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The Environment
- The Victorian Development of the Idea of "the Public Interest"
- Nature as Amenity and Liberal Economics in The Victorian Age
- How Filthy Was London?
- Metropolitan mud, filthy streets, and “A Thaw in the Streets of London (1865)”
- “A London Fog” (from the 1849 Illustrated London News)
- “A Fog in the Streets of London” (1867 Illustrated London News)
- King Coal — Industrial and Domestic Air Pollution and the Reaction against it
- Pollution in Sheffied
Sewage Disposal and the Pollution of the Thames
- Kingsley, Millar, Chadwick on Poverty, Environment. and Epidemics
- From Inconvenience to Pollution — Redefining Sewage in The Victorian Age
- Technological Solutions: The Abbey Mills Pumping Station
- London Nightmen (cesspool-sewermen)
- Good Intentions, Unexpected Consequences: Thames Pollution of and The Great Stink of 1858
- Punch on Thames Pollution (1859)
- Faraday Giving His Card to Father Thames: Punch on pollution of waterways (1855)
- “The Purification of The Thames” (Editorial, The Illustrated London News, 24 July 1858)
- Charles Dickens and “the Big Stink”
- Use of Metropolitan Sewage in Agriculture (1864)
Air Pollution
- Stained Glass and Gaslight — Darkness, Smog, and a Little Light in Victorian Cities
- Oxford at 1850
- Coal Fires, Gas illumination, and Victorian London as a "Heat Island"
- Sanitation and Its absence
- Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions
- Fun (1878) on polluting smoke and industry’s effect on the environment
- Fun (1878) on pollution’s effect on sculpture
Industrial pollution and environmental dangers in the workplace
- Robbed of “twenty-five years of existence” — The Trades of Sheffield and their dangers to worker's health
- High mortality rates of Sheffield knife grinders (1881)
Suggested readings about the environment in Victorian literature
Perhaps the most obvious works concerning the Victorian environment and its degradation are John Ruskin’s “The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century” and Gerard Manley Hopkins's “Binsey Poplars.” Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend and Ruskin’s “The King of the Golden River” also have important things to say on this topic.
Suggested readings about Victorian air pollution
On the discussion list Victoria Stephen Basdeo suggested the following articles and books about air pollution.
Brimblecombe, Peter. ‘Late Victorian Air Pollution’ in Smoke and Mirrors: the Politics and Culture of Air Pollution. Ed. E. Melanie DuPuis. New York: New York University Press, 2004.
Lewis, Jim. Water and Waste: Four Hundred Years of Health Improvements in the Lea Valley. London: Middlesex University Press, 2009.
Luckin, Bill. ‘Revisiting the Idea of Degeneration in Urban Britain, 1830-1900’. Urban History 33: 2 (2006): 234-52.
Luckin, Bill. 'The heart and home of horror': The great London fogs of the late nineteenth century.' Social History 28: 1 (2003): 31-48.
Mosley, Stephen. The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester. London: Routledge, 2001.
Stephen Mosley, 'A Disaster in Slow Motion: The Smoke Menace in Urban Industrial Britain' in Learning and Calamities: Practices, Interpretations, Patterns. Ed. Heike Egner, Marén Schorch, Martin Voss (2014).
Stephen Mosley, ‘Fresh Air and Foul: The Role of the Open Fireplace in Ventilating the British Home, 1837-1910' Planning Perspectives 18: 1 (2003): 1-21.
Platt, Harold L. ‘The Invisible Evil: Noxious Vapour and Public Health in Manchester during the Age of Industry’ in Smoke and Mirrors: . Ed. M. DuPuis.
Thorsheim, Peter. Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Culture in Britain since 1800. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006.
Last modified 31 December 2022