December 2021
ecember again: the year has flown. Sadly, it took two long-time contributors with it, John Sankey and Robert Freidus. But one of the works on which they collaborated was Sir Thomas Brock's equestrian statue of the Black Prince in Leeds, cheering on his troops. It seems like a message of encouragement now. So we send you all warm greetings at this festive season, and look forward to a happier year — and perhaps even (let's hope) the waning of the pandemic.
A bit of news first: we now have a new link for book reviews in our home-page "diamond." We have hundreds of these, spread over all sections. Click on the link to reach a list of the various sections. Publishers continually offer us review copies. If you'd like to contribute to our website in this way, please let us know (see "contact the webmaster" in the side panel).
Recently, Jackie Banerjee has been working on the great Victorian master-builders, this month with a look at George Myers, who is best known as Pugin's builder, but who turned the plans of many other architects into the buildings we see around us today. Next came John Kelk, whose firm also helped produce some of London's landmarks, including the Albert Memorial, and the Lucas Brothers, celebrated for major building projects like the Metroplitan Railway, where they worked with Kelk and others on the world's first underground railway. Talking of building, she found a glowing contemporary account of George Peabody, who built so much housing for the London poor; also, a contemporary critique of the famously elaborate Norwich Gates at Sandringham; and, finally, a contemporary discussion of the work of cartoonist Leonard Raven-Hill.
George Landow has been catching up on some of those books sent in for review. One, by Donal McCracken, has the intriguing title, You Will Dye at Midnight: Victorian Threatening Letters. Another really sumptuous boxed set deals with the Victorian craze for Majolica, although behind the attractive products lay horrible health risks for those who produced them. GPL himself has been going through some difficult times with his treatment (we all worry about him a good deal), but has still been helping considerably with the general work of the website. In particular, he has put online some more of Dennis T. Lanigan's brilliant contributions. Fans of the Pre-Raphelites will be delighted to see Lanigan's essay, on "Sketching Clubs Associated with Artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Circle," and his list of the various works created by them. This was followed by another equally interesting essay on the Exhibition of Modern British Art in America, 1857-1858, again with a list of many of the works selected for it. Landow also continues to put online David Skilton's collection of columns from the Cardiff Times. You may enjoy one entitled "Literary Aspirant," illustrated by a would-be writer, offering "the manuscript of ‘a small poem of a thousand lines’." Some things don't change all that much down the years!
More seriously, Simon Cooke has added an essay on the bookbindings of Mary Ellen Edwards. He then looked at the bindings of the 1870s and 1880s, noting how they evolve, and giving some appealing examples of them. He is well on his way to providing a fully comprehensive resource in this area.
Diane Josefowicz continues to work behind the scenes on editorial matters. Please do read the formatting advice assembled under "Directions for contributors" at the side of this page, remembering, however, that it is not the first step in the submission process. If you want to submit work, including visual material with captions etc., first do a search to see what we already have on the subject, and make sure you have the copyright for whatever you wish to contribute. Then send it in. Hopefully, we'll love it — and the formatting process follows. It is much easier than it looks, and section editors will always be ready to help you with it.
Another important addition this month is Andrzej Diniejko's "Parallels Between the British Arts and Crafts Movement and Young Poland" — an illustrated review of Young Poland: The Polish Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1918, edited by Julia Griffin and Andrzej Szczerski. This is the book accompanying the "Young Poland" exhibition at the William Morris Gallery, and it's both an eye-opener and a feast for the eye. The exhibition itself is on until 30 January 2022: catch it if you can!
Philip Allingham continues to revise and improve work in the illustration section, most recently sending in an intriguing "probable chronology" for Magwitch in Great Expectations.
Trollope scholar Ellen Moody has contributed the transcripts of her two recent Trollope Society talks. One is a close reading of the concluding chapters of Dr Thorne. The other is a moving piece about Trollope's short story, "Malachi's Cove." The screen versions of both are also discussed, and there's a link to a free film of the latter.
Antoine Capet has also made two very welcome contributions: a review of an earlier exhibition of Lord Leighton's drawings, due to be repeated when Leighton House reopens after its current refurbishment. Professor Capet's detailed account of a symposium on "Millais, Hunt and Modern Life," held at Tate Britain in November 2007, lets us in on some controversial topics — "Millais and 'Real Beauty,'" for example, or "The Elephant in the Room: Millais, Hunt and Empire."
Ray Dyer's latest commentary is on the talking Leg of Mutton in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. This takes in the whole question of talking animals and even objects, in this startling fantasy world. Dyer also suggests some cross-over here between the illustrations and Tenniel's political cartoons for Punch. We're grateful to Ray for kindly continuing to proofread for us.
One of our newer contributors, Shirley Nicholson, sent in a biography of the portraitist James Jebusa Shannon, who was part of the Holland Park Circle in Kensington. JB opened a new section on him with examples of his work, including this striking one of cartoonist Phil May in hunting costume.
Correspondence: Many thanks to Philip Pankhurst for updating an attribution in the introduction to Charles Eamer Kempe, in the stained glass section. Thanks also to Daniel Robbins at Leighton House Museum, for giving us prompt permission for the use of the images in Antoine Capet's review, and to Keith Seabridge for writing in to correct some details in our account of the former Heworth Grange in York. More recently, Dave Fisher wrote in to point out a mismatch of photo and description in our South Wales section. We very much welcome all corrections and suggestions for improving our webpages.
November 2021
ovember's tally of new work includes a few contributions that went online during the last few days of October, after last month's What's New was completed. But first, let's note that the William Morris Gallery has put on a brilliant new exhibition, "Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1918," with an accompanying book. Our website spans the Atlantic and takes in material from Europe and beyond, and we're lucky enough to have a Polish editor (Andrzej Diniejko of Warsaw University), so we're delighted to welcome an event which reveals cross-currents in British and Polish culture at this time. The exhibition lasts until the end of next January, and we'll be reviewing the handsome book that accompanies it. A note for Ruskinites: the Ruskin Society will mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Margaret Ruskin's (the great man's mother) at the church of St John the Evangelist, Shirley, Croydon, on 5 December from 1.50 pm. (details here). It promises to be a very special occasion.
At the end of last month Jackie Banerjee opened sections on two more stained glass makers, the York firm of T. and W. Hodgson and the Belgian stained glass designer, Jean-Baptiste Capronnier, and wrote briefly about Philip Charles Hardwick's St Edmund's School, Canterbury. She also put online a review of Marc Mulholland's The Murderer of Warren Street, which presents another aspect of Victorian London — the influx and intrigues of exiled revolutionaries from Paris and elsewhere. She spent some time, too, working with Philip Allingham on a topic connected with this, duelling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — fully illustrated, as you might expect! A new section for some of those energetic Victorian building contractors came next, to accommodate, first, the Wolverhampton-born Henry Lovatt, whose interests and energy both seem to have been inexhaustible. The architect Col. Robert William Edis claimed her attention next — friend of the royal family and many influential artists, but sadly neglected now. Like much of his work, the country house he built for Sir Edgar Boehm in Surrey no longer exists, but we can still admire his plans. Towards the end of the month, JB reviewed the new paperback edition of Neil Armstrong's Christmas in Nineteenth-Century England for the online journal Cercles, which kindly lets us share its reviews of books on the Victorian period. Thanks are due here to the journal's reviews editor Antoine Capet.
George Landow has been busy as ever improving parts of the site, and putting online some wonderful new paintings with commentaries by Dennis T. Lanigan. These include Marie Spartali Stillmamn's Luisa Strozzi and Autumn, and a whole new section on William Windus, with this arresting self-portrait and a biography. Even more enjoyable and informative, perhaps, is Lanigan's essay on The First Pre-Raphaelite Group Exhibition, to which he added a list of pictures shown there. This meant a lot of formatting work and linking for GPL, but the result is a splendid new Pre-Raphaelite resource. Later, Lanigan sent in another brilliant and well illustrated essay on the decorating of the Oxford Union Debating Hall, and the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. One of the illustrations is of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, over the doorway to the hall, designed by Alexander Munro. These are major contributions to our visual arts section.
