving some new batches of photographs from contributing photographer John Salmon, she introduced the architect Edward Monson (an ardent Freemason), and two of his firm's churches: St Martin's, West Acton, and St Alban's, Acton Green. Both of these have an array of stained glass windows, including a whole series in St Martin's by C. E. Moore and some by Goddard & Gibbs (earlier Walter Gibbs & Sons); and four in St Alban's by designer and author F. Hamilton Jackson — so these needed to be introduced as well. But perhaps the most striking window was an Edward VII memorial window in St Alban's, by the familiar firm of Clayton & Bell. As usual, John's photograph does it full justice.
Another welcome contribution was Mary Shannon's piece about Wellington Street in London, where Dickens, Reynolds and Mayhew all rubbed shoulders in Victorian times — the subject of her award-winning book. We also brought in and wrote about more paintings from the Tate and Manchester City Art Gallery, now released on the Creative Commons license. These included four by Ford Madox Brown: The Traveller, Carrying Corn, The Hayfield, and Geoffrey Chaucer Reading....
Johanne Teerink translated Jacqueline Banerjee’s homepage of the sculptor William Behnes, which she published on her online diary. Stevelyne Dhommée-Marie, who earlier wrote to volunteer her services as a translator, contributed “Le Déisme” and “Arguments éthiques contre la Religion dans l'Angleterre Victorienne.”
Mike Hickox, a frequent contributor, has sent in “Henry Wallis’s The Death of Chatterton Decoded.”
George Robinson writes from Edinburgh to invite readers of this site to inform our readers that Dr Bruce Vickery will deliver an illustrated talk on the history of the Royal Observatory on the Calton Hill between the years 1822 and 1896.
Thanks to Ellen Clark for sending a link to material about Barbara Bodichon’s involvement with Girton College that replaced a dead link. Thanks also to Dvora Negbi for correcting an error about Eliot's funderal.
On the thirty-first the site had 94,389 documents and images.
June 2017
he month began with your webmaster continuing work on material related to related to the celebrations of Edward VII’s accession to the throne that began with paintings of those in India. Punch expectedly provided both respectful tributes to the new King-Emperor and allegorical celebrations of empire as well as more characteristically humorous glances at the sea voyage to India and the Durbar, to which it gave fairly short shrift, making an interesting contrast to the work of Menpes.
Philip Allingham created sets of commentaries on Cruikshank’s illustrations of Memoir of Grimaldi and individual tales in his Fairy Tales, such as “Hop o My Thumb,” Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk.
Too late to include for last month, Jacqueline Banerjee completed a piece about the features of later-Victorian Queen Anne Revival domestic architecture, added a commentary on Kate Greenaway's house in this style, and wrote about quite a different kind of building, Canada House on Trafalgar Square. After that she formatted a biography of the sculptor Charles Sargeant Jagger, and included many pictures of his work, which she wrote about separately. These ranged from his symbolic figures on Nobel House at Millbank, like Chemistry, to his spontaneous likeness of a Maker of Modelling Tools. She went on to write a fuller account of St. Saviour's Church, Knightsbridge, which your webmaster had visited a year or two ago, because John Salmon kindly sent in many new photographs of it, including its stained glass. She would like to thank to her husband for reviewing Mark Ford's Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner, and Michael Pearce, Church Manager, for suggesting a couple of corrections to her account of St Raphael's Church in Kingston-upon-Thames.
Simon Cooke created a new section for the book illustrator(s) and designer (s) Alfred Crowquill — the name under which the Forrester brothers, Charles Robert (1803–50) and Alfred Henry (1804–72) published. His essays, the most detailed and authoritative avalable, cover “Crowquill”’s general illustrations, those for Dickens's, style, and work as a designer of book covers.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey contributed to the materials on the Durbar by providing photographs of Maiden's Metropolitan Hotel in Delhi, perhaps the only remaining building associated with that event.
