December 2022
ard to believe another year is almost over! We wish all our readers, and followers on social media, a very happy winter holiday. Let's hope (despite everything, in these difficult times) for peace and good will to prevail in the New Year.
Little lamps of hope: candles in Chartres Cathedral, taken by George Landow in 2012.
As for news, the second part of the Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Age of Victoria project's launch had to be postponed. The first part (on Zoom) was great and the second will have a larger number of presenters, so watch this space for a new date. Do check out our list of upcoming conferences, and calls for papers, too. Taylor Tomko has just put several very intriguing ones online, on Skin Studies, "Revision, Return, Reform," and "Body | Mind | Spirituality." The reach and range of Victorian studies keeps on growing. The Pre-Raphaelite Society is going from strength to strength too, with new podcasts coming along regularly. Their inspiring programme for the next months is here (putting it online was also Taylor's work!).
With many contributions arriving at the end of last month, Jackie Banerjee has opened two new sections, one on master-sculptor William Willingale Taylor, and the other on the architect G. E. Halliday. Both were to introduce work contributed by Michael Statham (see below). She wrote a short piece on Insole Court, Llandaff, on which Taylor worked as an architectural sculptor, and updated our series of pages about William Burges's work on Cardiff Castle. She also put online the press release for an intriguingly themed sculpture exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds: "The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture" and added several of the works currently on display there to our own pages, the most striking being Why Born Enslaved! by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875).
Working on Oxford University in the Victorian age, George Landow has come up with some wonderful contemporary accounts of the various colleges, such as Magdalen College, of which Dr Martin Joseph Routh (1755-1854) was President for sixty-four years (!), and Christ Church, whose "roll-call of famous graduates" includes a host of Archbishops, Bishops, the Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, and many others (Lewis Carroll too, of course). Work on several other colleges continued, as well as some contemporary accounts of Oxford life. In nineteenth-century Oxford, we learn, there were few professors, but still plenty of "eccentric recluses" who did their best to keep such distractions as railways and women at bay, and maintain their "ivory tower" existence. Happily, they were doomed to fail!
At the end of last month, our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke, turned his attention to the neo-Victorian section, reviewing The Innocents, and showing how the film deals with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. He also added some drawings by the illustrator Paolo Priolo, who made "a small but interesting contribution to mid-Victorian book-design": one example is Christian and Faithful entering the Town of Vanity, for The Pilgrim's Progress.
Diane Josefowicz, our Science and Technology editor, has been running checks for broken links on the site. There are many! One quite valid excuse is that so many of the websites we've linked to over the years, in our notes and bibliographies, have disappeared or moved. This includes some very big sites, whose web addresses have changed.... it will be a big problem for us to fix them all. Diane has also been updating many of the science entries — no mean task!
Perhaps the most newsworthy piece so far this month came from Tim Willasey-Wilsey, our Editor for Military and Colonial History: "Joe Biden and footsteps on the beach at Chennai," about the possible forebears of the present US President. Tim also augmented our section on the sculptor Edward Hodges Baily with two memorials, by far the most impressive of which is his monument to Major-General Sir William Ponsonby in St Paul's.
Contributing photographer Colin Price went on his first holiday since Covid, and remembered to take pictures of a really historic locomotive for us in the Lake District.
Philip Allingham continues with his work on the illustrations of Charles Lever's Roland Cashel, which provided Phiz with some of his best opportunities to show dramatic scenes of horsemanship: here is his spectacular take on Roland caught up in a buffalo stampede, innocuously entitled A Prairie-Evening Ride. It would be a shame for Phiz's admirers not to see his work for the lesser-known novels of the age.
Just in as well, Pamela Gerrish Nunn's review appraises The Legend of King Arthur: Pilgrimage, Place and the Pre-Raphaelites, edited by Natalie Rigby, Natalie, the book accompanying the current exhibition at William Morris House in Walthamstow. We're hoping to have a review of the exhibition itself before too long. Later, Pamela added some of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's lovely rose pictures, such as these two, of a pencil study and a watercolour.
Not long afterwards, thankfully with George in charge of this large body of work, Dennis T. Lanigan opened a whole new section on the Etruscan School of painters. This brought in several new artists, such as Walter Maclaren and Walter John James as well as adding to our knowledge of major artists already included: an example here would be Leighton's Lindos, Rhodes, which inspired the backgrund of his well-known later painting, Winding the Skein. All in all, this is a brilliant addition to our painting section.
Having written in with a correction last month, retired environmental scientist Michael Statham also contributed a large amount of material, starting with works by the architect John Prichard (including two notable churches St Margaret of Antioch, Roath, and St Catharine's, Baglan, in the Borough of Neath Port Talbot); and the master sculptor William Willingale Taylor. Michael's specialist knowledge on varius types of stone is a real asset. One of the most interesting new pieces Michael provided is the sculptor H.H. Armstead's drawing of a gargoyle (in the figure of an angel) for one of the churches, from the archives of W. Clarke of Llandaff. We're grateful to this firm for letting us show archival material. Then Michael started adding to the new section on George Eley Halliday, whose tiny church, St Nicholas in Nicholaston, Glamorgan, shows how different varieties of stone could be used to wonderfully subtle effect.
Michael went on to provide a short account of the long history of W. Clarke, and a series of remarkable sgraffito panels, starting here by George Heywood Sumner — these were for St Mary the Virgin, Llanfair Kilgeddin, Monmouthshire. Michael then added accounts and photographs of two rooms at Cardiff Castle missing from our pages about it: The Summer Smoking Room and the Bachelor Bedroom and bathroom, both in the Clock Tower. Finally (so far!) he sent in a few sample images of the marble insets in Lord Bute's suite in the Bute Tower, explaining their sources and giving examples of where each kind of marble has been used.
Shirley Nicholson's contribution this month is a short but very welcome piece on "The Clique," a group of young art-students at the beginning of the Victorian period, destined to be among the most important artists of the age. Taylor did her first piece of work outside the conferences listing, adding Hemry Stacy Marks's contemporary account of the second and better-known such group: the St John's Wood Clique. Kindly responding to our request, Ray Dyer went along to the Leeds exhibition ("The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture"), and provided a review of it which has made us all the more eager to see it. Both Shirley and Ray Dyer continue to proof-read for us, which is extremely helpful.
The latest from Rita Wood is the fine (former) York Insurance Building in St Helen's Square, York. It is worth visiting just to see its stairway, with its grape-vine balustrade!
Correspondence. Thank you to Peter Embling for writing in about a dramatic incident in which his grandfather was involved. It was on the Boxing Day morning of 1910, at the Red Cross Hall in Southwark — and certainly adds something to the after-history of Octavia Hill's housing development there. Annie Rhys has also written in about the artist James Clarke: she is his great-granddaughter, and has written a book about him. Not much is known about Clarke, so we must investigate. Naomi Lightman, who has previously contributed to our site, sent in a very useful note about Frank Bramley's painting, Eyes and No Eyes, explaining the title, and giving it a whole new dimension.
People write in regularly for permission to use images (which isn't necessary, unless stipulated), and information about the value of Victorian work that they've bought. We aren't able to advise on such matters, but we can put the item on the website or on our social media, in case anyone knows more about it.
November 2022
ovember 3rd saw the launch of the Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Age of Victoria project, with some of the contributors discussing their work and answering questions — a brilliant opportunity to understand the issues facing women, and society generally, in that age — and even ours. We're delighted with the success of this project and look forward to seeing it expand. We're also delighted to have help with formatting, in the shape of Taylor Tomko, our new editorial assistant. Taylor has already been lending a hand by dealing with conference schedules and calls for papers. Welcome, Taylor!
Having encountered the work of the marine artist, Colin Hunter, at Leighton House's re-opening, Jackie Banerjee opened a new section on him with a selection of his paintings, including his self-portrait and some evocative Highland scenes, such as the popular Good-night to Skye. She also wrote about the Lambeth Waterworks at Seething Wells, with its filter beds for purifying the Thames water. The waterworks did more than inspire some impressive industrial architecture: the London streets they supplied saw a dramatic drop in death rates from cholera, an effect duly noted by Dr John Snow — proof positive that the disease was spread by contaminated water. On a completely different subject, JB added a short piece about late nineteenth-century protests against the Salvation Army parades in Torquay. These have inspired a modern folksong written by local resident Ian Churchward and sung by Jules Jones of the Legendary Ten Seconds — you can listen to it on the page. We now have several new pictures and a separate home page for this section. JB also found time to write about William De Morgan's brilliant work on the tiling at Leighton House.
George Landow has started the month with some new material on Victorian Cambridge. At first glance, little seems to have changed, but then some comment takes the reader by surprise: "No dramatic performances are allowed in Cambridge," for instance!