GPL went off on quite a different tack in Power Bought at a Terrible Price, a review of Jeremy Paxman’s Black Gold and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller’s Extraction Technologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion — very timely, in view of the intense anxiety now about global warming. GPL and our science and technology editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, have also been gathering together more information to guide those who would like to contribute. Start here, follow the links at the end, and share your own particular interest in the period. Our website is built on contributions, and there may be a gap in our coverage that only you can fill!
Meanwhile Simon Cooke went to the Holbourne Museum in Bath, to see their exhibition of Rossetti's portraits. His review is bound to make you want to plan a visit too! Later in the month he contributed an essay on the bindings of the Silver Studio, with some very striking examples — including this one for a children's book.
Newly published is a smart new Icelandic edition of Great Expectations for which Philip Allingham provided all the scans, which are credited to our website. So this may bring us some new readers in that part of the world. As always Philip has been updating older commentaries, and adding new scans, in the large section about Dickens's illustrators. In particular, he has contributed a whole set of F. W. Pailthorpe's hand-coloured lithographs for Great Expectations. Long commentaries with wider relevance are gradually being developed into separate essays, to make them more visible and useful. One example is "Contrasting Visual Interpretations of Miss Havisham in Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1860-1862)"; another is on various illustrators' "readings" of Sikes and Nancy in Oliver Twist.
Rita Wood contributed a bumper bundle of photos and text about Heslington, in York, with its grand manor house, St Paul's Church and a village school, the last two by the York architects, J.B. and W. Atkinson. The church has a Salviati reredos and (more unusually) pavement. The windows here were the inspiration for the new entries on the stained glass makers mentioned above.
Still intrigued by the artist Henry Wallis, Mike Hickox wrote about his lost painting, The Death of Marlowe. We only know it from descriptions, but there's always a chance that it will turn up in someone's attic one day. Talking about fantasies, Ray Dyer wrote an interesting piece on transitions from one state of mind to another in the work of Lewis Carroll. This was in connection with Tenniel's illustrations for Through the Looking Glass. After that he looked at Tenniel's changing depictions of frogs (yes, frogs!).
Next came Colin Price's brilliant photo of the Stanford Viaduct over the River Soar near Loughborough. This was what inspired JB's research into its builder, the remarkable but now apparently little-known Henry Lovatt, mentioned above.
Antoine Capet, mentioned above in connection with the review pages of Cercles, also kindly contributed a review of his own, of James Macaulay's Chares Rennie Mackintosh. The cover alone is enough to sell this book!
Shirley Nicholson, who (like Ray Dyer) has been so kindly proofreading for us recently, has now sent in a short biography of Linley Sambourne. An expert on Sambourne and the whole circle of contemporary artists in Kensington, she promises to be a great asset to us. Her photos of Boehm's house in Wetherby Gardens inspired JB's research into Col. Edis, the architect... as usual, one thing leads to another.
Another new contributor is David Skilton of Cardiff University, who has collected columns entitled "Samuel's Sentiments" from Victorian issues of the Cardiff Times, giving rare and humorous glimpses into the everyday life of those days. For example, in December 1886, Samuel records attending a pantomime rehearsal in which the part of the "demon" is played by "an exceedingly mild-looking gentleman with spectacles and a semi-clerical air." It's still funny now!
Correspondence: Hans Heimann wrote in from Interlaken to verify the date of Rev. John Horsley's death (Horsely used to take groups of parishioners out to nearby Meiringen, with its English church, making it a kind of "Woolwich on the Alps"). Lee Timmel wrote in from Australia, to tell us about on his great-grandfather's papers from when he was working for the railways in India, where he developed and patented a rail switch. It would be great if these correspondents contributed some of their findings to our website.
October 2021
ctober brought another change to our editorial team. After many years of contributing to the site, Derek Scott has stepped down as music editor. We're so grateful for all his valuable additions. Fortunately, we can still enjoy his work online, and even hear his voice in his wonderful collection of Victorian parlour songs — and we're very much hoping that he'll continue to contribute when time and energy allow. One of his kindnesses was to recruit a replacement for us. So now we welcome on board as new music and theater editor Amy J. Hunsaker, whose interest in this area is usefully entwined with her love of the Victorian period. So the curtain goes up on a promising new era.
The month arrived with a flurry of new academic conference announcements. They all sound so intriguing — like this one, scheduled for next March, on Nineteenth-Century Strata (an Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference at Salt Lake City, Utah). Follow the link! We too are looking for submissions on a range of subjects. At our recent foundation board and editorial board meetings, the latter chaired by our science editor Diane Josefowicz, we've resolved to look for gaps in our coverage. Meanwhile, both George Landow and Josefowicz have been busy revising our contributors' directions, to ensure that would-be contributors have all the help they need to prepare new work. The link is also in the left-hand column here and on the home page. We aim to be increasingly useful as the demand for open access publication rises. Passage through the peer-reviewing process can be indicated where required. There are also sections now on copyright, and contributing photographs. Please help us make the website more informative and visually attractive!
To help illustrate Alex Round's new feminist readings of Rebecca Solomon's paintings, formatted for us by Simon Cooke, Jackie Banerjee found several new works by her, like her painting, The Appointment (or The Letter); and her illustration for a story about an artist's model. She also added some of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's illustrations for The Golden Book of Women, ranging from the daring (Eloisa being kissed by Abelard) to the perfectly virtuous, like St Clare. A rare treat, a visit to an exhibition in the beautiful Surrey Hills, resulted in a very favourable review of "Uncommon Power": Catherine and Lucy Madox Brown" at the Watts Gallery, Compton. It lasts until 20 February 2022. Do go if you can. JB also added an account of Clissold Park in Stoke Newington, acquired for the benefit of the public at a time when London's green spaces were being eaten up for housing.
George Landow has been discussing some of the ideas in Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, for example on the pros and cons of money and empire (there were some pros!), as well as dealing with some very welcome new work by Dennis T. Lanigan. If you don't know anything about the artistic group dubbed Poetry without Grammar, now is your chance to find out. Similarly, if you only know the work of Alfred William Hassam in stained glass, you should have a look at his paintings. GPL also brought in many new works from the Maas Gallery's art catalogue, from which we are allowed to reproduce images. Two favourites (judging by Twitter "likes") are Mary E. Williams's golden-hued Autumn, and Fanny Mary Minns's An Autumn Hedgerow near Carisbrook, both perfectly timed for October.
For a larger and often much less comfortable vision of the world, Simon Cooke has provided us with a new essay on John Martin as an illustrator, with several examples of his illustrations, like this one of Adam and Eve being driven out of Paradise, as well as some more of his paintings, like this terrific one of The Last Judgement. Cooke's extended and re-organised bibliography for book illustration will be a boon to students in this general area.
More political in theme are three paintings by Henry Wallis, discussed this month by Michael Hickox. One that (sadly) strikes a topical chord is Wallis's Refugees from Constantinople. It was hard to find public domain images for these, and then they were engravings, so not in colour. But they do help us to appreciate the works more fully. Of special interest too is Dennis T. Lanigan's essay on Aldred Hassam's A Softened Luster in Her Eye, because (as mentioned above) we mainly know Hassam now as a stained glass designer. More work by Hassam followed, so he is now better represented here by his paintings (although some of the new works were, in fact, designs for stained glass). Another very welcome addition from Dennis Lanigan is on the work of the orientalist, Michael Frederick Halliday. Two striking examples are: Algerian Women Playing Cards, and The Pomegranate Sellers. The month ended with Lanigan's informative look at the Hogarth Club, founded in 1858, which only lasted until 1861 but played a significant part in the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Amongst many other refurbishments and updatings, Philip Allingham has looked again at large- and small-screen film adaptations of Dickens's Great Expectations, illustrated now by screen shots of the Internet Archives' version of the classic David Lean production. Philip realises that his next task is to deal with more recent productions: it seems that there is no end to illustrating and adapting Dickens's work. But the great originals will always have a special place in Dickens studies.
Ray Dyer's commentaries on John Tenniel's cartoons for Through the Looking Glass continue, with some intriguing observations, for example, on Alice's elevation to royalty at the end of the chess game.
