What fun. The British Library (here) is calling all budding Victorianists to join them on 4 June for a massive edit-in. The idea from the library’s point of view is to help spread the word about the depth and breadth of the various Victorian collections quietly waiting for readers at
Tag: history
Total 25 Posts
The case of Harriet Buswell is perhaps too ordinary to merit interest 150 years after the event. But I find it haunting. Of the four dozen or so cases I looked at researching The Invention of Murder, this is the one I can’t get out of my mind. Maybe because
In his novel Armadale, Wilkie Collins seemed to share the generally low view of professional detectives, as working-class men sticking their noses where they weren’t wanted. And the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act added to the general perception. Divorce was now possible without getting a special act passed in parliament, but
Not that long ago, my neighbour’s car was stolen. Not a very unusual, or even a interesting story. He parked, he went into his house, went to bed, woke up, car was gone. Happens all the time. But until this morning, short of a dramatic, gangland-style car-jacking, I thought you
A long post today, so bear with me (or go and make a sandwich, whichever seems more sensible). The wonderful Lee Jackson, onlie begetter of Victorian London website, and author of splendid Victorian mysteries, has written on the early days of the theatrical Sweeney Todd. I thought I would add
A puzzle for untangling, suggestions extremely welcome. On 2 January 1858, the Illustrated London News reported that ‘Great exertions have been made’ at Westminster Abbey, ‘to adapt the nave…to the purpose of popular worship’. As the Abbey had been a place of worship for 1,000 years, this at first (and
Yesterday, International Women’s Day, I went to see the new small exhibition at the British Library. And while the census is not obviously about women, the question of counting women matters. Col. William Thornton, who fought under the Duke of Cumberland in 1745, and was later MP for York, thundered
I should have said in my very first post that the title of my blog is 100 per cent stolen, no imagination added. So my thanks are due to Prof B. R. Burg, from whose essay on early Stuart attitudes to homosexuality I lifted it. And even more to my
English