Our Contributing Editor from Poland, Andrzej Diniejko, has completed his work on the novelist Sarah Grand with an intriguing essay on "The Beth Book as a Portrait of the Artist as a Young New Woman." Perhaps the ending of this novel lets it down — or does it simply, and honestly, acknowledge an inevitable conflict?
Our most dedicated contributor, Philip Allingham, has been updating his early work (from 2002!) on Helen Allingham's illustrations for Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd in the Cornhill Magazine, replacing tiny scans with larger, more detailed ones, and adding commentaries. These amount to critiques of the novel itself, as well the illustrator. Many of the discussions can be accessed from a detailed, thoroughly researched general essay about them. Philip then returned to Phiz, and his illustrations for another Charles Lever novel, Roland Cashel (work still in progress).
In the painting section, Dennis Lanigan has contributed a large amount of original material on Alphonse Legros, including his portraits of Sir Edward Burne Jones and and the sculptor Thomas Woolner, but also sculpture, like this beautiful "Head of a Peasant Woman" and medals, equally full of character, like this bronze one of Maria Valvova. All this valuable work was put online by George.
Pamela Gerrish Nunn has contributed two more in-depth commentaries on paintings by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, this time the particularly appealing Laura of Avignon. Brickdale is another artist whose work is on display at Leighton House at the moment (The Child of Truth or Fiction). It's wonderful to see her getting the attention she deserves.
More from York next, with Rita Wood's latest piece about the former fire station in St Andrewgate, by an architect better known for his railway stations, George Townsend Adams. A spin-off from this is Rita's collection of houses in York sporting mostly nineteenth-century fire-marks — plaques identifying them as being insured by one of the various fire insurers then in operation.
Shirley Nicholson wrote a very enjoyable biography of William Powell Frith, illustrated by a number of new paintings by him. Just one example: The New Frock, which (like Millais's Bubbles) was used in soap adverts! Shirley also continues to add to our knowledge of the artists who lived near Lord Leighton in Kensington, for example identifying the candidates in the running to be President of the Royal Academy in a cartoon by Linley Sambourne. Here, at one side, you can see a well-known onlooker looking very thoughtful: Ruskin!
From Katherine Wakely-Mulroney, currently teaching at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, came an interesting footnote to Ray Dyer's work on Lewis Carroll and Christina Rossetti: the latter distinctly disapproved of the young nude "fairies" drawn by Gertrude Thomson, who would later illustrate Carroll's poetry.
Shirley and Ray both continue to do a lot of useful proof-reading. Thank you, and we send much sympathy to Ray, who has recently suffered a family bereavement.
Our Twitter following fell quite considerably following the recent take-over of the platform. Some special interest groups, such as those using the hashtag #sciencetwitter, seem to have decamped en masse to the rather different platform, Mastodon. We still have about 13,000 followers on Twitter, but have opened a Mastodon account as well. We now have a grand total of seven followers there! As for our website, this now has over 126,200+ images and documents. We recently had a message from Google to congratulate us on having had 180K clicks from Google Search in the last 28 days. By no means everyone comes via Google Search, so that seems pretty good.
Correspondence. Wang Yongyi kindly wrote in from China to report some broken links in the railways section. Diana Reynolds wrote in from the University of Sidney with an interesting query about Rebecca Solomon, for which we hope to get an answer from the museum holding one of her paintings. Michael Statham, an expert on such matters, wrote to correct a mistake about the kind of stone used in a memorial. Queries of one kind and another come in every day, and generally have to be passed on to one or other of our contributors — a small task but time-consuming all the same!
October 2022
ctober's big news is that the University of Victoria is now ready to launch its open-access project with us, on Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Age of Victoria. Two Zoom events will take place, with scholars from around the world talking about their work on topics such as birth control, sexual knowledge, advice manuals, and pregnancy tests in the nineteenth century. The first event will be held on 3 November, the second on the 17 November, both at 10:00 am PDT and running for approximately one hour (check the times carefully in your own time zone). To register, please email victorianpregnancyproject@gmail.com.
More good news this month: a request from Gale/Cengage for permission to publish one of Ray Dyer's essays, "Unravelling Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky,'" in an upcoming volume of Poetry Criticism — then another request from Carnegie Learning for permission to reprint a piece by David Cody on Jonathan Swift. It's encouraging to see publishers reading our contributors' work, and wanting it for print publication. Then, later in the month, a reporter from the Washington Post interviewed Simon Cooke (our expert on all things ghostly!) on the subject of haunted houses. He'll be cited there soon as our senior editor.
Conference news (don't miss our listings): "Hitting the Road! Travel Experiences and Narratives of the Victorian and Edwardian Era" takes place at the University of Tours, France, on 2-3 February 2023. Sounds like a good reason to catch up on your own travels, as well as immerse yourself in that great period of pioneering travellers. This announcement has a useful bibliography. Something very different but equally relevant to Victorianists: the new exhibition at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, "The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story": read about it here.
As for new material online, pride of place this month goes to George Landow's recent work on Victorian Liverpool and Birmingham. Despite his punishing bouts of chemotherapy, George has gathered a huge amount of material from different contemporary sources, to give us a detailed picture of these cities when they was at the height of their influence. The long piece on Liverpool's harbour and docks alone entailed a great deal of work, but it is only one of George's many new entries. In one particularly eye-opening piece about Birmingham, we learn that "at least 10,000 persons were present" in the Town Hall for an anti-Papist protest (how could they all get in?)!
George has also put online, for art historian Dennis T. Lanigan, a whole series of commentaries about the artist Henry Wallis. This section really does him justice now, and includes a full essay on his much-discussed relationship with Mary Ellen Meredith. It seems so ironic that her husband, George Meredith, a great supporter of women's rights, should have behaved as he did towards her. We'll never know the full reasons for it.
Working with other contributors, Jackie Banerjee has added a series of commentaries of her own on selected landscape paintings by George Vicat Cole, and a biography of the Yorkshire architect, George Townsend Andrews. She has also written a short piece entitled "Light and Darkness in Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Lantern Out of Doors' and 'The Candle Indoors,'" and brought in several new sculptures, two by Mary Thornycroft (of HRH Princess Louise, and of the author and artist Emilie Isabel Barrington), and a new set of photos of Sir Thomas Brock's Moment of Peril (to which Caroline Garrett added a very thoughtful note). These sculptures were all seen at the re-opening of Leighton House, which she has now reviewed.
The painting commentaries were part of a collaborative project with Shirley Nicholson, who provided a fine introduction to Vicat Cole's life and work. Similarly, JB's biography of Andrews was inspired by Rita Wood's new work on this architect. Rita went to explore the office building he built next to York Castle, which we discovered was probably the first ever purpose-built architect's office. Some additional photographs, which Rita sent in a few days later, showed that it was really rather grand inside. York's County Gaol, which Andrews and his partner had been commissioned to build, is another entry which Rita plans to expand. These collaborative projects are very enjoyable, and bring in some talented Victorians not previously featured on the website.
As well as sharing his knowledge of haunted houses, Simon Cooke has added a "'Ambiguous Alternations’: A Note on Mirroring, Symmetry, Doubling and the Uncanny Effects of Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla.’" He describes this vampire story as "unsettling" and it is certainly not for those of a nervous disposition.
Working behind the scenes, as so often, Diane Greco Josefowicz, our science and technology editor, has been making multiple corrections and improvements in her section and exploring ways of mending broken links, an absolutely key project in our link-based website.
Two long-time contributors have also been hard at work: Philip Allingham has been presenting some of Phiz's finest illustrations, not often seen because they accompany Charles Lever's convoluted plot in The Martins of Cro' Martin. Set mainly in Ireland, the narrative gave Phiz plenty of scope for action shots (literally: here's his heroine engaged in "ball practice" of a kind you might not expect). Meanwhile, with "Part Five, 1889-98: Final Glances," Ray Dyer has finished tracing in detail the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Tennyson. This last part also inspired a piece on Carroll's share of the bard's Arthurian romanticism. There's a very pertinent sentence in Foucault's The Archeology of Knowledge, about writers whose "unique discourses" intersect "in a web of which they are not the masters, of which they cannot see the whole," which often comes to mind while adding new materials. Perhaps we should adopt it as our motto!
Another case in point: we were delighted with Pamela Gerrish Nunn's essay on the artist Edith Martineau, and her connection with the Aesthetic Movement. Martineau received more recognition at the time than she has done since - but Pamela is helping to rectify that. In addition to this work, Pamela has been contributing a series of very enlightening commentaries on the watercolours of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, like this one on Love and Adversity. She has now gone through the whole section on this artist, giving more details about her work.
Talking of collaboration, three new essays by contributors to the University of Victoria's Pregnancy Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, are also online now: "Victorian Childbirth" by Hilary Marland; "Anatomical Models of Pregnancy," by Corinna Wagner; and "Miscarriage in Nineteenth-Century America," by Shannon Widdycombe. Notice of the formal launch of the project is given at the top of this month's entry.