Dr. Gareth Cordery, former senior adjunct fellow, School of Humanities and Creative Arts, Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, contributed “‘Your Country Needs You’: Charles Dickens Called Up for National Service”. Carroll Clayton Savant sent along a second essay, “Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Musical Scene in Victorian England.” Virginia Chieffo Raguin, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, College of the Holy Cross shared a description of her website, Style, Status, and Religion: America’s Pictorial Windows. George Robinson contributed his essay on the British League Cadets, “John Hope’s Water Rats.” Thanks to Marie-France Le Fel, who shared with us an unpublished drawing by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon on the effects of tight lacing.
On the twenty-sixth the site consisted of 93,930 documents and images.
May 2017
ay begins with your webmaster creating the HTML documents for a lovely set of photographs of Mackay Hugh Baille Scott’s Waterlow Court in Hampstead Garden Suburb sent in by Robert Freidus, one of our contributing photographers. Jacqueline Banerjee then wrote text to accompany the images. Landow also created a new section for David Cox, adding a chronology, A. J. Finberg’s biography, commentary from Martin Hardie, and seven paintings and forty-five drawings and sketches — all drawn from museums that grant Creative Commons permissions and from material on the Internet Archive.
During the remainder of the month two projects occupied your webmaster. First, he created a typical Victorian Web network of interlinked documents and images on the 1878 Afghanistan crisis from online materials found in The Illustrated London News, Punch, and Fun. While looking for more material about the 1878 crisis and its relation to the disasters of 1842, Landow came upon Mortimer Menpes’s wonderful volume of 100 watercolors devoted to the people and cultures he encountered at the 1902 Durbar, the amazing, enormous ceremonial celebration in Delhi of the accession of Edward the VII. Mining the text of the artist’s book, Landow added commentaries about “the Political Importance of the 1903 Durbar,” “Shame at English behavior at the Durbar,” “Lord Curzon’s Attempts to Change English Racist Attitudes,” ,“The state of Indian Art at the death of Victoria,” and a tribute to “J. W. M. Turner.”
Philip V. Allinghgam completed his enormous project that involved creating interlinked commentaries for illustrations of Dickens’s Sketches by Boz by Frank Barnard, George Cruikshank, Sol Eytinge, and Harry Furniss. Each of these dozens of substantial essays consists of scanned images, the passages illustrated, and comparative material, and bibliographical information.
This month, Jackie Banerjee has looked at the beautiful Savoy Chapel on Savoy Hill, restored by Sydney Smirke and with a lovely font by Edward Blore, stained glass by Clayton and Bell and the D'Oyly Carte Memorial Window by Edward Jenkin Prest, as well as a richly embroidered altar frontal by the Royal School of Needlework. The chapel also has a drawing of St Philip by Edward Burne-Jones, all that is left of a window lost in war. She then added a four-part essay on Matthew Arnold, adapted and extended from previously published material. This now includes his portrait by G. F. Watts and a teasing caricature by Tissot. Later, she discussed the collaboration between Sir Charles Barry and Pugin over the Palace of Westminster, and added a brief biography of Barry.
Many thanks to Robert Galea-Naudi, great-great-grandson of the Maltese architect Emanuele Galizia, who prepared a short biography of him accompanied by a list of his works and a number of photographs, which were added throughout our section on him, and included some new works like his philanthropic Istituto Tecnico Bugeja.
Simon cook contributed “Illustrating Thackeray: Richard Doyle and Rebecca and Rowena” and a dozen of Doyle’s Thackeray illustrations.
A collector who wishes to retain his anonymity generously contributed photographs and caption material for medallists, including Frank Bowcher’s Captain A.E. Haynes, R.E. medal, George T. Morgan’s David Cox David Roberts and The Letter Writer, and Leonard Charles Wyon’s Sir Richard Westmacott and Charity and works by various sculptors, including Adrian Jones’s Chariot with Two Horses, Andrea Carlo Lucchesi’s Mask, a female bust by Horace Montford, George Tinworth’s two terracotta religious bas reliefs — Simon, a Cyrenian, with the Christ and Then the King was Exceeding Sorry [The Distress of Herod] and Albert Toft’s bust of an unidentified man and bas relief Henry Irving.
Bob Muscutt contributed an introduction to G. H. Lewes’s The Life and Works of Goethe plus a list of suggested chapters or long chapters from the book, which included Weimar in the Eighteenth Century, Karl August and Goethe, Christiane Vulpius, Goethe’s lover, mother of his child, and wife at last, and Goethe and Schiller. Stephen Foster sent in a biography of the pioneering geologist and fossil hunter Hugh Miller.