Rita Wood's latest is about St Oswald's Church, Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, interesting both because it was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and because Ruskin wrote a letter to the vicar about its David and Goliath window, which reminded him of a children's "Penny Dreadful" cheap publication! Thanks to Alan Murray-Rust for a fine set of photos of this church. Rita's knowledgeable and well-illustrated essay on the church's tiling brought in a new tiling company, Campbell's Brick & Tile Co..
Sabrina Laurent's translations of Mackintosh are complete (except for one stray item just found), and this meant going back and updating the Mackintosh section to match the new look in the French section, and adding a line on each entry to say that it is now available in French. Still, somehow the French section looks more elegant. How about this table and chairs set from Mrs Cranston's Tea-Rooms in Argyle Street?
Incidentally, Landow has now put some of the earlier years of this What's New page separately, since it was getting too long — and also (hands up!) since JB accidentally chopped off a chunk of it when updating this very entry. It was easy to restore, as we each keep an offline copy of the whole site, but harder to separate and reorganise. Sorry for the extra work; still, it really was getting unwieldy. The site itself is growing at a rate: at the beginning of the month we had 120,538 items in each of our copies. You can now see the earlier years of What's New by clicking on the links at the bottom of the left-hand column.
Correspondence: many thanks to Shirley Nicholson, whose information from the Linley Sambourne archives has helped to explain three of his cartoons about the Royal Academy Presidency election. Shirley has very kindly gone on to proofread the Sambourne and Leighton sections, and add useful comments from her store of knowledge, gained from working with the Sambourne archives in Kensington. Thanks to Diane L. Ritter, for spotting a typo in the Ruskin section, and taking the trouble to write in about it. Special thanks, too, to Roberto Ferrari of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive, for letting us reproduce one of the paintings on his site which proved absolutely impossible to find (with proper permission to reproduce) elsewhere. Also to Pictorial Post, which was willing for us to use one of their engravings as an illustration.
September 2021
eptember 2021 brought some very sad news, first that Dr John Sankey, a long-time contributor to our sculpture section, and an expert on the work of Sir Thomas Brock, had recently fallen victim to Covid. We send our heartfelt sympathy to his wife and family. One way of memorialising him will be to publicise his plans for a Brock centenary next year, which his family will now be carrying through. This will be a way of honouring John's work as well as the sculptor's. We will keep you posted. Then, alas, towards the end of the month we learned that someone he first introduced to us, one of our treasured Contributing Photographers, Robert Freidus, has also died. Many of his photographs can be found in these pages, a reminder of his love and knowledge of many kinds of art. Our hearts go out to his wife, who helped us only recently with an artwork on a Shakespearean subject. So sorry to start with such unhappy news.
Do check out another kind of news, that is, our postings of recent conferences on Victorian matters. We also received notice of a Dickens Symposium, and the founding of a new society: The Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies.
New online this month is Jackie Banerjee's discussion of E. A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. He enlarged the collection with great energy and sometimes by dubious means — a fascinating character. Many of his publications, including his book on Egyptian mummies, are still in print today. With the arrival of some new stained glass contributions from Rita Wood and Colin Price, JB also wrote introductions to two key early figures, whose interest in it started with heraldry — Thomas Willement and William Warrington. Colin's photograph of the Grantley window at Ripon Cathedral is the first to have gone online. (By the way, did you know we have a section on heraldry during this period?) Later in the month, she added a little information about, and a few more works by, the high-society portrait-photographer H. S. Mendelssohn, a Polish refugee who eventually included the royal family among his clients. In complete contrast, she also wrote an account of the former Holloway Sanatorium in Surrey, which had been "coming shortly" for far too long!
George Landow's latest work includes views of a delicate sculpture of St Cecilia, attributed to Mary Seton Watts, sent in by a private collector; another, more unusal one, is of a pair of Compton Pottery butterfly bookends. He also added some new work by Daniel Maclise, such as this historical one, shown in a very fine engraving, of Harold taking leave of Edward the Confessor. GPL also worked with Dennis T. Lanigan on John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's watercolour version of The Wine Press, a dramatic painting with various links to other Pre-Raphaelite works, and Lannigan's several other contributions, in the process revising the whole section on John Everett Millais's paintings.
Coming in late last month, Simon Cooke's discussion of Clarkson Stanfield's illustrations is a real eye-opener, since Stanfield is much better known for his paintings of marine scenes. Cooke followed up with another surprise, a piece on that flamboyant man of letters, George Augustus Sala, who also turned his hand to illustrating. Sala satirised the various nationalities involved at the Crystal Palace, not forgetting to make fun of the home team! Another contribution this month is an essay, Richard Doyle in Colour, to go with a reorganised section about this well-known fairy painter and illustrator.
Our science and technology editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, has done a great deal of behind-the-scenes work, reorganizing the science section. As so often, the least noticeable work is the most important. Making entries easier for readers to find is vital.
From Andrzej Diniejko we have a biographical introduction to one of the New Women fiction writers of the turn of the century, Sarah Grand, opening a new section on this important woman novelist.
As well as some more brilliant photos of stained glass yet to be put online (we've just received permission from two cathedrals to reproduce them), contributing photographer Colin Price sent in photos of the "elegant" Porthkerry Viaduct in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Returning to mockery, one of Philip Allingham's latest contributions is about F. A. Fraser's Trabb's boy, seen mimicking the affectations of the new gentlemanly Pip in Great Expectations. New scans and new or revised commentaries are making our Dickens illustrations section ever more comprehensive and useful. Included in Allingham's latest work is an essay on debtors' in Dickens's life and novels. Meanwhile Ray Dyer's latest commentaries are also giving us new insights into Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. One prompted JB to hunt down John Tenniel's cartoon in Punch about the Thames flood of 1877 — does London's rebuke to Old Father Thames have something in common with his illustration of the White Knight being dunked in a muddy ditch? Carroll's anxiety about ageing is another topic taken up by Dyer.
As for the Thames, Simon Wenham has contributed an entertaining piece about the arrival of cockney 'Arry on the Thames — once the preserve of the fashionable and well-heeled. Times, they were a-changing!
We've had some wonderful additions to the paintings section, mainly from Dennis T. Lanigan, whose thoughtful discussions often focus on works that are not easily accessible. Besides The Wine Press, mentioned earlier, another example here is the Scottish artist James Archer's watercolour of The Betrothal of Robert Burns and Highland Mary. Lanigan has also added two versions of Millais's Charlie is My Darling, portraits associated with a romantic story. Equally interesting essays followed, one on John William Waterhouse's Study for Margaret, Scottish Martyr, and another on a portrait that G. F. Stephens painted of his wife. Two other new paintings are discussed here as well, Edward Clifford's magical The Taj at Dawn, and striking portrait, Mens Conscia Recti. Alex Round's very promising series of essays on Rebecca Solomon has started too, with this first discussion of the artist as a social activist.
Mike Hickox's latest contribution should be at the top here really, as it came in at the end of last month: it's a detailed and intriguing little pen-and-ink sketch by John Brett, entitled After the Party. Can you read the young woman's expression?
Something quite different: Translations. Sabrina Laurent finished translating into French the individual entries for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with just a chronology and discussion now needed; and Ann Sole translated Philip V. Allingham's "King George the Fourth (a.k.a. "Prinny") and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (1811-1822)" into Ukrainian, as "Король Георг Четвертий (він же "Прінні") і Королівський павільйон, Брайтон (1811-1822)."
Correspondence: Special thanks to Ray Dyer for his much-needed proof-reading; and to Louise Hope, for notifying us of broken links. Randy Hill, the immediate past Chair of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, requested and received from Philip Allingham a high resolution scan of a Cruikshank illustration, and Russell Caplan sought and received advice on dating a church interior. Kind Twitter followers were able to help here. George Landow has handled several requests to list up-coming conferences, and put some of the abstracts submitted for them online as well, to give a flavour of what is to come.
August 2021
ugust already, and some more announcements of conferences. Here's one that raises all sorts of possibilities: "The Past as Nightmare": An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Reading (UK), 6-7 September 2022. Details here.