Paul Goldman has reviewed Bethan Stevens' fascinating The Wood Engravers' Self- Portrait about the Dalziel brothers, whose names crop up on so many Victorian illustrations. Having taken advantage of an Open Day, Rita Wood added some very colourful interior photographs to her earlier write-up of the Masonic Lodge in Duncombe Place, York.
Many thanks also to a new contributor, Michael Gibbons, who sent in an amusing contemporary clipping about Hall Caine, with its parody of The Eternal City — and news of its runaway success on the stage, on both sides of the Atlantic. The clipping ends with some very entertaining remarks about book reviewing!
Both Shirley Nicholson and Ray Dyer continue to proofread for us. This is so helpful. With just coming up to 126,000 interlinked items, continually being updated and added to, it is all too easy to slip up now and then.
Correspondence and additions: Thanks to Patrick Leary for some extra information about the Scottish fossil-collector Hugh Miller — thought to have died of working too hard on his latest book. An awful warning? Thanks also to Philip Turner, who wrote in to say how much the young Victorianists of his history club enjoyed exploring the website. One of the members has asked us to add some more material on Big Ben. Will do, Alice! Later, Professor Aaron Trehub, who is working on the George Eliot Archives, wrote in about his problems with reaching his mother's important work on university archival resources from an external link. He was happy to learn that it is not lost, but easy to access on the site itself. Dr Ben Zion Zaidman kindly wrote in to correct a misattribution in the railway section, and Jessica Cook spotted a mistake in the title of one of Frederick Marryat's novels. Thank you! Indicating that Christmas is on the way, Noel Kay wrote in for permission to use some images scanned by Philip Allingham in an article on the history of Cinderella in a pantomime programme.
September 2022
On Thursday 8 September came the sad news that Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022), Queen Victoria's great-great granddaughter, had died at Balmoral — truly the end of an era. But it is also the beginning of a new one: we are now in the reign of Queen Victoria's great-great-great grandson King Charles III. The legacy lives on.
ith leaves already falling, summer is fast receding now. This might be the ideal time to curl up with a good book. You can join the Trollope Society's online reading group for Dr. Wortle's School (September 21 and October 12, "free with the option to donate") as activities resume after Covid (offsite link to more details). Another heads up: Leighton House in Kensington is re-opening on 15 October, after a remarkable full-scale restoration (a new wing, no less). Anyone with any interest in the Victorian art world, take note! We will be covering that next month.
This month started with checking and putting online new sections on three painters Matthew Ridley Corbet, Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope and Wilfrid Ball. The first two both feature in Shirley Nicholson's series about the Campden Hill artists, and Ball was just a chance discovery, a landscapist very popular in his time but mostly forgotten now. His work is not that far off the topographical, encouraging JB to excerpt some pages from Philip Hamerton's thoughts on landscape v. topography, in his biography of Turner. JB also wrote about William Theed's sculpture of Victoria and Albert in Saxon costume, a fascinating and rather complicated piece, not on public view since the National Portrait Gallery in London closed for restoration before Covid. (Looking forward to that re-opening, too!)
George Landow found a really curious retrospective of social theory, politics, and literature in the Victorian age in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1894. Taking into account the end of the period too, how would you like to sum up the age? It would be interesting to have some readers' responses, to this or any other item.
Back from his summer holiday in Florence, our senior editor is trying to scare us with another writer who specialises in the weird and the wonderful, Arthur Machen. Brace yourselves for more discussions of his work....
Colin Price, one of our gifted contributing photographers, sent in some extra pictures of the interior decoration of St Paul's, including the dome and earlier Salviati mosaics round it.
We were delighted to hear from Patrick Carson again, with the second volume of his book on Thomas Potter's metalworking firm. Patrick kindly provided larger photos of Potter's magnificent doors for St George's Hall, Liverpool, as well as some taken of the celebrated (but usually covered) Minton tiled floor of the Great Hall there.
So far this month Philip Allingham's contributions include George Cattermole's, Fred Barnard's and Harry Furniss's illustrations for Dickens's Master Humphrey's Clock, making one of Philip's useful mini-webs within the illustrations section. He is now working on Phiz's illustrations for Charles Lever's The Martins of Cro'Martin, which give some fascinating glimpses into the problems with Ireland at this time.
Also online now is Part IV of Ray Dyer's revealing account of Lewis Carroll's strained relationship with Tennyson. In these years, the main settings for Carroll's social life were London and Eastbourne, and sometimes the closest he got to his bard-hero was Beachy Head on the south coast. From here he might catch a tantalising glimpse of the Isle of Wight, where Tennyson was now living. We look forward to a "final glance" at this relationship in Part V.
Pamela Gerrish Nunn has taken time out from her contributions on women artists to add a commentary on James Nairn's Evans Bay. It's a special pleasure to have work in from New Zealand, about this Scottish artist who influenced the art scene there.
Of great interest too is Rita Wood's exploration of the Central Methodist Church in York, by the Leeds architect James Simpson, with later additions (including an ingenious moveable partition) by the York architect Edward Taylor. Methodism was strong in York and this church, with its impressive curved gallery, huge pulpit, highly decorated organ and tall font, is perhaps the equivalent of a cathedral in the Protestant or Roman Catholic Church.
Shirley Nicholson followed up her series on the Campden Hill artists in Kensington with an additional piece on Little Campden House. Home to one artist after another, it gives an interesting glimpse into changes in interiors between the Victorian and Edwardian ages.
Thanks to Caroline Banerjee (just possibly some relation to JB!) we now have a page about the statue of George Eliot in Nuneaton. No one could claim that the great novelist was beautiful, but John Letts, the sculptor, has captured something of the inner beauty often noted by those who met her.
Correspondence: good news from one of our contributors — Cynthia Gamble has followed up her success with Voix entrelacées de Proust et de Ruskin with another book, jointly authored with Matthieu Pinette: Ruskin, Proust et la Normandie: Aux sources de la Recherche (Classiques Garnier, 2022). Proust's retracing of Ruskin’s Normandy journeys really did play "a definitive role" in his In Search of Lost Time. More to come on this. Jo Mullet wrote in from Swansea, having found two headstones in Babell graveyard there with the same motif and text as that used elsewhere by the Welsh sculptor Joseph Edwards. Was Edwards at work there, or was the design simply a popular one? We'll try to find out!
August 2022
he long hot summer continues. When the month opened, our guiding light, George Landow, and his wife Ruth, were still on their Norwegian cruise. Unfortunately, halfway through they both caught one of the new variants of Covid. But they couldn't have been better cared for, and after recovering they were able to enjoy an extra six days on board to compensate. George is back helping us now, and has already added some useful material about Wales in Victorian times from the Imperial Gazetteer: Wales in 1855, and Wales in 1871, as well as some revealing facts and figures about education in the years following the Education Act of 1870.
We had some good news from Caroline Jarrett. Caroline is the daughter of Dr. John Sankey, the authority on the work of the great Victorian sculptor, Sir Thomas Brock (1847-1922). John contributed so much to our site in years past, but sadly passed away before this year's Brock centenary celebration. Caroline and other family members represented him at the unveiling of a plaque to Brock in Worcester, where the sculptor was born, close to his statue of Queen Victoria there. Her father would have been so pleased by this recognition of his hero. Caroline is seen in the right-hand picture; click on the other one to see what the plaque says.
Holding the fort while George was away, Jackie Banerjee reviewed Catriona Blaker's short book on one of of Ramsgate's "gems" — Ellington Park, with its connections to the architect, A.W.N. Pugin. Such public parks, with their various amenities, were yet another of the heritage assets that we owe to the Victorians. To help illustrate other contributors' work, JB also added many new paintings and photographs, including two of Charles West Cope's portraits of young mothers with their babies (such as The Young Mother), three of John Ballantyne's portraits of artists in their studios (including one of William Holman Hunt), and one of Sir Joseph Noel Paton's most intriguing fairy paintings, The Fairy Raid: Carrying Off a Changeling, Midsummer Eve. Among the photos, by far the most striking was Shirley Nicholson's view of Alfred Waterhouse's only known town house, still standing tall in Kensington. Later in the month, JB wrote about the well-known Victorian traveller, Isabella Bird, and her achievements as a writer and photographer, wondering how well her reputation stands up to present-day scrutiny.
The motherhood theme was picked up from the University of Victoria's "Great Expectations" project. Seven of the papers are online now, so this extremely useful resource is really taking shape. The interest of papers like the latest, Sarah Bull's "Sexual Knowledge in Print Culture," and Anna Niiranan's "'Advice to a Young Wife': Medical Advice Manuals in the Nineteenth Century, spreads far beyond the science section. Paintings of artists and discussions of their homes were prompted by Shirley and her co-author Carolyn Starren's seven-part essay on the artists' colony in Campden Hill, Kensington. If you imagined these artists praying for inspiration in lonely garrets, think again!