In 2015 Astrid Rioust de Largentaye of DDA Architects asked for information about the Villa ‘Les Mauriciens’ at Wimereux, which John Belcher designed. On the 29th, Dr. J. F. Geddes e-mailed to explain that in 1914 it was taken over by a group of Englishwomen, the Women’s Hospital Corps. Thanks!
On the twenty-ninth the site had 93,543 documents and images.
April 2017
pril began with your webmaster heading across the water to London, editing essays along the way.
Re-reading G. Kitson Clark’s The Making of Victorian England (1962) while in London, led to placing several excerpt from this brilliant work on the site —
“Was Arnold right about the Evangelicals?,” “Jane Austen’s prescient idea of the gentleman,” “William Ewart Gladstone — the right man at the right time,” and “The golden age of the MP and the ineffectual Parliament at mid century.” Prompted by a promise of contributions about George Henry Lewes, Landow created a section for him, and mining the Internet Archive, added Lewes’s comments on a Victorian actor (Macready) and his discussions of the French Revolution, including the influence of Rousseau, other conditions that led to the revolution, isolation of kings, Robespierre. With this new material on hand, Landow next created a new homepage for the French Revolution.
Landow reviewed Cathie Pilkington RA’s “Anatomy of a Doll” (1-14 April 2017), a pop-up show in the Royal Academy’s old room for life drawing, and Tate Britain’s Queer British Art.
Jackie Banerjee added an assortment of new items, including: a different type of old city postbox; a medallion of Joseph, Lord Lister by Margaret Giles; a painting entitled Daily Bread for Thomas Benjamin Kennington, and another by John Singer Sargent — his wonderful portrait of Vernon Lee (aka Violet Paget). JB also reviewed Kimberly J. Stern's The Social Life of Criticism: Gender, Critical Writing, and the Politics of Belonging, primarily for the online journal, Cercles, with which we have a reciprocal arrangement. This involved adding two etchings by Daniel Maclise, depicting contrasting groups of male and female writers for Fraser's Magazine. Later in the month she added several pictures of Henry James and his house in Rye, to help illustrate David Cooke's excellent new essay, "Was Henry James a Victorian?", and wrote a short piece herself on Henri de Triqueti's relief of Sir Thomas More and his family.
Many thanks to Sue Derbyshire for sending in images of, and information about, an embroidered and appliquéd panel of the Cawnpore Memorial Well in India. Thanks also to Caroline Hedengren-Dillon for adding some material to the Marochetti section, especially about La Bimba Dormiente.
Simon Cooke added to the site three essays on William Makepeace Thackeray: Thackeray and His Illustrators,” “Illustrating Thackeray: Richard Doyle and The Newcomes,” “Doyle and Thackeray: the Struggle for Dominance.”
Andrzej Diniejko continued his critical survey of Disraeli’s career as a novelist with “Benjamin Disraeli’s Venetia as a Byronic roman-à-clef.”
Continuing his series of essays on Victorian pharmacology, Charles DePaolo sent in “The Trial & Reinventions of Dr. John Pattison, “Dr. John Pattison's Caustic Temperament, and “Campbell De Morgan, M.D. & the Mixed Mode of Operation.” Michael A. Williams contributed “Ruskin in the 1840s and ’50s: Art and Political Economy.” Hamilton Beck updated the bibliography for the essay on Mark Twain and the Crimean Way that he contributed in 2005. Jim Cheshire PhD, Reader, the College of Arts, University of Lincoln shared “Print & Stereotyping: Tennyson’s Poetical Works as Published by Ticknor and Fields” and “The old and the new: Tennyson, Photography and Portraiture” from his 2016 book Tennyson and Mid-Victorian Publishing (2016). Joe Pilling, one of our regular reviewers, reviewed Kathy Chamberlain's Jane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World: A Story of Love, Work, Marriage, and Friendship.
One of our longtime contributors, a collector who wishes to remain anonymous, sent in photographs and caption material for two works of sculpture, S. Nicholson Babb’s The Chinese Robe and William Calder Marshall’s Dancing Girl Reposing.
