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Miss Florence Marryat vs Mr Charles Dickens

March 10, 2016 By Catherine Pope

Photo of Charles Dickens's letter to Florence Marryat

Charles Dickens’s letter to Florence Marryat

It’s not often that Florence Marryat makes the national press, so this has been an exciting week. An unpublished letter from 1860 has emerged in which Charles Dickens berates Marryat for requesting advice from him. She offered a short story for inclusion in his journal All the Year Round, hoping that he would also give her a critique. Of course, it’s perfectly usual for authors to solicit feedback from editors, and Dickens was actually a close friend of her father, fellow novelist Captain Frederick Marryat. Poor Florence must’ve been rather miffed to receive a three-page snotgram in response.
Bonhams, who are to auction the letter on 16th March, have described Dickens’s reply as “wonderfully rude”. Refusing to enter into further discussion, he writes:

I do not think it is a good story. I think its leading incident is common-place, and one that would require for its support some special observation of character, or strength of dialogue, or happiness of description. … I cannot, however, alter what seems to me to be the fact regarding this story (for instance), any more than I can alter my eyesight or my hearing.

Warming to his theme, Dickens goes on to say:

You have no idea of the labour inseparable from the editing of such a Journal as All The Year Round, when you suppose it within the bounds of possibility that those who discharge such duties can give critical reasons for the rejection of papers. To read professed contributions honestly, and communicate a perfectly unprejudiced decision respecting every one of them to its author or authoress, is a task, of the magnitude of which you evidently have no conception.

Matthew Haley, head of books at Bonhams, commented:

He could just have been having a bad day, of course, and she later dedicated one of her books to him so does not seem to have held any grudges.

Photo of Charles Dickens

GrumpyChops

Future relations were certainly more cordial, and Marryat continued to ask Dickens for favours – she was never afraid of exploiting literary connections.  This is not to say that she didn’t hold a grudge, though. Marryat was highly skilled in the art of the passive-aggressive book dedication. Her novel The Girls of Feversham, a story in which a family is shown to function very happily without a mother, is dedicated to Marryat’s own mother, with whom she had a very restrained relationship. And the novel she dedicated to her first husband is called Too Good for Him. Ouch.
Marryat never won Dickens’s approval. He later detected a “certain coarseness” in her writing and thought her “unwise in touching on forbidden topics”.  Those “forbidden topics” were allusions to extra-marital sex and prostitution in Marryat’s novel The Confessions of Gerald Estcourt. When she dedicated her bigamy novel Veronique to Dickens, he responded with a rather uncomfortable letter of thanks.
Whatever she felt about Dickens’s contumely, Marryat remained undeterred. She went on to write 68 novels and hundreds of short stories and articles. Marryat also became the respected editor of the journal London Society, and certainly seems to have handled her would-be contributors more delicately.

Victorian Secrets publishes Florence Marryat’s The Dead Man’s Message, Her Father’s Name, and The Blood of the Vampire. For more information on Marryat’s role as editor, see Beth Palmer’s excellent study Women’s Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture.

Filed Under: Florence Marryat

A Biographer’s Journey in Pattledom – a guest post by David Waller

February 4, 2016 By Catherine Pope

Photo of Julia Prinsep Jackson by Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of her niece Julia Prinsep Jackson, the mother Virginia Woolf

Casting around for a book to write after I finished The Perfect Man, my life of Victorian strongman Eugen Sandow, I thought that my sainted publisher (aka Catherine Pope of Victorian Secrets and this blog) might be interested in the tale of the seven Pattle sisters who in their day were more celebrated that the Mitford sisters in the twentieth century.

The most enduringly famous of the sisters is Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), whose photographs are on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum until February 21. She took up photography after being introduced to the new invention by her friend the astronomer Sir John Herschel, and her images of her social circle, from famous men to children and servants, are highly evocative.

Julia Margaret was the fourth of ten children born in early nineteenth century Calcutta to James and Adeline Pattle. The other surviving sisters were Adeline (b.1812), Sarah (b.1816), Maria (b.1818), Louisa (b.1821), Virginia (b.1827) and Sophia (b. 1829). Their grandfather was the Chevalier Antoine de L’Etang, a French aristocrat exiled to India after he flirted excessively with Queen Marie Antoinette when serving as her pageboy. He ended up running a riding school in Pondicherry. Their father was James Pattle, a successful Anglo-Indian merchant who when he died was shipped back to London in a barrel of rum for burial in Camberwell. He was a heavy drinker, and family legend suggests he burst out of the barrel on the way home.

With the exception of Julia, the sisters were renowned for their beauty. When Virginia came to London, the fellow Anglo-Indian William Thackeray was besotted to the extent that he wrote a babbling portrait in Punch. “When she comes into the room, it is like a beautiful air of Mozart breaking on you…[nature] has endowed this young lady with every kind of perfection…a charming face…a perfect form, a pure perception and heart…”

But Thackeray had lost his fortune, and didn’t stand a chance with Virginia. She married Lord Eastor, of Eastnor Castle, who became 3rd Earl Somers. The other sisters all made advantageous matches, Adeline marrying a military man who became a General, Sophia marrying a baronet, Louisa, a High Court Judge, Maria, the distinguished Dr Jackson. Sarah married Henry Thoby Prinsep, Member of the Council of India and Oriental scholar, himself one of seven brothers.