Jackie Banerjee's first contribution this month was a piece about Edith Nesbit and Kipling: did Kipling really borrow from Nesbit's Strand Magazine serials? Next, having taken a photo of St James's Palace during the quiet days of lockdown, JB wrote about its role in Victorian times. In this connection, she added George Hayter's painting, The Marriage of Queen Victoria, 10 February 1840, which took place in the Chapel Royal there. She then worked with Rita Wood on York Station, which involved a certain amount of refurbishment of Newcastle Central Station, with which there are links.... since GPL has infected JB with his love of railway technology and architecture, there is much more to come on this! Other additional odds and ends include some paintings of women in green dresses, such as this one by Sir William Orpen, and two additions to the Robert Louis Stevenson gallery: one rather unlikely one (a waxwork in Monterey!), and one about his stay in Hawaii. Later in the month she transcribed Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt's account of the Egyptian Court at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. It must have been one of the great sights of the age! She also worked through the John William Waterhouse gallery of paintings, making sure that each thumbnail went to a better-sized image (mostly thanks to Art UK) with extra information and links to other works — a very enjoyable project.
GPL (our own George Landow) has also been sprucing up several sections of the website, including the large one on George MacDonald, sometimes adding page decorations — as here. In a very long-established site like ours, updating and improvements are essential. In addition, he has opened an entirely new section for illustrator Kenny Meadows, with (literally) scores of his characterful illustrations, such as this wonderful one of the witch Sycorax, from The Tempest. GPL added several new works by Augustus Egg, as well, including this sympathetic study of poor doomed Desdemona. He has been sharing the task of putting new work online with JB, for which she is extremely grateful.
Our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke, was also in London, and his son Laurence provided us with some welcome new photographs, allowing JB to include, among several others, the Franklin Memorial in Westminster Abbey and the Elizabeth Tower at the southern end of the Palace of Westminster. Laurence has just achieved the most brilliant exam results, so special congratulations from all of us here.
The biggest contribution this month so far has been a five-part introduction to our new archaeology section by our Science and Technology Editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, bringing together so much new thinking about the subject, so many different avenues and areas of exploration, so many of the scholars and enthusiasts involved — and the huge impact these endeavours had on our culture generally. She has updated her biography, which now includes reference to her latest (and very well received) book in that area. By the way, you can see the various editors' biographies by clicking on their names in the left-hand column here. See who we are!
Our Assistant Editor for Gender Matters, Jo Devereux, has reviewed Rachel Teukolsky's Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media, which shows that Victorian ephemera, including adverts and posters, has had a more lasting impact than we suppose. We were happy to learn that the book was awarded the Honorable Mention for the BAVS (British Association of Victorian Studies) Second Book Prize this year, as being "transformative" of its field.
Philip Allingham continues to add to his vast compendium of Dickens's illustrators. Among the latest is Fred Barnard's depiction of Mrs Kenwigs's maternal tears and fears — written in April but now complete with relevant illustrations from other editions. A little later, contributing photographer Colin Price sent in some photos and information about the Larpool Viaduct over the R. Esk — and JB found a pleasing description of it in Dracula!
One of the month's stand-outs is Cynthia Gamble's wonderful essay on Ruskin, A Catalyst for Proust: her new book is just out, to much acclaim, and you can find a link to François de Combret's enthusiastic review of it at the end of the essay. Just in, also, is such an inspiring essay by Tony Schwab, "A Genuine Absence of Both Display and Concealment": Three Moments of Goodness in Little Dorrit."
Another favourite so far this month is Dennis T. Lanigan's discussion of Albert Moore's The Elements, with its pared down symbolism and colour harmonies. This was followed by Lanigan's discussions of two paintings by Simeon Solomon: In the Temple of Vesta (for which one of the artist's models may have been Fanny Cornforth) and St Cecilia (who closely remembles Elizabeth Siddal). Lanigan also discussed Obedience, by Sir Edward John Poynter, and The Infant Jason delivered to the Centaur by Oliver Madox Brown, son of Ford Madox Brown. How sad that young "Ollie" died at the age of nineteen, before he could fulfil his obvious potential.
As well as adding some more commentaries to Sir John Tenniel's illustrations of Through the Looking Glass, Ray Dyer has contributed an interesting essay on Lewis Carroll's "Methods of Concealment," with special reference to Alice and the White Knight in this second Alice novel. Another long-time contributor, Michael Williams, has sent in a discussion of Charles Kingsley and Lord John Manners' different responses to the medievalism of the age, a big subject for which we need more material. In an unexpected detail of Williams's piece, we discover that The Young Victoria was filmed at Manners's estate, Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. Besides York Station, Rita Wood sent in an account of the photogenic Lendal Bridge, York, by Thomas Page (who collaborated with Sir Charles Barry on Westminster Bridge), and a shorter piece on a "Tudorish" former girls' school in Blossom Street, York, by the Atkinson brothers. They went to town on the mullioned windows: count the rectangles!
It's a great pleasure to see the French translations of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's work reaching completion. We're really grateful to Sabrina Laurent for going through these pieces patiently.
Special thanks also to Roger G. Edwards, who wrote to point out the wrong illustration for a Scottish chapel — though this was correctly transcribed from the source, an early Victorian gazetteer. A suitable note was appended! Equally enlightening was Martin Bastone's revelation that damage to the V & A façade on Exhibition Road was due not to pollution (as we had thought) but to a bomb. Thank goodness the building was not even more badly damaged.
July 2021
uly is usually pretty quiet: the holiday season is upon us. Hope you manage to get away for a while. But our contributors are still keeping us well supplied. George Landow has not slackened at all since standing back from his leading role (in fact he is still leading us!) and has been contributing most, with an array of new scoops from the Graphic. These include glimpses into a Birmingham workshop and a steel pen-making one in Sheffield. These stunningly illustrated accounts broaden our picture of Victorian England, its working conditions, occupational health issues, and productivity. He also found a number of new illustrations by Daniel Maclise, such as a seductively entitled romantic one ("Meet me by moonlight alone") from Father Prout’s Reliques. Next came castles, of which we have plenty in the UK: here is the introduction to a whole set of descriptions of Alnwick Castle, the Hogwarts of the first two Harry Potter films, as it was in the nineteenth century. Has it changed much? A series on the life of the Jewish people of London followed, including this pleasant one of a Jewish wedding, with its fine sense of occasion. Most timely is a series of articles on the Cholera epidemic of 1884, which includes an illustration of someone in a "fumigating box" — at least we haven't been subjected to that! Another very useful piece is about Thomas Hughes's utopian "New Rugby" in Tennessee, where, after a period of decline, new homes are now being built, in keeping with the original spirit of the settlement.
Your current chief editor's work still focuses on W. B. Yeats, with several discussions: "Of Its Time: 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'"; "'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' and the Later Poetry"; and "'The Wild Swans at Coole' and the Influence of Lady Gregory." There is now at least the beginning of a gallery for him. These can all be accessed from the main page for Yeats. More to come here. But meanwhile there is also a new section on Sir William Orpen, whose self-portraits, like this one, are among his most appealing works. Another of his portraits is of the photographer George Charles Beresford, whose own portrait of Yeats is well known (so now you can see how one thing led to another, as it often seems to do on this website!). A review of G. J. Hyland's The Life and Work of E. W. Pugin followed: a lifetime's enthusiasm lies behind this meticulously arranged study of Pugin's eldest son, a prolific High Victorian architect whose legacy also needs to be treasured. Another (double) review followed, this time of two older works, one by Jacqueline Pearson and another edited by Nicola Diane Thompson, dealing with women's reading and writing, and the "Women Question." Later in the month, JB imported most of the background material on Australia from the Postcolonial Web so that it now has its own section, creating new opportunities for contributions. She also opened a new section on Sir Henry Tanner, the architect best-known for his post office design, and added a short Strand Magazine profile of Edith Nesbit to the authors' section.
Simon Cooke, our senior editor, has thrown more light on the weirder side of nineteenth-century culture, discussing the Victorians' fascination with the great sea-serpent, and the extraordinary ways in which this form of cryptozoology manifested itself. Seeing is believing, but what on earth (or, rather, in water) did they really see?
Diane Greco Josefowicz has contributed a landmark essay of 1850, "On the Study of Archeology" by Charles Newton, to which she is referring in her own discussion (in process now) of Victorian archeology.