Thanks to Adrian Stevenson, who writes from Dublin, Ireland, to point out that Marianne Farningham’s 'Just as I am' is an imitation of Charlotte Elliott's poem of the same name. Thanks to David Ward for notifying us that Marjie Bloy’s biography of Canning included the Parliament Square statue of another PM!
On the seventeenth the site had 92,879 documents and images.
March 2017
erek B. Scott, our Editor for Music and Popular Entertainment, shared with us “The Music-Hall Cockney: Flesh and Blood, or Replicant?” plus reviews of two books — Regina B. Oost’s Gilbert and Sullivan: Class and the Savoy Tradition, 1875-1896 and Ian Bradley’s Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan. Upon linking to some of Derek’s performances of the music he discusses, your webmaster was horrified to discover that the sound files no longer functioned properly. Fortunately, the internet quickly provided the information about the new code required, and after a bit of tedious copying and pasting, all works again! (Now to fix the problem with some of our rotating and rotatable images of sculpture!)
After formatting these contributions and addong links to them, your webmaster returned to mining Internet Archive versions of periodicals that contain photographs of sculpture, adding Jules Blanchard’s Young Woman Interrogating the Sphinx, F. V. Blundstone’s Egypt, Clovis Delacour’s Andromeda, Leonard Jennings’s Paolo and Francesca, G. D. Macdougald’s Hagar and Ishmael, Florence H. Steele’s puzzlingly titled Trophy for Buffs, in Memory of the South African War, and S. M. Wien’s Perdita.
The March wind blew in Jackie Banerjee's new section on genre painting, which includes Sir Frederick Wedmore's introduction to it, published in 1880. This was mainly inspired by getting to know the work of Thomas Benjamin Kennington, who painted the well-known Orphans — although he also painted a fine portrait of Queen Victoria. Others will be added as galleries give us permission to reproduce them. She also wrote a short piece on Brinsley Headstocks, Nottinghamshire, in the technology section. The journal Cercles permitted her to include Hugh Clout's review of Technology in the Country House, by Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, and Ramachandran Venkatesh kindly contributed his own photographs and a commentary on the High Court in Mumbai. A new set of lovely photographs by John Salmon enabled her to write about William Butterfield's St Matthews, Ashford in Surrey, and its full complement of Victorian and early twentieth-century stained glass by important firms. In particular, she opened a new section on William Aikman, who designed eight of the windows here. She also formatted, illustrated and commented on Paul Waterhouse's life of Butterfield (1901). At the end of the month she enjoyed reviewing Michael Fisher's new book on A W N Pugin's only pupil, and perhaps his most loyal disciple: Guarding the Pugin Flame: John Hardman Powell, 1827-1895.
A new set of lovely photographs by John Salmon enabled her to write about William Butterfield's St Matthews, Ashford in Surrey, and its full complement of Victorian and early twentieth-century stained glass by important firms. In particular, she opened a new section on William Aikman, who designed eight of the windows here. She also formatted, illustrated and commented on Paul Waterhouse's life of Butterfield (1901).
Before traveling to Paris and Grenoble to continue research on her book on Champollion, the translator of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Diane Greco Josefowicz, our Science and Technology Editor, added another half dozen brief biographies of pioneering bacteriologists to Ray Dyer’s chronology.'
Continuing his series of essays on Victorian pharmacology, Charles DePaolo sent in “Dr. Fell's Investigation Under Scrutiny” and “Escharotic Medicine, 1805-1889.” Stephen Foster continued work on his nine-part study of Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.
Catherine J. Golden, Professor of English and Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters, Skidmore College, created a section on Lewis Carroll as illustrator with an introduction and several plates.
Peter J. Capuano, Associate Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, shared “Injured and Maimed at the Factory — Some Readings” plus two passages from his 2015 book, Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body: “Losing one’s hand to the machine, or maimed at the factory” and “Industrial accidents & Sir Charles Bell’s treatise on the human hand.” Thanks again to Jim Spates for sharing material from his blog, Why Ruskin? — “Leslie Stephen, G. K. Chesterton, and Marcel Proust on Ruskin” and “Ruskin and Gandhi.”