Another far-from-lonely genius was Lewis Carroll, and Ray Dyer continues to examine the ups and downs of his relationship with Tennyson. In this third part of his chronological study, the rabbit-hole deepens and branches off in all directions as Carroll uses the new train services to pursue or at least try to breathe the same air as his hero. Ray gives us a most intriguing entry into the author's psyche. He also continues to save us from many blunders by proofreading.... an essential service, alas!
Richard Gibson, co-editor for the large section on religion, has recruited Professor Densil Morgan of the University of Wales, Trinity St David Lampeter, to write a series about the history of Welsh Protestant Nonconformity, starting here: Wales was indeed "renowned for its chapel culture and thriving Christian witness," but how did this come about? Richard's diligent research and George's careful arrangement have meant that the essays could be fully illustrated.
On an entirely different note - from the sublime to the ridiculous, in fact, – Thackeray's illustrations for his fairytale/pantomime, The Rose and the Ring, came in from Philip Allingham. Betsinda Stripped by Order of the Queen gives you an idea of them. Thackeray may have been an amateur but these quirky depictions are full of character. Philip also contributed Richard Doyle's later, and sometimes very different, illustrations for the same work (here's an example). Meanwhile, Philip continues to update his earlier work, an ongoing process for someone who has now been contributing for over twenty years.
An exciting new addition has been Phoebe Caldwell's biography of her distant forebear, Juliana Hervey, whose journals of her adventures in "Tartary, Thibet, China, & Kashmir" caused a sensation when published in 1853. This was followed by several extracts from the journals themselves, including the preface and introduction in which she examines her motives and aims in exploring these challenging areas.
Pamela Gerrish Nunn's latest contribution is on the Scottish painter, James Nairn, who went out to New Zealand for his health, and proved really influential there. Pamela has provided a short biography and list of works, and JB has begun adding some of his paintings. One, Tess, will be of special interest to fans of Thomas Hardy.
Many thanks to Caitlin Jones, Heritage Projects Officer for Habitats & Heritage, based in southwest London, for a set of photographs of Grove Gardens Chapel, Richmond upon Thames, a work by Sir Arthur Blomfield from 1875. It's very encouraging to see the efforts being made to secure its future. On the strength of its one remaining panel of stained glass, JB opened a new section on Daniel Bell and his various partnerships.
As a small experiment, JB also added some contemporary comments on music in the later Victorian/turn of the century period, to which Amy Hunsaker, our music editor, added a very appropriate Spotify link. This will allow our readers to enjoy total immersion in the music of the age. Sadly, though, Amy told us she has too much on her plate at the moment, and feels unable to commit to more editorial work. We'll miss her cheerful presence at our meetings, and hope very much that she'll continue to make useful suggestions — contributions, too, when time permits.
Special thanks as usual to our two unofficial proofreaders, Ray and Shirley, both mentioned above. We seem to keep them very busy!!
July 2022
uly, with its promise of summer holidays at last, arrives with new work already online and just checked by the various contributors. More contributions followed in quick succession. As usual, the range is wide — from bucolic scenes in painting to some remarkable faience on a butcher's shop; from new illustrators to the warm but courteous relationship between Lewis Carroll and Christina Rossetti; and, coincidentally, another Alice-related piece in stained glass. We also have an exhibition review, after a long drought in that area.
This last was by Jackie Banerjee, who took a day off to visit "A Window on Scottish Art" in a local gallery. There really is no substitute for seeing paintings with your own eyes. Phoebe Traquair's miniature of her daughter Helen, for instance, is tiny but radiates affection. Nothing in a book or on the screen engages you in the same way. Thanks to photographs sent in by a reader, Carole Moody, JB was also able to write a piece about Folkestone Cemetery, with a selection of its most interesting monuments, including one to the many who perished when a German iron-clad naval ship sank in the Channel. To illustrate new work by others, she also brought in several new paintings, such as Ford Madox Brown's An English Autumn Afternoon, and Rossetti's troubling How They Met Themselves. Later, she transcribed and formatted a fascinating newspaper interview with Linley Sambourne, from a paper-cutting in Shirley Nicholson's collection. It gives useful insights into his character, working practices etc.
At the same time, George Landow was bringing in more paintings from the Maas catalogue, which generously allows us to use their material. A personal favourite here is Lord Leighton's watercolour of Michelangelo Nursing His Dying Servant — a powerfully moving work, even in reproduction. George then turned to something completely different: transcribing and integrating useful material on Glasgow and Manchester in Victorian times. Glasgow's arms has the neat motto, "Let Glasgow Flourish"! At the time of writing, George and Ruth Landow are enjoying a fabulous cruise in the Norwegian fjords, and we're expecting lots of new material next month on the Art Nouveau Museum and Art Nouveau houses in Ålesund — hope they're reading this!
Simon Cooke's latest is online right now: "Charles Robinson as a Book Cover Designer. This shows another side to Robinson, whose work as an illustrator we already feature. All Simon's examples of his bindings are appealing, perhaps especially the one for Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. Simon also reviewed the latest publication of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, The Presence and the Dream, a volume of new poetry inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, and edited by Serena Trowbridge and Sarah Doyle. This pays homage to the Pre-Raphaelites' blending of the literary with the visual in a most appealing way.
Skipping into a new area, our science and technology editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, has reviewed Barbara Black's Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories, giving her review the perfect title: "From Clubdom to Ritzonia."
Still in the science section, our hosting of papers for the Great Expectations Pregnancy Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, expanded: we received and put on line Leslie Hall's second paper, on Abortion in Victorian Britain, and Jessica Cox's on Breastfeeding, Wet Nursing, and Feeding “by Hand.”
Andrzej Diniejko, our contributing editor in Poland, continued his discussion of the work of Sarah Grand, the late Victorian "New Woman" novelist, with a close look at her best-known novel, The Heavenly Twins, a daring critique of sexual double standards.
Some good news: Amy Hunsaker, our new editor for Music and Theatre, updated the various bibliographies in this section, making it a much more valuable resource for researchers. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part!
The latest work by veteran contributor Philip Allingham introduces another illustrator, better remembered now for his pioneering efforts at aviation: Harold Hume Piffard (naturally, Piff to his schoolfellows). The first illustrations we have for him are of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Philip has also been completing his work on the Edwardian illustrations of David Copperfield by William H.C. Groome. This is an artist who found his own quite distinctive method of making the most of the small space available to him in the Collins' Clear-type edition of the novel. Next in line for revisions and additions is Thackeray's work for his fairytale, The Rose and the Ring: here's the latest gallery of his illustrations for it.
The butcher's shop mentioned earlier is in N. Yorkshire, and was spotted by Rita Wood, who paused to admire its arresting array of faience — a bit later than the Victorian period, but such a good example of this kind of work. How often do you come face to face with a green bull? More conventional, but treated in a new way for us, is her account of a porch tile from Pocklington's All Saints' church, by the Campbell & Co. firm. Rita's visit to Pocklington yielded two nonconformist chapels and a sturdy (now repurposed) railway station as well. Between them, these introduced some important new architects working in the north of England.
Pamela Nunn continues to build up our knowledge of women artists, this month with a biography of the Scottish painter, Flora MacDonald Reid, and a list of her works. Pamela's commentaries on several of the more striking of these works, like her Cornish Fishwife, places her in relationship to the Newlyn School, Jules Bastien-Lepage and others, usefully extending our knowledge of the whole art scene of the late Victorian period. Locating Reid's Love's Young Dream on the James Alder Fine Art website led to a friendly correspondence: we can now reproduce images from this large and well-organised website. This is a useful new resource.
Moving to a completely different area, Ray Dyer examines Lewis Carroll's relationship with Christina Rossetti. He reminds us that the author's adult friends were at least as important to him as his child-friends. Ray continues to proof-read, too — a very valuable service.
Coincidentally, just after that went online, Colin Price sent in a photograph of a stained glass window in Christ's College Cathedral, Oxford, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones: St Catherine's face in this window is a likeness of Edith Liddell's, sister of the original of Alice in Carroll's famous books, who died suddenly on the very threshold of adult life. Inspired by our new work on York, Colin (who is a poet as well as an environmental economist and photographer) also sent in his poem, "Prospect of York Minster from the City Walls," which includes reference to St Wilfrid's Church, the minster's Victorian neighbour.
Shirley Nicholson has been taking a close look at Linley Sambourne's wonderfully clever "Fancy Portraits" of Victorian notables, adding commentaries where needed, for instance to this one of Sir Herbert Herkomer in charge of an art class. Another of her commentaries is on a cartoon showing Disraeli as Mephistopheles, with Gladstone bitterly opposing his foreign policy during the Russo-Turkish war. Her explanations go a long way towards refreshing Sambourne's really wicked sense of humour!