The latest contribution to the section on James Smetham, by the knowledgeable Dennis T. Lanigan, is this Wesleyan painter's intriguing Saul "Hiding among the Stuff". Continuing to work with GPL, Lanigan also contributed a fine critique of a painting by another PreRaphaelite associate, Robert Bateman: Reading of Love, He Being By.
Colin Price's most recent batch of photographs includes some splendid external shots of St Margaret's, "The Marble Church," Clwyd, N. Wales, and its stained glass windows. All the windows are now online, most of them by Michael and Arthur O'Connor, others by Ward and Hughes. Similarly, Sabrina Laurent's latest translations of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's work, like this four-poster bed are now online, with still more to come.
Despite his recent house move (not to mention the heat in Canada), Philip Allingham continues to fill in gaps and produce better scans for his enormous collection of Dickens illustrators. Currently working on Charles Reinhart, he has some wonderful new pieces, like this one of Fanny Squeers trying to entrap a frankly horrified Nicholas Nickleby....
Rita Wood sent in pictures of plaque and memorial marking the birthplace in York of John Snow, who found out that cholera was transmitted via contaminated water. She also sent in photographs and descriptions of some more of central York's impressive public buildings, such as the former Register Office, and Tanner's (former) General Post Office (hence JB's opening of a new section on him). These were followed by several pages on St Paul's, Holgate Road, with some very attractive stained glass. Ray Dyer continues his analyses of the strange goings-on in Through the Looking Glass, this time reminding us about Lewis Carroll's pacifism, and (for example) showing how the Arts and Crafts movement impinged on Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Looking-glass soldiers — fascinating! He feels that Tenniel's most inspired illustration is of the drumming at the end of Chapter 7. What do you think? Amitav Banerjee, a less regular contributor despite some pretty severe arm-twisting, kindly provided a short introduction to Yeats's work.
Thank you to the kind "private collectors" who wrote in to correct two attributions in the sculpture section, and add images to these and another sculpture: this lovely bas-relief panel of angels watching over a sleeping baby turns out to have been by Gertrude Alice Meredith Williams, not Robert Anning Bell (with whom she had studied). An item in the Studio of 1900 confirms this. But Bell himself was not forgotten. Here is his faded but still touching plaque, Mother and Child. Thanks also to Rosalind, the kind reader who wrote in about the railways section with warm appreciation, and also corrected a Victorian author's middle name; and to RIBA's picture library, for allowing us to reproduce one of their images. The University of Hull has written asking for accessibility information before recommending the website to its students. We're so pleased to find that we score very well indeed when using their criteria.
Victorianists and Neo-Victorianists, don't forget to look at our signboard for scheduled conferences, calls for papers etc. More have been added!
June 2021
une brought in an announcement of the Pre-Raphaelite Society's new programme of talks. Take a look: the first is on E. A. Fellowes Prynne. We have some of the stained glass windows he designed, but not his paintings. Always so much new to discover! In that connection, conference announcements and calls for papers are now easy to access from our main page, on the left-hand column.
The month also arrived with a fresh crop of contributions, some of them quite scary! This is a reference to our new section on Victorian Ghost Stories, the result of our Senior Editor Simon Cooke's spooky researches. Since many of the authors were women, your webmaster found herself opening new sections on Amelia Edwards (who was also an important Egyptologist), Charlotte Riddell and Rhoda Broughton, with some welcome help with Edwards from William Joy of the Peggy Joy Egyptology Library in Michigan. JB also added two sets of Walter Crane's illustrations, one series for Bluebeard and the other for The Sleeping Beauty. Then she returned to the paintings of James Smetham, with a discussion of his character and work by the Art Journal, and some other paintings of his — also a few by other artists, including this summery one by John MacWhirter: Cornfield with Figures. A new section on W. B. Yeats followed — like the other new sections this month, just a start, to open the way for more submissions. Even more of a start is a collection of links to material on the website that might appropriately be listed as cultural history.
George Landow continues to work at pace. He's added to our conferences pages with some cracking new conferences coming up soon, on periodicals and popular fiction. Do check them out. For our growing section on Egypt and Egyptology, he put together a useful piece, from several sources, on the Suez Canal. He also continues to work with Dennis T. Lanigan, most recently with a discussion of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's The Garden Court, in the Briar Rose series, and a commentary on William Bell Scott's The Poet in Arcadia. Other new work includes opening a section on Norwich, and transcribing a useful, very detailed contemporary account of a new orphanage at Birmingham. Others followed, on the Government School of Design (set up long before the Great Exhibiiton of 1851); the opium trade (mentioning the growing use of opium in parts of England to allay hunger); Quakers in the early 1840s, with useful information on their meetings, the women's costumes etc.; a workhouse in Fulham; and an interesting piece on Balmoral. A special focus has been on Ireland, with a huge amount of new material from the Illustrated London News on this important, complex and long-running issue. Then GPL put in something rather different: an account of Philip Webb's one-of-a-kind Standen House in Sussex, kindly provided by Peyton Skipwith.
The ghost stories section deserves separate mention, with Simon Cooke's five-part discussion of them, looking at (for instance) their psychological aspects and even political motivations: yes, here was another way of asserting "the power of the female voice." In quite a different vein, this was followed by a look at a clutch of Kate Greenaway's illustrations, including several for Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin. The last one is particularly poignant.
Richard Gibson's review of David Yeandle's A Victorian Curate: A Study of the Life and Career of the Rev. Dr John Hunt proved unexpectedly engaging and even entertaining!
Philip Allingham sent in many scans and the beginning of a set of discussions of Charles Reinhart's illustrations for the Household Edition of Nicholas Nickleby. Here's a taster, Nicholas turning the tables (and the cane) on Mr Squeers.
Thanks to Rita Wood, our section on York continues to grow, with discussions of G. F. Bodley's Boer War Memorial, and the redevelopment of Duncombe Place, in front of the Minster — showing how the views of the Minster, gained with such effort, were soon partially obscured with new buildings. Other "new" York buildings include the Masonic Hall and the former Probate Office. Rita also cast an appraising eye over the Atkinson brothers' restoration of the ancient church of St Mary, Bishophill Junior.
Ray Dyer continues his commentaries on John Tenniel's Through the Looking Glass illustrations, reminding us in one that W.H. Smith had railway bookstalls at our stations even in Lewis Carroll's times!
Of special interest is Eidya Pal's short piece alerting us to the Indian government's redevelopment project in New Delhi. It threatens the whole ambience of Sir Edwin Lutyens' and Sir Herbert Baker's work between India Gate and the former Viceroy's House there — an ensemble which a recent architectural historian has described as "sublime." Work has already begun. This is very troubling.
Please note that our French section continues to grow, with our new volunteer translators, Sabrina Laurent and Thierry Vourdon. Here's an example of Sabrina's work, just some furniture by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but somehow it looks even more elegant in a French setting! All the Mackintosh section is gradually being translated.
Thanks as usual to help from readers, for example, Richard Scully identified the artist and engraver of an influential cartoon for us. Canon Ian Tarrant, Dean of Gibraltar, sent in some very interesting information about Holy Trinity Cathedral's original architect. We were also notified that the latest issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century is now live. This issue of the open access peer-reviewed journal has some brilliant articles, as usual, this time on the theme of ageing, includng ones about Tennyson and Charlotte Yonge, and another about "terrible old ladies" in Victorian literature and their make-up! Check it out here.
May 2021
ay blew in with another long weekend, so we're a bit behind. One piece of good news arrived very late indeed: we'd like to congratulate Andrzej Diniejko, our contributing editor from Poland, on his latest book, the first ever biography of Disraeli in Polish, published by the University of Warsaw Press in 2019.
Towards the end of last month, architect/engineer Patricia Stefanowicz asked why we had nothing on St Augustine's, Kilburn, one of the most important High Church churches in London. Contributing photographer John Salmon duly came to the rescue with well over a hundred photographs of it, including many he'd taken of the marvellous collection of embroidered church vestments there. Writing about these kept Jackie Banerjee busy for quite some time. She then enjoyed reviewing David Frazer Lewis's new book, A. W. N. Pugin, for the online journal Cercles, which kindly allows us to share our reviews. Afer that she added a contemporary obituary of Alexander Cunningham, who became head of the Archaeological Survey of India, Cunningham, and one of the sites in Delhi of great archeological interest — the Qtub Minar. Since then she has worked with Colin Price on Sir George Gilbert Scott's major restoration of Bangor Cathedral, again involving some fruitful excavations. This has also meant opening a new section for stained glass artist David Evans. At the end of the month she wrote a review article, "Updating the Brontës," looking at Mimi Matthews's John Eyre: A Tale of Darkness and Shadow, Bella Ellis's The Vanished Bride and Michael Stewart's Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff.