Michael Williams contributed a second essay on John Ruskin — “John Ruskin’s Modern Painters I — Quantification, Multiplicity, and Unity in Aesthetic Response.” Stephen Foster contributed a multi-part study of Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.
Cristina Salcedo provided a Spanish translation of Jackie Banerjee's essay on Emma Marshall, which Ana González-Rivas Fernández edited and formatted.
As of the twenty-seventh the site had 92,755 documents and images.
February 2017
s the month opened your webmaster worked with new contributors, editing and formatting their essays. Lucy Paquette improved our materials on James Tissot, adding a biography and detailed chronology. Next due: her essay on Tissot during the Commune. . Michael Williams contributed “Sir Charles Bell and John Ruskin — Victorian Aesthetics and Natural Philosophy.”
Working his way through xeroxed pages of The Studio and the Architectural Review, Landow used the resources of the Internet Archive online versions of periodicals to improve older documents on sculpture and add some new works and even artists to the site. Examples of newly added works include C. J. Allen’s “The Woman that Thou gavest to be with me”, Abraham Broadbent’s Water-Nymph, William Reid Dick’s The Frog, Alfred Drury’s Relief over the entrance to the Grand Trunk Railway Offices Richard Louis Garbe’s Man and the Masks, The Mark of Cain, and Solitude, Ernest Gillick’s Memorial to “Ouida,” with the statues of Courage and Sympathy, Health, and Education, Charles Leonard Hartwell’s The Victor and The Gleaner, Adrian Jones’s Meditation, Edith C. Maryon’s The passing of Winter — Miss Maude Allen as Spring, Priestess of Isis, and The Priest, Frank Ransom’s A Broken Idol, Frederick Roslyn’s The Struggle, and W. Grant Stevenson’s Governor-General Simcoe. Sections have been created for the following sculptors: Alfred Buxton, Augustus Lukeman and Mary I. Pownall (Madame Fromet).
Philip V. Allingham created a section for the illustrations of Henry Macbeth-Raeburn, which includes an introduction to the artist and two dozen of his depictions of scenes from Hardy’s Wessex novels, and after which he contributed both “William Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood, A Romance” and a bibliographical history of the novel and its illustrations.
At the beginning of the month, Jacqueline Banerjee finished a project on John Lockwood Kipling, inspired by a visit to the V&A's splendid exhibition about his work, and the arts and crafts of the Punjab. He now has new sections in sculpture, design, and illustration, with many examples of his work. She also reviewed the exhibition and its accompanying book edited by Julius Bryant and Susan Weber. Another review (which was written originally for the journal Cercles) followed, of Patrick C. Fleming's The Legacy of the Moral Tale: Children's Literature and the English Novel, 1744-1859. After a trip to India mid-month, she added two other brief photo-essays, on the Working-Men's Conservative Club, and Goscombe John's monument to David Lloyd George, both in Caernarfon, N. Wales. The former was useful for illustrating another piece that Cercles kindly shared with us: Emily Jones's review of Jörg Neuheiser's Crown, Church and Constitution: Popular Conservatism in England, 1815-1867.
By the end of the month, we had over 4000 followers on Twitter. It has proved to be a great way of sharing information about the Victorian period!
Derek B. Scott shared with us three of his previously published essays — “Sex and and Gender in Gilbert & Sullivan,” “Comic Style and Character Psychology in the Music of Arthur Sullivan ,” and “Irish Nationalism, British Imperialism, and Popular Song.”
Simon Cooke contributed “From George Du Maurier to Hugh Thomson: Illustrating the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell.”
Diane Josefowicz, our science and technology editor, contributed more than two dozen biographies of pioneering bacteriologists, which she linked to Ray Dyer’s chronology.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey contributed two photo-essays about military funerary monuments in India — John Bacon’s Captain George Hardinge, the San Fiorenzo and the memorial sculpture in Bombay Cathedral” and Charles Peart’s Memorial to Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell (1753-1784).
Tony Schwab, a regular contributor, sent in “‘How they Shone!’ Tracing the Change in English Thought and Feeling, 1850-1900,” and Lucy Paquette enriched our section on James Tissot with her chronology and biography. Charles DePaolo continues his series of essays on Victorian pharmacology with “Jesse Weldon Fell, M.D., Zinc Chloride & Furtive Medicine.”