We're delighted to include new work by Emeritus Professor Clive Edwards, on the background to the art-furniture firm, Collinson and Lock — an excerpt from his new book on the subject. Also, this month brought Amitav Banerjee's review of Elizabeth Lowry's neo-Victorian novel, The Chosen. Lowry has explored, with insight and sympathy, the unravelling of Thomas Hardy's marriage to his first wife, Emma — ending on a positive note, just as Hardy's own poetry does, after Emma's death.
New online too are Sabrina Laurent's translations of Antoine Capet's "[Critique] Charles Rennie Mackintosh de James Macaulay," and his account of a visit to the Mackintosh House at the Hunterian in Glasgow. Such an achievement: Sabrina has translated this whole important section now.
Correspondence and additions: We were delighted to hear from Caroline Jarrett, daughter of our long-time contributor, John Sankey, who sadly passed away at the end of last year. Caroline sent us details of an inspiring talk last month on John's special subject, the sculptor John Sankey. You can listen to it online by clicking on the link at the top of our bibliography for Brock, on his homepage. Brock died in the summer of 1922, and we expect to hear more about him in this centenary year. Many thanks also to Hilana Linton, who allowed us to add a useful note to an earlier entry on "What the Poor Ate." GPL has been adding to this section ever since, from his own reading. Here for example is Seebohm Rowntree as late as 1902 on Five Alternating Periods of Want and Comparative Plenty in the Labourer’s Life. Most people were still living very, very near to the edge then.
June 2022
is for June — and Jubilee, as this was the month when we marked the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Victoria's great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth II. At the time of writing, this unique milestone was still being enthusiastically celebrated, and all the pageantry that surrounds the monarchy was still on display. But the highlight for some was that moment when the Queen revealed exactly what it is that she keeps in her handbag!
To more scholarly matters: if you missed the Pre-Raphaelite Society's last lecture, on the poetry of Evelyn de Morgan, you might like to register for their next one: it's about Frederick Shields, on 23 July, and again by Zoom. Do look at the whole programme.
Despite the holiday weekend, the editors of our website have been finding time for work. Jackie Banerjee started by adding commentaries to photos of All Saints', Putney, sent in by contributing photographer John Salmon. The church was designed by George Edmund Street and has a full complement of stained glass windows executed by Morris & Co., most of them designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones: here is the East window, in which all the figures are by Burne-Jones, except for one by Morris himself. Favourites, however, are the baptistery roundels of youthful musicians, such as these angelic-looking choristers. Next came an introduction to Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer of motion pictures: he spent large parts of his life in Kingston-on-Thames, and the museum there has an internationally important collection of his equipment and work. Starting to fill another gap, JB turned to Anne Lister ("Gentleman Jack") and the possible influence of her life on the work of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Another intriguing project was on the influential garden designer and "wild garden" promoter, William Robinson, whose book on that topic was beautifully illustrated by Alfred Parsons. Robinson had his picture taken by the Vandyk studio, so that finds a place in our photography section now.
For his part, George Landow has enjoyed putting online Dennis T. Lanigan's latest essays, on two important Victorian exhibition spaces: the New Gallery, the Dudley Gallery. GPL went on to make numerous links to these galleries from earlier material on the artists whose work was shown in them. This kind of editorial work is very time-consuming. He has also been updating the large section on "British and European Aesthetes, Decadents and Symbolists." It has a different look from the rest of the website — take a tour! The Maas Catalogue next provided many fine Victorian paintings to incorporate into the paintings section, some of them adding new dimensions to our discussions. A good example is John Brett's Sunset off Lundy, in which he balanced his usual close detail with much broader atmospheric effects. But another especially appealing one is Sheep and Cattle on the Marshes by Thomas Sidney Cooper, in which a cow is given (honestly, take a look) "heroic stature."
Contributors have been active too: having finished the sequence of "Samuel's" opinion columns from the Victorian issues of Cardiff Times, David Skilton sent in a very enjoyable article of his own on "Trollope and his Middle-Class Readership." So who was that "reader" whom Trollope addresses?
Rita Wood has been exploring the work (and Congregationalist faith) of an interesting York architect James Piggot Pritchett, who took up the challenge of creating new buildings for medieval contexts like the Minster precincts. Sadly, some of his varied body of work has since been replaced, but archival sources preserve the record of it. One that is still very much here is his grand neo-classical Huddersfield Station.
Ray Dyer has contributed the first and second parts of a chronology tracing Lewis Carroll's growing admiration for Tennyson, and its subsequent tailing off. This brought in one of Carroll's best known photos, of Agnes Grace Weld dressed as Little Red Riding Hood — she happened to be Tennyson's niece, and Carroll was careful to send him a copy of the photo. It also brought in a short piece by Ray on Carroll's early, derivative ballad, "Stolen Waters."
Prolific as ever, Philip Allingham has completed his work on Phiz's illustrations for Charles Lever's The Daltons, and continues with William Newman's illustrations for the same author's A Day's Ride. In the former, Lever, who was a diplomat in Italy, gives some insights into the Italian Risorgimento, but Phiz is at his best in comic scenes like one featuring Mr Foglass — who is pretending to have gout to avoid leaving for Florence, but doesn't seem to be suffering much!
Pamela Nunn has introduced us to a new artist, Mary Ann Criddle, née Alabaster. Women's paintings were more likely to be kept within private collections, so we only have two of her works so far, but they are both quite striking — one shows the artist in her studio, her easel confidently planted among various well-known paintings by men as she more than justifies her right to be amongst them. Her portrait by the photographers Cundall, Downes and Co. gave JB the opportunity to add another new name to our photography section.
Those of you still planning holidays might be thinking of the Scottish Highlands. If so, here's a destination for trekkers: Colin Price sent in a particularly attractive photo of the Bridge of Oich, a James Dredge design which is quite rare now, and open to (intrepid!) pedestrians.
Correspondence: Many thanks to Elizabeth Hamilton, for writing in about All Saints' Putney, and offering a correction. Special thanks to Dr Michael Riley, who pointed out some (apparently common) confusion between portraits of the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his son Lord Lytton, and also asked us to note that one of his early works, mentioned as published, was unfinished and left in manuscript at that time. Carole Moody wrote in to correct information taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, about the whereabouts of William Warrington's grave. Alas, the stained glass designer lies in an unmarked spot in Folkestone's Cheriton Rd cemetery. Another alert reader, C. Ralph Hayes, wrote in after spotting a missing word in the illustrations section. Ray Dyer kindly continues to proofread.
May 2022
ay sees the near-completion of our largest recent project, David Skilton's collection of "Samuel's Sentiments" columns from the late Victorian Cardiff Times. Samuel's latest opinion pieces cover everything from presentiments to Association Football and rugby in Wales, a subject which definitely lends itself to expansion!
Not as entertaining, but hopefully thought-provoking, is a new discussion of George Gissing's first published novel Workers in the Dawn, by Jackie Banerjee. The work is not without occasional light relief, and a little hope from an unlikely source (at least, coming from this particular author). Looking into the influence of Schopenhauer on Gissing, Thomas Hardy and the whole fin-de-siècle, JB selected and introduced some passages from the philosopher's writings about the Will as "the Thing-in-itself", and "the aesthetical mode of contemplation." For a complete change, she then reviewed Geoffrey Finch's brilliant, funny and suspenseful The Uncollected Cases of Sherlock Holmes, and finally added another review, this time of Hosanna Krienke's recent ground-breaking study of Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Afterlife of Victorian Illness. This alerted JB to the fact that the first ever purpose-built convalescent home was only a short walk away....
As well as shepherding in Samuel's Sentiments, George Landow has been reading and providing commentaries on the work of the Victorian author E(neas) S(weetland) Dallas. You can see the scope of his work so far in the philosophy section, among the latest pieces being a critique of Dallas on Matthew Arnold, & the main characteristics of the Victorian Age, and a thought-provoking discussion of his promotion of Venice as both a model and a lesson for Victorian England.
Simon Cooke, our Senior Editor, has written another of his discussions of bookbinding, a subject on which he is now a leading authority. This time his subject is late Victorian and Edwardian bindings, and his new examples are really superb. One that stands out as both highly original and yet entirely typical of the age is A. A. Turbayne's cloth binding for Kelly’s Burma.
Contributing photographer Colin Price sent in some of his great stained glass photos of C. E. Kempe's St Peter and St Paul at York Minster, and JB belatedly remembered to put online George Tinworth's fabulous reredos there, this one taken by our contributor from York, Rita Wood.