George Landow has been hard at work in the sculpture section, with contributions from a private collector, including a bust of William Morris by Conrad Dressler (earlier than his more familiar bronze one at the Art Worker's Guild). GPL has also added new pieces by Dennis Lanigan, such as one on Alexander Munro's ideal sculpture, Young Romilly, and another on Hamo Thornycroft's Teucer (one of Homer's heroes). Much of GPL's time is now being spent on creating a new archeology section with our science editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz. We all seem to have caught something of the excitement of this — the new discoveries and controversies of the time are well illustrated in the work of the archeologist Dr Schliemann, who reported on his discoveries at Mycenae to the Royal Society of Antiquaries, but has turned out, on further inspection, to have claimed rather more credit for them than he deserved! GPL also put online some Victorian accounts of anti-slavery naval missions in the Arabian Gulf, and Lancaster, "this famous little north-of-England town ... of high antiquity," as well as adding some new Ruskin translations by Gabriel Lombard to the French section, such as a translation of the seventh letter of Fors Glavigera. At the end of the month, he also started a new section on Norwich.
Our senior editor, Simon Cooke, hasn't been sitting on his laurels after his recent and very well received book on the Moxon Tennyson. He's written a full and handsomely illustrated article for us, "The Remains of the Day: Death and Dying in Victorian Illustration." It treats this difficult but important subject from a variety of angles, bringing together many illustrators and ideas with his usual tact, insight, and empathy.
Philip Allingham's latest additions to the Dickens illustrations are new, sharper scans of Harry Furniss's work for Nicholas Nickleby. Here, for example, is a very unprepossessing Mr Squeers. Next came about sixty scans of Fred Barnard's illustrations for the same novel. This is till a work in progress, with commentaries to follow. Meanwhile Philip is providing an Icelandic publisher with scans of the Household Edition for a new Icelandic translation of Great Expectations.
Among Colin Price's photographs of Bangor Cathedral was a set showing its doors, one of which is quite unusual, sporting a victory wreath. The ironwork of at least three of these doors seems to have been designed by George Gilbert Scott, dating from one of his last restoration projects.
Continuing her study of J. B. and W. Atkinson, the important York architects, Rita Wood has looked at Nos 1 and 3 Nessgate, a building that proved to be too extravagant for the bank it was built for; Nos 62 and 64 Petergate, and the grander Dean Court Hotel, in Duncombe Place. Ray Dyer continues with his current project too, exploring such subtleties of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass as the big black umbrella which appears now and then in the episodes with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and asking questions worthy of Alice herself: what on earth is the King's Messenger doing with the Mad Hatter's hat?
Edward Nudelman has again allowed us explore the riches of his catalogue of rare Victorian and Edwardian books, such as this splendidly bound Palgrave's Golden Treasury and the Moxon edition of Tennyson's Poems, also with a wonderful leather binding. A welcome find in the catalogue was Luke Fildes's Sophia.
Two new contributors now: Simon Edwards has contributed some photographs of graves of well-known Victorians in Highgate cemetery, including, so far, those of the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon, Dickens's parents, John and Elizabeth Dickens, and his wife Catherine and baby daughter Dora. It was very sad to see the state of sculptor E. H. Bailey's grave though. The other new contributor, Sabrina Laurent, has been helping with the French translations, for example, these ones of our entries on the Glasgow School of Art and the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow.
Readers are helpful as ever: Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, Davis Alumni Professor of Louisiana State University, wrote in to give the specific source (in Ruskin's work) of Frank Bramley's title for his painting, A Hopeless Dawn. It adds a great deal to our understanding of it. Sean Ridgeway wrote in about an outdated link in the periodicals section. It was to an outside resource, which, fortunately was easily traced to its new web address.
April 2021
pril started with a holiday weekend that, in the south-east of England at least, turned from summer to arctic over the space of the three days. But there's plenty on the web to warm the heart. This includes the William Morris Society's new online exhibition, "The Ideal Book: William Morris and the Kelmscott Press." Also, an inspiring call for papers for a conference on Victorian and Edwardian Interiors at Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France, 27-28 January 2022. Have a look at the details on our site, see the variety of angles suggested, and be inspired!!
If you're just looking for new books to read at home, we have several book reviews to offer. Your webmaster's review, shared with the online journal Cercles, is of Nathaniel Robert Walker's Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia: Abandoning Babylon, which makes surprising connections across several disciplines. JB also added to her earlier Newlyn School artists, and included two new artists, Norman Garstin and Henry Meynell Rheam. She turned to James Smetham after this, acquiring some new favourite paintings, such as his panoramic Evening Pasture and evocative Naboth in His Vineyard. Then came a new section on one of William Morris's important legacies, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), with an account of its founding, and an inspiring essay by Caroline Murray, who has just recently joined the organisation. JB also very much enjoyed writing about Michael Blaker's etching of Wellington's funeral car, kindly sent in by Catriona Blaker. Sadly, Michael is no longer with us, but his work often features Victorian subjects, so his contributions continue, both in the etchings section and elsewhere, and can still give much pleasure.
The best news of all is that George Landow has been working away, despite some worrying health crises, with his usual energy and enthusiasm, putting online work by our new editors, Richard Gibbons and Timothy Larsen: a very useful glossary of ecclesiastical terms. Equally welcome is a valuable piece on Pre-Raphaelite sculpture by a new contributor, Dennis T. Lanigan, and another on Hamo Thornycroft's Artemis and its casts, both of which GPL has put online. Then, coming across a rare and short-lived late-Victorian periodical called The Dome, he also put online some wonderful wood-engravings by theatre-designer/director Gordon Craig — Ellen Terry's son! Next (the list goes on) he opened new sections for two Scottish artists, John MacWhirter and Samuel Bough, and added to the furniture section with items designed by Alfred Waterhouse and others, such as this timeless pitch pine writing table, by renowned makers Holland & Sons, of 1870. More than all that, he continued to give helpful advice and support to the rest of us, which is much needed and appreciated.
In his new role as Senior Editor (to which we're hoping that others will aspire, as time permits), Simon Cooke has been policing the illustrations section. For example, we had three illustrators with the same surmame invading each others' territories. This had to stop! They have all been put in their proper places now. Simon also contributed two essays, one on the artist Thomas Creswick as a painter, and the other one on him as an illustrator, both with a range of examples. Paul Goldman's review of Simon's new book, The Moxon Tennyson: A Landmark in Victorian Illustration brings out the importance both of the Moxon Tennyson itself, and of Simon's highly knowledgeable and perceptive study of it.
Meanwhile, our Science and Technology Editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, had added a biography of Hertha Ayrton, whose career as a scientist and inventor (and suffragette) makes her a truly inspiring figure even today.
Philip Allingham continues to add to and improve the various illustrators of Bleak House, making a large interlinked compendium of their different interpretations and styles. Just to give you an idea, here's the latest to go up, an entertaining bit of farce in Mrs Guppy's Indignation, by Harry Furniss. His attention has now turned to the illustrators of Nicholas Nickleby, for which he is sending in new scans and essays, currently, by Sol Eytinge.
Four more book reviews: from Rita Wood, we had an appreciative review of Helen Wilson's book about some other inspirational Victorian women, The Remarkable Pinwill Sisters: From "Lady Woodcarvers" to Professionals. Another review so far this month has been Suzy Kim's thorough and stimulating one of Victorian Hands: The Manual Turn in Nineteenth-Century Body Studies, edited by Peter J. Capuano & Sue Zemka, a challenging book again ranging over various disciplines. Then Christine Whittemore reviewed Julia Kavanagh's Rachel Grey, the first publication from Nick Holland's Hanover Press, in an admirable project to recover neglected Victorian women novelists. This thoughtful review provided the incentive to open a new section on Kavanagh. More needed here!! We're also grateful to Jacquelynn Baas, for kindly letting us add her review of Marcella Genz's A History of the Eragny Press, 1894-1914, with its correctives to the more conventional views of Lucien Pissarro's work in graphics.