Thanks to Mimi Matthews for sharing “Nineteenth Century Fortune-Telling: From the Drawing Room to the Court Room” from her blog.
Alan Doyle, who has shared an photograph of Victorian policeman taken by A. P. Chambers of Clapham, writes to ask if anyone can provide information about the uniform and the likely date of the photograph. If you have information contact the webmaster.
On the twenty-seventh the site had 92,510 documents and images.
January 2017
he year begins with 91,923 documents and images on the site.
Philip Allingham extensive contributions included revising the list of illustrators into British and American artists. In addition he provided an introduction to William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard and completed his extended project of commrnytaries on the illustrations for The Moonstone, 1868-1944. He also wrote “J. B. Handelsman’s parody of “Please, sir, I want some more.’” and obtained permission — that is, paid for — permission to publish the New Yorker cartoon.
Jacqueline Banerjee's first piece for the New Year was on Hampton Court Palace. Tim Willasey-Wilsey's contributions on the sculptor Edward Richardson (see below) then inspired her to write about several more pieces of his work, including his memorial to the 16th Queen's Lancers in Canterbury Cathedral, and his restoration of the Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral. She then added two of her recent reviews for the TLS, one of Simon Cooke and Paul Goldman's fine collection of essays on George Du Maurier, and the other on Daniel Bivona and Marlene Tromp's collection, Culture & Money in the Nineteenth Century. These were followed by a piece on Lewis Carroll in Guildford.
Many thanks to the online journal Cercles, for sharing three reviews with us: Michel Pharand's review of David Casarini's book on Disraeli (our second review of it); Vince Cable's review of Joseph Chamberlain: International Statesman, National Leader, Local Icon, edited by Ian Cawood and Chris Upton; Robert D. Richardson's review of The Man Behind the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: The Life and Letters of Edward FitzGerald, edited by William H. Martin and Sandra Mason; and Keir Waddington's review of Cholera: The Victorian Plague, by Amanda J. Thomas. Thanks also to Michael Critchlow, for sending in photographs of a naturalistic stone lioness with her cubs at Thornbridge Hall, Derbyshire, sculpted by John Thomas; and Colin Price for his brilliant long-distance shot of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
We welcomed a new contributor, David Cooke, who sent in an interesting piece on Robert Browning: "What Happens in 'Caliban upon Setebos'?"
Andrzej Diniejko continues his discussions of Disraeli novels with “Benjamin Disraeli’s The Rise of Iskander as a Philhellenic Tale of Chivalry and Love.”
Simon Cooke contributed seven illustrations by Hugh Thomson and a dozen by George DuMaurier for his essay, “From George Du Maurier to Hugh Thomson: Illustrating the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell.”
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, our Assistant Editor for Military and Colonial History, contributed three photo-essays on the subjects of funerary monuments in Madras Cathedral: Edward Richardson’s for George Broadfoot, Thomas Banks’s for Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, and Sir John Steell’s for Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gordon of the Madras Army.
Ray Dyer contributed “Cholera and the Komma Bacillus of Robert Koch.”
Stephen Foster has written a fascinating study of what really happened at the famous Oxford debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution, separating what he terms evolutionary hagiography from what Wilberforce and Darwin actually said. He followed this with a series of essays on Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, which includes discussions of Lamarck and evolutionary theory, the political imnplications of his works, and his legacy.
Charles de Paolo contributed the first four of a planned series of essays on Victorian pharmacology, including “The Discovery & Early Use of Zinc Chloride in Medicine” and “Zinc Chloride Enters the British Dispensary.”
Fijavan Brenk, a student at Leiden University, translated Jaqueline Banerjee’s biography of the sculptor William Behne, which appears on her blog, and Jimmy Anastasovski translated into Macedonian Jacqueline Banerjee’s photo-essay on T. R. Spence’s mosaics. Sherali Jalolov translated Elizabeth Lee's “Victorian Theories of Sex and Sexuality” into Tajik.
As of the twenty-third the site has 92,051 documents & images.
Last modified 5 January 2024