Philip Allingham continues his commentaries on Phiz's illustrations for Charles Lever's The Daltons, often introducing topics of wider interest, such as Phiz's response on the "Picturesque Sublime." Philip and JB worked together on a new illustrator, too, William Newman, after Philip discovered that Newman had replaced John McLenan as the Harper's Weekly illustrator of Lever's A Day's Ride. The bonus here was finding out that, before emigrating to America, Newman was one of the early Punch cartoonists, drawing its very first cover and two of its best known cartoons, both alluding to the heavily polluted Thames: Dirty Father Thames and "Water! Water! Everywhere".
Right at the start of the month, Pamela Gerrish Nunn began providing commentaries on several of Sophie Anderson's paintings, including The Story-book; the work that made her name, Elaine; and No Walk Today. Elaine marked the beginning of an epoch: it was the first work by a living female artist bought for a public collection in the UK. Pamela's latest commentary is on Anderson's The Song — which she has been able to identify correctly for the first time.
As usual on our website, one thing leads to another. One of Anderson's fans was none other than Lewis Carroll, so all this wonderful new work on her prompted our unofficial but much appreciated proof-reader, Ray Dyer, to write about the Alice author's interest in her work. He comments on Carroll's particular appreciation of women's long hair, a notable feature of Anderson's painting of Tennyson's Elaine — and something that offers a new insight into Carroll's complicated psyche.
Dennis T. Lanigan has sent in two more fine and extensive contributions. The first is time on the artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, particularly on his connection with the Pre-Raphaelites. Included in this section now are many more examples of his work, such as his well-received Eve Tempted, and his puzzling Robins of Modern Times. The commentaries direct us to telling details in the painting, for example his commentary on another one, Penelope has a intriguing discussion under the sub-heading: "Apples or Oranges — the Painting's Ambiguity" (who knew that oranges were particularly associated with brides?). The next essay is on "The Early Aesthetic Movement in England," again with some new and striking paintings among the illustrations.
After all this, refreshment is served up by Rita Wood's three-part discussion of the historic public houses, nineteenth-century coaching houses and inns (including the George Inn, at which Charlotte and Anne Brontë stayed in 1849) and (now) converted pubs around York. You could hardly wish for a more comprehensive and distinguished pub-crawl.... In sharp contrast, Rita's next pieces were all on G. E. Street's St Andrew's, Heslerton, in N. Yorkshire, covering every aspect, from the interior (with Street's own fittings) to the Vicarage, including the original Minton tiling in the church, and its stained glass by Clayton and Bell. A tour de force, even though (to be honest) the church itself is not as appealing as some of the Arts and Crafts churches of these years.
Later in the month, David Skilton (having successfully completed his "Samuel's Sentiments" project) sent in a short piece on "Alexander Bain on the Literature of Plot-interest." Bain's final comment here is quite thought-provoking: "When allowed to run riot, the interest in mere narrative and plot becomes a source of serious annoyance"!
This month also sees Taylor Tomko, a postgraduate student and teaching assistant at Western University, Canada, helping out by formatting conference announcements and calls for papers. We look forward to a fruitful future relationship.
Other website news: we now have over 124,000 documents and images on our site, over 12,800 followers on Twitter, and close to 1000 on Facebook (despite having lost the password for some time now!). Thanks to all contributors and readers. On the technical side, our editors are trying new ways to collaborate, using the communication app, Slack, and Google Workspace. This all takes getting used to, but we need to adopt such means to co-operate while working (increasingly) across the globe.
Correspondence: Many thanks to Alan Gidney, for pointing out some broken or wrong links in the Phiz illustrations. These were due to confusing Phiz's work on two "mc"s — Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and William Harrison Ainsworth's Mervyn Clitheroe. You can see how it happens, can't you?!
April 2022
pril started off with the usual mixture of sunshine and showers, but it turned out to be an exceptionally dry month — and a bumper one for new contributions.
Still intrigued by the novels of George Gissing, Jackie Banerjee introduced a passage about Ritualism in the High Church from his first published novel, Workers in the Dawn. More to come when time permits. First, with Colin Price and his more recent photos, and George Landow's earlier comments, she updated our pages on the Tower Subway and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. She was also very pleased to add an account of the publisher and architectural and archaeological writer, John Henry Parker, to our list of such influential figures. She then brought in some paintings by Landseer, including two well-known ones, The Monarch of the Glen, and Queen Victoria at Osborne (on her horse, with her ghillie John Brown holding the reins); and other works by various artists, the most impressive of which is Anna Lee Merritt's War. Laying the ground, again, for Pamela Gerrish Nunn's next piece of work on the artist Sophie Anderson, JB also brought in several of her paintings, such as her captivating Capri Girl with Flowers.
As well as excavating Victorian issues of Punch for cartoons like William Ralston's about James Watt, George Landow has been putting online some of his rich store of materials about the Pre-Raphaelites, including "Looking at the Pre-Raphaelites through the eyes of a Pioneering Art Historian," and William Holman Hunt's "Notes on the Life of Augustus L. Egg," both fascinating in their own ways. Later George added an account of Arthur Hallam, whose sad loss inspired Tennyson's In Memoriam. Many more of "Samuel's Sentiments" have been coming in, too. Among the latest of these Cardiff Times columns collected by David Skilton is one (the 126th!) in which poor Samuel suffers from toothache. This in turn inspired some new items on dentistry in our health section.
Of special interest in this connection is a new article by our Science and Technology editor, Diane Greco Josefowicz, on Felix Weiss (1822?-1892), the Bloomsbury dentist who pioneered dental reform — and tried to warn people against quackery by writing popular novels.
Our Senior Editor has a new slant on Charles Kingsley. Did you ever think of the author of The Water Babies as an illustrator and critic of illustrators? Well, Simon Cooke has shown this side of him in a new essay which includes some illustrations by Charles Bennett and J. Noël Paton as well, such as this frontispiece by the latter.
A visit to York Minster prompted Tim Willasey-Wilsey, our editor for Military and Colonial History, to send in two poignant memorials there, one by sculptor Edward Richardson for the Officers and Men of the King's Own (Yorkshire) Light Infantry; the other by John Birnie Philip for Lt. Col. Willoughby Moore, a hero and victim, along with his men, of fire at sea.
From Richard Gibson, joint editor for our large section on religion, comes an outstanding essay on "The State of the Victorian Bible" — the Authorised Version was, he finds, the "one book" for the late Victorians just as it had been for their parents and grandparents.
Now for something very much needed: Jo Devereux, our Gender Matters editor, has considerably updated and extended the bibliography for her section.
Colin Price's series on railway viaducts continues, the latest three being the Crumlin Viaduct (S. Wales), the Bennerley Viaduct (Nottingham/Derbyshire) and the Victoria Viaduct (Sunderland). These kinds of railway architecture have a romance all their own. In fact, Colin shared with us one of his poems, in which he listens (unexpectantly) for the "whistle-wake" of "ghost locomotives" on them. Special thanks to Colin for going under the river with us too, to help improve those early entries on the Thames tunnels! More stunning, however, are his photographs of the interior of York Minster, restored by a series of notable architects in the Victorian period.
Another inspiring contributor is Pamela Gerrish Nunn, who continues her own series in the paintings section, on female artists who have been too long neglected. Her first contribution this month was on Margaret Isabel Dicksee, a gifted painter over-shadowed by those other Dicksees, her brother Frank and cousin Herbert. It is very pleasing indeed to see examples of her work. This was followed by two of Anna Blunden's landscape paintings, one of them from a visit to Cornwall, and the other from a visit to Scotland, both really capturing the spirit of the place. Next came an introduction to the Stannard Family of Painters, which included both Norfolk landscapists and, among the women, some very accomplished still-life artists. Look at the wasps enjoying Eloise Harriet Stannard's raspberries! A list of works by Anna Lee Merritt is another very welcome addition. Sophie Anderson's biography, list of works, and several of her paintings, are now online, but, as mentioned above, more entries for her are on the way.
Philip Allingham is now dealing with illustrations of Charles Lever's A Day's Ride, first those by Phiz, in his inimitable style, and then the ones by John McLenan for Harper's Weekly, which are nearly all yet to come — but here is the programme for it, which has obviously taken a lot of research in itself. Philip was invited to see a collector's original work by Phiz, and wrote an enthusiastic essay about "The Evolution of Phiz's 'Weller' Plate for Pickwick Papers." This produced an interesting and knowledgable conversation on Twitter about the use of steel pens!
Rita Wood has sent in an account of St Mary's, Ellerton, an early work by J. L. Pearson, of particular interest for several reasons, for example, its original ironwork and the fact that Pearson had evidently drawn on John Henry Parker's architectural glossary for inspiration. It was great to have another architectural source to add to our more general background material for the Gothic Revival. Next came a close look at York Minster's Chapter House, particularly its sensational Minton tiling.