The latest entry for the history section is Mike Williams's useful account, "John James Robert Manners, Seventh Duke of Rutland (1818-1906): The Making of a Statesman." Manners was a prominent figure who served in every Tory cabinet for 40 years, so it is well worth following his career. Besides, we do like to bring neglected figures to the forefront.
Philip Pankhurst and Fabian Musto kindly contributed photographs of St. Andrew, Moreton-on-Lugg, Herefordshire, designed by the architect W. H. Knight (1799-1881) of Cheltenham (our first by him), and Philip contributed a description too — the chief beauty of this church lies in its Salviati mosaics in the chancel. Ray Dyer's series of mini-biographies of Freud's early associates continues to grow, the latest online being A. A. Brill and Ernest Jones; but he has also been contributing comments on Tenniel's illustrations of Through the Looking Glass,such as this one of the White Knight sliding down a poker! There is more to come on this particular one! Mike Hickox contributed a discussion of James Smetham's painting, Mary Magdalene, and quite rightly asks why this artist, befreinded and admired by Ruskin and Rossetti, isn't better known.
Rita Wood continues her study of the architectural firm of J. B. and W. Atkinson of York with, among others, a particularly interesting look at Varvil's Warehouse on the Ouse (or sometimes partially in it!).
As ever, readers have been actively engaged: Justyna Tobolska reported broken links in the Burne-Jones section, where one of the artists' series paintings had been moved to a different place (this happens!), and Arthur Russ wrote in to update links in the phrenology section.
March 2021
arch has come in more like a lamb than a lion this year, with hopes building for an end to lockdown. First, announcements: here's one for all those who love the Pre-Raphaelites: if you click on this link, you'll find details of the Pre-Raphaelite Society's upcoming lecture programme. There's a series of three lectures, which you won't want to miss – and the first one is on 20 March, so don't delay. Next, Dr Helen Wilson's new book on the Pinwill sisters is out at last (read about them here). Also now out for review, the first of the "neglected Victorian novels" to be published by the new Hanover Press: Julia Kavanagh's Rachel Gray. Watch this space!
We're all still spending more time at home, so contributions continue to flow in. Your new webmaster has found a little time to spare for exploring the Newlyn school of painters, making new sections on Stanhope A. Forbes and his wife Elizabeth Adela Forbes. The former brings a breath of fresh sea air in paintings like Chadding on Mount's Bay, though JB's favourite is a rural one, The Drinking Place. Two particularly touching works by him are a domestic interior, showing a family taking in the news of Queen Victoria's death; and his proud portrait of his and Elizabeth's only child, who died in the war. Elizabeth's work is no less appealing: favourites here are School is Out and Jean, Jeanne and Jeannette (NB Jeannette is a goat!). Frank Bramley has also been added, and Walter Langley has made it into the main list of artists now that several more works like The Breadwinners, with their moving insights into the fisherwomen's lives, have been included.
As usual, and really incredibly — despite ongoing medical treatment, and one severe crisis — George Landow has been hard at work retrieving a wide range of articles from the English Illustrated Magazine, including ones on Westminster School (1887), The Straits Settlement and British Malaya (1888), and (one after his own heart), Broad Gauge Engines (1891). The latest piece, beautifully illustrated by W. Biscombe Gardner, is about Surrey Farmhouses. These articles are impossible to read comfortably in their original sources, and need a good deal of careful transcription, but they afford unique insights into late Victorian life and attitudes. GPL has continued to look through Robert Freidus's photos, too, putting online this splendid coronation seal for George V, and last but not least has been looking into the more technical aspects of the site.
Our long-time science editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, has been proposing some great plans for developing the website, meanwhile tidying up the science sitemap in preparation for our big new project with the University of Victoria on pregnancy and childbirth — much anticipated! There might just possibly be some link here to our Book Illustration and Design editor Simon Cooke's latest article: it's on "Sexuality and Gender in Victorian Illustration," bringing together many illustrators, from the Pre-Raphaelites to Punch cartoonists to Aubrey Beardsley, excavating hidden meanings and putting the more blatant and prevocative ones into a sober scholarly context. Simon's next piece was entirely different: a five-star review of BBC Two's The Terror about the lost Franklin Expedition of the 1840s. (You'll want to catch the series on I-Player if you live in the UK).
Our new editors for Religion have been quick off the mark with this opener, Timothy Larsen's "The Bible and Belief in Victorian Britain," ready-formatted for us by his co-editor, Richard Gibson, who then sent in a very enjoyable essay of his own, on "The Charms of Trollope and His Twentieth-Century Reputation." We're so pleased with this new team!
Philip Allingham's latest is a set of illustrations by John McLaren Ralston for Dickens's "idiosyncratic, unabashedly biased" Child's History of England. This calls for more scrutiny! Several other sections on the Dickens's illustrators have also been updated, with new scans, and new comparisons. The entries for Phiz's illustrations for Charles Lever's Davenport Dunn have also been updated — an immense amount of work here, too.
Contributing photographer Colin Price sent in several photographs of bridges, only the first of which is online so far — the Liskeard Viaduct in Cornwall. But what are Shuichi Okada's photographs of the Hama-Nakatsu bridge in Japan doing on our website? Well, the story goes back to 1873, when Britain was still an industrial powerhouse....
New light too on the weird and wonderful portmanteau words and coinages of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem, in an analysis by Ray Dyer. Ray has also sent in eight more biographies of Freud's early associates, Eduard Hitschmann, Otto Rank, Isador Isaak Sadger and James Jackson Putnam, Max Eitingon, Fritz Wittels, Karl Abraham and Ludwig Binswanger. Ray is gradually bringing the (often complicated) world of these early psychoanalysts to life for us.
We had another great contribution from Sarah Sullivan, this time about a sample house, The Heights, on the Half-Moon estate in Haslemere. It's amazing how much talent blossomed in the Surrey Hills in the late nineteenth century, and here was a fine local Arts and Crafts architect, Herbert Hutchinson, who catered for their tastes. This prompted JB to collect garden suburbs and planned estates in a new sitemap. Also in the architecture section, a new, long-awaited entry on St Andrew's, Roker, by Alec Hamilton, who promises more accounts of the lovely Arts and Crafts churches he featured in his recent book on the subject. Then, Rita Wood, still in pursuit of the important York architectural firm, J.B. and W. Atkinson, sent in their own office building in Micklegate and a couple of prestigious houses by them in Museum Street. Meanhile, in the paintings section, Mike Hickox contributed another piece about Henry Wallis, this time about his three paintings of Sir Walter Ralieigh, especially Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower.
Thanks to Professors Antoine Capet and Laurent Bury in France, for sharing Laurent Bury's review in the online journal Cercles with us: it's of John Dixon Hunt's The Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place. Suzy Kim made a fine start on her publication portfolio with a review of Christina Meyer's Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid. We're grateful too to contributors and readers who have written in to update links. Cecilia Wadsö Lecaros updated one to her book, The Victorian Governess, now available online; archivist Natalie Adams updated the link to Edward Blore's papers at Cambridge University Library; Joaquim Jocfla spotted a link that needed mending in the Dickens section; and Lorna Seymour pointed out repetitions and omissions in one of the articles transcribed from a Victorian periodical, where the text in the original is confusingly wrapped around the illustrations. Three cheers for alert readers!
February 2021
ebruary takes us a little closer to spring, and (let's hope) normalcy. It also sees a change in this "What's New" column as JB (Jacqueline Banerjee) takes over from GPL (George Landow) — who founded this website in the very earliest days of the World Wide Web, and has been its webmaster and editor-in-chief ever since. JB finds this more than a little daunting. Fortunately, though, GPL continues to be our guiding light. Long may this continue, as he is very much needed! Your new webmaster is also very lucky to have an excellent technical adviser, and the support of a terrific editorial team, as well as three contributing photographers — and, of course, contributors old and new, without whom we could not possibly keep up to date in all our different areas. In this connection, we're delighted to announce that Professors Timothy Larsen and Richard Gibson, of Wheaton College, Illinois, are joining us as joint-editors of our large religious section. We're also delighted to announce a new partnership with Pre-Raphaelite Society: we'll be pooling resources to promote "knowledge, understanding and appreciation" of this influential, ever-fascinating brotherhood of artists.
On a sad note, however, we need to report the passing of one of our most illustrious contributors, Lionel Gossman from Princeton — and, before that, Glasgow. It has been such a pleasure to have his work on art, stained glass and photography over these last few years, as well as his friendship and help in other areas — when writing about the German architect, Schinkel, for example. We shall miss him very much indeed.
Turning the focus to this month's work so far (near the end of it now) we have plenty of new material to explore on the website. A set of three magnificent new books about Pre-Raphaelite stained glass by William Waters (author) and Andrew Carew (photographer) arrived for review recently: the review is now online. By the way, it comes with a special offer for readers (a discount, and free postage), so do check it out. A new piece on the Central Baptist Church, New Delhi. Then a Victorian history of the old-fashioned children's teaching aid, the hornbook, provided your new webmaster with a set of four delicate illustrations for it by Georgie Gaskin, including this seasonal one for spring. Another, a humorous one by cartoonist Phil May, shows that a hornbook could be used for other things besides instruction. Later in the month, JB started work on the Newlyn School of artists in Cornwall, but has only got as far as adding some early accounts of it, and adding to our entries on Henry Scott Tuke (who was more complicated than she previously realised!).
We're so pleased to report that George Landow, despite stepping back a bit, has been continuing to explore the treasures of the English Illustrated Magazine, and has found a detailed account of "Post Office Parcels and Telegraphs" in those early days, and another article on "William James Linton, Engraver, Poet, and Political Writer." Such essays bring with them still more illustrators, including Robert Walker Macbeth, with (for example) his precise and sympathetic depictions of women and children potato-pickers among other farm workers, and Patty Townsend [Johnson]'s sketches of old Coventry. Landow has also made a start on contributing photographer Robert Freidus's latest large batch of photos, putting about a dozen online already, including several of this very intriguing bust of Anne Hartley, which is heavily inscribed across the back. We would love to know more about her, and why this was commissioned long after her death! Another favourite is Ellen Mary Rope's relief, Mother and Child, typically tender and sensitive.
Many thanks also to Paul Goldman for an informative introduction to William Mulready as an under-rated illustrator, an essay for which Simon Cooke, our Book Illustration and Design editor, selected and prepared some appropriate illustrations. In this connection, enthusiasts shouldn't miss the chance to hear Edmund King, a contributor and a leading authority in this field, giving a talk via Zoom entitled "Books and Bindings: Art serving mass production" on 25 March, hosted by the Portico Library. Take a peek at the notice for it: the bindings are absolutely gorgeous!
Another big thank-you goes to Shuichi Okada, who contributed two terrific shots of the only English steam engine in working use in Japan (Victorian, of course!). Also to Colin Price, for his great shots of viaducts and bridge, especially the Leaderfoot Viaduct on the Scottish Borders. Then too we had some right up-to-date photographs by Oindrila Ghosh, in Kolkata, most notably Lady Canning's beautiful tomb monument designed by George Gilbert Scott, with sculptural work by J Birnie Philip.
Philip Allingham has also continued to be as active as ever, sending in improved scans of illustrations, filling in gaps, rearranging introductory pages etc, especially for Fred Barnard's Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, and Gissing illustrations, and Harry Furniss's Barnaby Rudge. Then he surprised us with a highly relevant new essay on "Major Bagstock's Native in Dombey and Son — Nameless and Mute" - this could not be more timely.
Another much-valued addition comes from Ray Dyer, on Victorian Theories of Sexuality: more to come on this subject, starting with Freud and the early influences on his thought, and a new, very thorough annotated chronology of his life. Both Landow and Banerjee worked on these. We have preserved the original Freud project on our website, as a matter of historical record, but now have a more up-to-date one linking to new contributions. Ray has already added an account of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud's Studies on Hysteria, and is now adding mini-biographies of Freud's associates, including Jung and Adler.
Many thanks to William Gibbs for some more works by the Welsh sculptor sculptor Joseph Edwards, the most striking of which is a bust of Taliesin Williams. Thanks also to Antoine Capet, reviews editor of the journal Cercles, for sharing Erika Rappaport's very useful review of Emma Griffin's Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. Rita Wood's careful research into the architectural firm of J.B. and W. Atkinson of York led to accounts of two buildings which also tell us much about social history: the former York Union Workhouse, and the former Institute of Popular Science and Literature.
Welcome new information/corrections also came in from readers. Christine Whittemore noted a discrepancy in the dates of F. W. Robertons's Baptism sermons. Heinz Theuerkauf wrote in from Munich with more details about one of C. F. A. Voysey's houses. Whistler expert, Professor Margaret MacDonald, wrote to say that Whistler's On a Venetian Canal was almost certainly misattributed when it first came to light. Gerard Hyland sent in a notice of his eagerly awaited forthcoming book, Life and Works of Edward Welby Pugin, Architect, 1834-75 [reviewed here later].
January 2021
anuary brings the new year and changes on the site’s editorial board: Jaqueline Banerjee takes over as Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster, and Philip Allingham retires from the board. George P. Landow will continue to contribute as long as his health permits. He began the month by transcribing several beautifully illustrated articles from The English Illustrated Magazine: “Old Chester,” “China-Making at Stoke-on-Trent,” and “Iron and Steel Making in South Wales.” The last two offer detailed examples of late-Victorian technology and manufacturing combined with excellent pictorial documentation. These projects led to creating sections for two illustrators, Herbert Railton and Albert George Morrow. Continuing his goal of adding Victorian descriptions of manufacturing, Landow added “A Day at the City Sawmills, Regent’s-Canal Basin, City-Road, London” from the 1853 The Illustrated Magazine of Art. That periodical also provided an informative illustrated article on copper and steel engraving, a series of Henry Ryland’s Lady of Shalott and his drawings of flowers found in the English landscape.
Working with one of our frequent contributors, Catherine J. Golden, Professor of English and the Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters, Skidmore College, Landow created a section for the Jemima Blackburn based on her biographical essay and ones on Blackburn as a illustrator of birds, animals, and biblical scenes as well as a portraitist of famous scientists and watercolorist of Scottish scenes.
For Jackie Banerjee, the end of 2020 was very much like the rest of it, in that her computer suddenly seized up. But with a lot of help she soon recovered most of her lost work, and rewrote the most recent items. These included more entries in the new Cornwall section, such as Tintagel Castle, with its Arthurian connections (which drew Tennyson to it) and the coastal scenery that inspired so many artists, such as the Newlyn School of painters. More on these artists coming up! Looking at St Materiana's Church, Tintagel, and St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, then brought her to open a new section on the restoration architect, J. P. St Aubyn. After that she added a piece about Glasgow Station, with photographs of her own and a batch sent in by Colin Price. Neither set was enough alone, but together they make an interesting commentary on the busiest railway station in Scotland. Colin's photograph of the Caledonian Railway Bridge was most welcome too. Then, as a complete change, she reviewed Diane Johnson's The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith, reissued recently and worthy of all the attention it is getting.
Philip Allingham completed his long series on Hablot Knight Browne's (aka Phiz's) illustrations of Barnaby Rudge, a massive undertaking, which also involved some additions to his work on Harry Furniss, for comparison.
Our Book Illustration and Design editor, Simon Cooke, provided us with a much-needed introduction to the life and work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, tracing the development of his unique Irish-Gothic voice.
Rita Wood sent in another of the works of the architectural firm of J. B. and W. Atkinson, Gray's Court, close to York Minster. Another contributor, Then, a complete change, William Gibbs, is uncovering more work on (and by) the Welsh sculptor Joseph Edwards, including this touching Memorial to Mary Elizabeth Davis in St George's, Tredegar.
Many thanks to Amitav Banerjee for writing an analysis of Thomas Hardy's "After a Journey," written after the poet revisited Cornwall, the scene of his and his first wife's early courtship.
Thanks to Bob Bethune for correcting an embarrassing typo!
Last modified 5 January 2024