Just to show how collaborative our endeavours are, a group of cartoons about the Temple Bar Memorial in the Strand, at the entrance to the city, involved four of us: GPL on John Gordon Thomson's in Fun magazine, and Ray Dyer and Shirley Nicholson both pitching in with JB to explain a batch in Punch, by John Tenniel, Linley Sambourne and Harry Furniss. Who would have guessed that the cartoonists would all be up in arms about the monument, which we take for granted now? Many thanks to both Ray and Shirley for their proof-reading in general.
We were also grateful to Geri Walton, who shared with us her most enjoyable essay on Edwin Landseer. It had some surprises (he brought an unusual case to court!) and ended sadly, but he remains one of the best-loved painters of the age.
Correspondence: Many thanks to Rocío Moyano Rejano, who has offered to do some translation work for us, to add to the 5000 or so pages that we already have in Spanish. Thanks also to Rachel Whitworth, of Gallery Oldham, for permission to reproduce one of Margaret Dicksee's works. We were really delighted to hear from Kathryn McCormick with the good news that one of the architect John Johnson's gems — the little Colquhuon Mortuary Chapel at Brookwood Cemetery had been restored. Many thanks also to both Alastair Carew-Cox, and Adrian Powter in Cambridge, who both took the time to notify us that Stanley Shepherd's magisterial book on A. W. N. Pugin's stained glass is currently available on the web for free download. This is an opportunity not to be missed!
March 2022
arch has "come in like a lion," in a way that has nothing to do with the weather. We hope and pray that it will go out "like a lamb," but, tragically, this seems more and more unlikely. Meanwhile, we continue to explore and try to understand an earlier age — one which, we tend to forget, was also in a state of constant alarm about both epidemics and warfare.
Looking out our long list of Victorian landscape artists prompted Jackie Banerjee to write an introductory essay for it. This meant bringing in some new material on Constable and John Sell Cotman (a particular favourite, whose work had not been included here before). There is still much more to be done in this area. Meanwhile, she collaborated with contributing photographer Colin Price on accounts of the Conwy Tubular Bridge in N. Wales, the only surviving bridge of its kind by Robert Stephenson and Thomas Fairbairn; and Telford's picturesque and historical Waterloo Bridge at Betwys-y-Coed. She also very much enjoyed adding about a dozen examples of flower paintings, such as this one of a Japanese anemone to Pamela Nunn's biography of Maud Naftel. Later she added a number of paintings and drawings to Pamela's new work on Jessie Macgregor (work in progress), and reviewed Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton's Down from London: Seaside Reading in the Railway Age. Last but not least, because it was such a pleasure to revisit the Watts Gallery in Compton, she reviewed the new exhibition there, Pre-Raphaelite Treasures: Drawings and Watercolours from the Ashmolean Museum. This brought in such marvellous new works as Rossetti's drawing of Jane Morris in Icelandic costume, Marie Spartali Stillman's watercolour of Cloister Lilies, and Edward Burne-Jones's frontispiece for The Golden Legend.
Inspired by Richard Scully's recent contributions, George Landow went back to the periodicals, and, following extensive work on Judy, he has been looking at the Shah of Persia's visit to England in 1873. The Punch cartoonists made the most of this exotic encounter, and since one of them was John Tenniel, the quality of these cartoons is exceptionally high. Here, for example, is Tenniel's title page for the 1873 volume. Another highlight was the discovery of this poetic tribute to Temple Bar (when it was still in the Strand!). Still finding useful and often intriguing material, George looked at a very different topic — the invention of canning, and its effect on what Victorians ate. Did you know that Heinz baked beans date back to the Victorian period?!
Yet another piece of George's work involved arranging valuable pages by Dennis T. Lanigan, on the painter Walter Deverell, whose good looks made him much in demand as a model. Here's Dennis's very welcome new essay on Deverell as a Pre-Raphaelite.
Simon Cooke's new piece on Talwin Morris's book designs is a visual feast of quite a different kind. One of Simon's aims as editor of book design, as well as senior editor, is to bring together meaningfully the material on individuals or subjects in separate entries. This is all the more important as the website continues to expand.
Rounding off his sequence of W. L. Sheppard's illustrations for Dombey and Son, Philip Allingham sent in this autumnal one of Mr Dombey, transformed into a doting grandfather, on the beach with Florence's little daughter, another Florence. Philip is now busy extending his coverage of Harry Furniss's illustrations of David Copperfield. Watch this space! Meanwhile, another long project has come to fruition, with the last of Ray Dyer's insightful commentaries on John Tenniel's illustrations of Through the Looking Glass: Alice Finds the Red Queen.
This month has also brought an outstanding two-part essay by Tony Schwab, written with his characteristic verve and empathy. The essay explores Dickens's vision in Nicholas Nickleby: Part I, What the Wayfarer Sees; and Part II: Kate Nickleby and the #MeToo Movement.
On a lighter note, anyone following cheeky Samuel and his "sentiments," the columns collected by David Skilton from the late-Victorian Cardiff Times, will be pleased to know that we are now a long way past his hundredth! A recent one deals with another of Samuel's sporting misdventures, this time, that favourite Victorian pastime, boating on the river (and, of course, to the amusement of spectators, falling into it!). It's light reading, but this too tells a lot about the age. Samuel's toothache, for example, prompted George Landow to incorporate a brief round-up of the history of dentistry in the science and technology section.
The latest contributions from our York-based contributor, Rita Wood, are about York Cemetery, a big project full of different kinds of interest, dealing with the Victorian cemetery's history, buildings, monuments etc. We're so lucky to have contributors from different parts of the country — but there are still many, many places that are poorly represented. Hint!
New online from Professor Laurent Bury of the Université Lumière — Lyon are two reviews, both of great interest to us, kindly shared with the online journal, Cercles: one is of Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ, by Jessica Ann Hughes; the other of Victorian Visions of War & Peace. Aesthetics, Sovereignty & Violence in the British Empire, c. 1851-1900, by Sean Willcock.
We were also delighted to have Pamela Gerrish Nunn's own point of view on Rebecca Solomon. As for the extra comments on Rebecca Solomon, even though we have no general forum for discussion on the website, we do very much encourage a variety of different approaches, and these can be added to individual sections as appropriate. As a matter of fact, the discussion does have a wide relevance, so links have been made to it from other sections. Scholarly debate is not just welcome, it is essential to any academic endeavour. Happily, Pamela has now sent in four more biographies and lists of works by overlooked women artists of the period. The first three are Henrietta Ward, and (as mentioned above) Maud Naftel and Jessie Macgregor; the most recent is Anna Blunden, later Martino. More to follow here too, we hope!
February 2022
ebruary's first announcement is now out-of-date: it was a talk by one of our contributors, Cynthia Gamble, on "Interlacing Voices of Proust and Ruskin." The talk may be over, but you can find out about her book on the subject here. Time flies: to keep up with new talks, conferences, and calls for papers, please go to the home page and click on the last link in the column on the left. The latest announcement there concerns the formation of a new society, for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies. Its flagship journal, Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, will be published from spring 2022 by Liverpool University Press.
We recently announced the start of our open-access publication of the Great Expectations Pregnancy Project. This deals with pregnancy and childbirth in the age of Victoria, and is peer-reviewed under the direction of Professors Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge of the University of Victoria, and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The inaugural essay, by Isabel Davis of Birkbeck, University of London, is about early approaches to pregnancy testing. The second is in now, and it deals "Pregnancy and Venereal Disease," by Dr. Anne Hanley of the University of Birmingham. Related to these though not part of the project is the very useful bibliography for infant mortality kindly provided by Lesley A. Hall, Wellcome Library Research Fellow and Honorary Associate Professor, University College London.
Other news: the month started with both JB and GPL working on cartoons, after Richard Scully sent in a piece on William Boucher last month. This called our attention to Punch's rival magazine (yes, you guessed it!), Judy. Boucher's wonderful double-page spreads (example) were just the start of our explorations. It was very useful (at least for JB) to have help from Richard with understanding the cartoon's historical references. Some cartoons were prophetic: George found this one of the changing roles of women: What You May Expect Some Day. Women graduates, policemen and worse! JB also found illustrations for the other new work Richard sent in, for instance Alfred Bryan's caricatures of the diminutive but high-octane music hall performer, Dan Leno. George has gone on to add many new cartoons to the Judy section, while JB turned to George Gissing, and wrote about his novel The Odd Women. Like the cartoon mentioned above, this is a warning to men in the age of the New Woman! Somehow, she moved on from there to something entirely different — the Crace family of interior decorators and furniture-makers, who worked with A.W.N. Pugin, William Burges and others, to brilliant effect. J. G. Crace wrote an interesting piece about the appropriate use of colour in interior decoration.
GPL has also been completing his work in the William Holman Hunt section, and adding to it with a new discussion by Dennis T. Lanigan on Hunt’s two versions of The Eve of Saint Agnes, a piece which was finalised at the every end of last month. This was soon followed by Dennis's much-needed essay on William Bell Scott, which has brought in many new reproductions of his work. Still being checked is Dennis's latest, on another Pre-Raphaelite associate, Michael Frederick Halliday. We are really fortunate to have such contributors.
Our science editor Diane Josefowicz has been sprucing up the psychology section, as well as bringing us all together for editorial meetings — essential work, though its visible results go uncredited.
New from Simon Cooke is an essay on illustrator H. Granville Fell, about whom little has been written up until now. We're lucky to be able to open new doors in our fast-growing illustration section. Our link with the Pre-Raphaelite Society, established and handled by Simon, has also brought in new work: Laura MacCulloch's carefully researched and enlightening "Ford Madox Brown: Drawing History."
Rather different are the late Victorian newspaper columns being sent in by David Skilton, in the "Samuel's Sentiments" series. One from a while back is quite surprising — Samuel goes to a women’s football match, finding the game slow and fractious, and the women "not fair to gaze upon." His "sentiments" would get him into trouble now, but things were different in 1887! A later column, arriving online at the beginning of this month, has an amusing account of the changeable Easter weather, perhaps another kind of warning.... Samuel expresses many "sentiments," such as a hearty dislike of seaside landladies at a time when the Welsh seaside resorts were flourishing. We are up to his 74th column (a highly opinionated piece about current taste in novels, "current" being in 1889).
Philip Allingham's latest project is to complete a series on William Ludlow Sheppard's illustrations for the American Household Edition of Dickens's works. One of the five internationally known artists commissioned by Harper and Brother, Sheppard was a Civil War veteran, and this sometimes influenced his sympathies. In Dombey and Son he was particularly drawn to Dickens's old sea-salt, Captain Cuttle: here he is in an entry which shows Sheppard's work in relation to that of various other illustrators.
Besides providing commentaries for some Boucher cartoons, and an introductory essay on Alfred Bryan, Richard Scully sent in two other essays, one on Henry Edward Doyle, and the other on Matt Morgan. As for Doyle, we already had his two talented brothers, so this completes the set — once again, a very pleasing development. We also have a good number of Matt Morgan's cartoons and illustrations, so it was a great pleasure to find out more about him.
Ray Dyer's most recent commentary on the Through the Looking Glass illustrations notes the various styles that John Tenniel used to gain his effects, from intricately detailed designs to sparer, tightly focused ones. These can be hard to categorise but amply repay close study. We also continue to benefit from Ray's proofreading. Right after Ray's latest, in came Rita Wood's look at pubs in Walmgate, York — or, in most cases, what is left of them. This study brings in local history and the larger social context, as well as hints of buildings' past use. Luckily, our system of links will lead readers to it from several different angles. Rita also sent in some photographs relating to earlier pieces, such as this unusual cast-iron service cover outside the Masonic Hall in St Saviourgate, York.
Correspondence: Many thanks to Jesse McLachan for noticing a broken link in the Dickens section, and to Denise Woodcock for pointing out on Twitter that an earlier assumption about one of Rossetti's drawings has since been overturned. Thank you also to Richard Barnes, who pointed out, again via Twitter, that our account of the Guards Crimean War Memorial off Pall Mall needed some attention.Nothing gets past our very alert Twitter followers (now over 12,700 in number). We also had some useful input from Josh of Standard Ebooks, a volunteer-staffed source of well-presented and carefully proofread public domain Ebooks. Check it out — plenty of Victorian novels can be found there. Finally, something a bit different. We are not a dating site (!) but we were very happy to hear that two of our contributors have got married: Brigid Allen and Robert Fraser. Many congratulations!!
January 2022
appy New Year to one and all! Like everyone else, we're hoping that this year will be much better than the last. Our own immediate hope is that our founder and long-time Editor-in-Chief, George Landow, will soon recover from a really nasty reaction to his latest course of medical treatment. He is still our guiding spirit as well as a major contributor, so we're greatly missing him at the moment. [Update! Relieved to report that George is doing much better now, and is busy working on William Holman Hunt, with some wonderful results, like this piece on The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple.]
With the promise of new work on the various artists of Campden Hill, Kensington, Jackie Banerjee has added some biographical material and a dozen works by one of the most sociable and cosmopolitan of them: George Boughton. Specially known for his wintry scenes, he seems an appropriate choice of subject for this time of year. One of his best-known paintings is The Lady of the Snows. Looking into our offline material on London, JB then came across a striking panorama of the Thames Embankment, when still in progress. The panorama had originally been scanned by GPL so she found the source in the Illustrated London News, and transcribed the (very hard to read!) account of it in the Internet Archive. The result is therefore a pleasing collaboration between GPL and JB, helpfully proofread by the ever-vigilant Ray Dyer. In the process, she also came across an item on the demolition of Hungerford Market, offering a fascinating piece of social history as well as insights into Victorian planning (again, this has much to say about the railways then being brought right into the heart of the capital); and a curious advert for Beecham's Pills, in which the artist (probably Harry Furniss) showed off his skills as a caricaturist, and a commentator on modern life. JB next introduced the work of H. Clarence Whaite, who made important contributions to the artistic scene in both Wales and Manchester, with paintings like The Rainbow.
Simon Cooke, our senior editor, found time to review the new biography of H. G. Wells by Claire Tomalin, which brings up the old question of how much attention to pay to the less commendable sides of an author's life. Better, in general, to focus on the work, especially when there is so much in it to enjoy and admire! Simon has also written a new piece on the book bindings of H. Granville Fell, well illustrated as usual from his own extensive collection. He has been engaged in editorial work as well, preparing an article by Lisa Thefaut, "The Girl in the Red Dress: Reading Madox Brown’s Work," for our website. This is the happy result of our link with the Pre-Raphaelite Society and its journal.
Dickensians will be pleased to see a whole set of colour illustrations by Cruikshank coming into the illustration section, courtesy of Philip Allingham. Side by side with the steel-engravings, and with the addition of newly revised commentaries, they offer many insights into the novel as well as into Cruikshank's own methods. An example here is the famous scene of Oliver Twist asking for more. One wide-ranging discussion was put separately: "Dickens's Illustrators and the Botched Burglary in Oliver Twist, Chapter 22." Also in the illustrations section is a new commentary by Ray Dyer, on the chaotic feast which marks the end of Alice's dream in Through the Looking Glass, one of only four similarly cropped illustrations which reveal more about the author than he himself might have realised.
Extremely welcome too are three essays by Dennis T. Lanigan. One is an account of William Michael Rossetti as an artist. We usually think of him as an art critic, but his portrait of Millais, in particular, shows real talent. The second is a biography and assessment of the work of John Richard Clayton, an associate of the Pre-Raphaelites, and an illustrator and sculptor (who knew?) as well as being one half of the stained glass and decoration specialists, Clayton and Bell. Absolutely fascinating. The third and most recent is about another of the Pre-Raphaelite associates, Robert Braithwaite Martineau — he was so talented, but died in his early 40s, and "was greatly mourned by all his friends within the Pre-Raphaelite circle."
No less interesting is the whole set of new contributions by Rita Wood, on St Edith's in Bishop Wilton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Extraordinary care was lavished on this ancient village church at the turn of the century, even to the extent of installing a mosaic pavement in the nave copied by the Salviati Co. from one at the Vatican. Maybe not what you expect to find in a village church!
David Skilton continues to amuse and instruct us with the "Samuel's Sentiments" columns culled from the late Victorian Cardiff Times. In general, these columns give us many insights into life in Wales at that time, but sometimes the difference between then and now is surprisingly small. In a recent one, about "Some Domestic Annoyances," we find that many household irritations, from snoring spouses and recalcitrant children, to plumbers who dawdle over simple repairs and then overcharge, are pretty timeless.
Did you realise that we have a large cartoon section, with numerous examples drawn not just from Punch but from its many rivals? Coming in later this month, Richard Scully's work on several cartoonists provides a brilliant guide to the cartoonists themselves, and the historical background on which they were commenting. So far we have new essays on John Proctor, who became chief cartoonist at Fun; John Gordon Thomson, responsible for some of the most memorable cartoons of the great Gladstone v. Disraeli rivalry; and another star cartoonist, William Henry Boucher, the long-serving chief cartoonist on Judy.
Many thanks to Philip Pankhurst for providing two more photographs to accompany the Rev. Kilvert's biography.
Correspondence: Eva Bauche-Eppers, a translator, wrote in for help with understanding two particularly baffling passages in one of George Meredith's poems. One of our contributing photographers, with a special interest in stained glass, raised a question about some Victorian glaziers and glass-cutters. It's always interesting to look into such matters, and we give whatever advice we can. In both these cases, it was rather limited, but happily we were able to provide at least a partial answer to Gail Bennett's query about a particularly splendid memorial mosaic — there it was in James Powell & Sons' online records, price and all. Gail kindly allowed us to put her photo on the website, so you can see it here.
Last modified 5 January 2024