On returning from India, the Prinseps lived at Little Holland Park in Kensington, the place where the artist GF Watts came to tea, met and married Ellen Terry. The marriage lasted one year, but Watts stayed on at Little Holland House for more like twenty. Other guests at the salon included Herschel, Gladstone, Tennyson and Browning, creating the milieu captured in Julia Margaret Cameron’s pictures.

The sisters floated about the gardens, “robed in splendid Venetian draperies…talking with foreign emphatic gestures,” wrote Virginia Woolf.  Woolf’s mother Julia nee Jackson was daughter of Maria nee Pattle, one of the six Pattle sisters, and she was named after her great-aunt Virginia. There is a definite whiff of Pattledom in Virginia Woolf’s writing and style.

The sisters would in theory make a fascinating subject for a group biography, along the lines of Judith Flanders’ Circle of Sisters, which chronicles the lives of the four Macdonald sisters. The Pattles must have written thousands of letters to one another over the years, from India to London and Paris, and there must have been diaries galore. But despite rooting round, I only managed to find partial correspondence from two of the sisters. There was simply not enough material to attempt the book, let alone do a joint biography taking in the seven Prinsep brothers as well, as once crossed my mind.

I wrote a book about Victorian engineers instead.1 I leave the Pattle sisters to a more intrepid biographer, or perhaps to a novelist, who could chronicle the journey from Anglo-India to the fashionable bohemian world of Little Holland House and on another generation or two to the Bloomsbury set.

  1. Iron Men, published by Anthem Press. [↩]

Filed Under: News

New edition of The Story of Lilly Dawson by Catherine Crowe

September 27, 2015 By Catherine Pope

The Story of Lilly Dawson by Catherine CroweWe’re very pleased to announce a new critical edition of Catherine Crowe’s ‘The Story of Lilly Dawson’, edited by Ruth Heholt.

Shipwrecked as a young girl, middle-class Lilly Dawson is kidnapped by smugglers and forced to work as their servant. Terrified by the prospect of a forced marriage, this Victorian Cinderella flees captivity and has to navigate an outside world she finds both oppressive and dangerous. ‘The Story of Lilly Dawson’ is a romping tale of pirates, outlaws, murder, mistaken identity, lust and betrayal.

This edition includes a critical introduction, explanatory footnotes,  selection of contemporary reviews, and extracts from Crowe’s other work.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-story-of-lilly-dawson/

Filed Under: News

New edition of A City Girl by John Law (Margaret Harkness)

September 15, 2015 By Catherine Pope

A City Girl by Margaret HarknessWe’re delighted to announce a new critical edition of A City Girl by John Law (pseudonym of Margaret Harkness), edited by Deborah Mutch, and with additional material by Terry Elkiss.

In her first novel, Harkness presents a vivid and troubling depiction of working-class life in late-Victorian London. Based on her own experience of the slums, she exposes the appalling conditions experienced by women in the casual labour force and their desperate struggle for economic security.

This edition includes a critical introduction, explanatory footnotes, Margaret Harkness biography, and additional contextual material.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/a-city-girl/

Filed Under: News

New book: Selected Stories of Morley Roberts

August 2, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Selected Stories of Morley RobertsWe’re very pleased to announce the publication of Selected Stories of Morley Roberts, edited by Markus Neacey.

You might know Roberts as the first biographer and friend of George Gissing, but he was also an accomplished writer of fiction. In a career spanning over 50 years, Roberts wrote hundreds of short stories and was one of the most successful operators in the Victorian-Edwardian literary marketplace.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/selected-stories-of-morley-roberts/

Filed Under: News

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNee

May 14, 2015 By Catherine Pope

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNeeAs someone with an aversion to the outdoors, I prefer to experience nature vicariously. Preferably with a G&T in my hand. Had I been shuffling around in the nineteenth century, I’d have no doubt found my way to Albert Smith’s ‘Ascent of Mont Blanc’ show at London’s Egyptian Hall. Audiences were mesmerised by a diorama that gave the impression they were participating in an Alpine adventure – all from the safety of a plush seat in Piccadilly.

Smith, in full evening dress, would appear on the stage giving a ‘rattling and rapid description of the journey from town to Dover; then the run across the channel and the Continent, till in a few minutes he brought the audience to Switzerland itself’. The proscenium was designed to resemble a two-storey Swiss chalet, complete with shutters and balcony. Behind it lay rocks and a miniature lake, stocked with live fish. Alpine plants adorned the display, along with appropriate accoutrements, such as knapsacks, alpenstocks, and Swiss hats. As Smith described the journey, the Swiss chalet would rise of sight to make way for the painted canvases, depicting scenes along the way. The interval was marked by the arrival of St. Bernard dogs bearing boxes of chocolates for the children. In the second act, the images moved in a continuous descending panorama to give the impression of the ascent in progress.

Audiences loved it. The first performance took place on 15 March 1852, and it ran for seven seasons – a total of 2,000 shows. Alan McNee estimates that around 800,000 people watched ‘The Ascent of Mont Blanc’, placing it in the league of modern West End musicals. By the second season, The Times remarked that ‘the exhibition now seems to be one of the “sights of London” – like St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey and the Monument’. Initially sceptical of the show’s appeal, Thackeray later wrote to his daughters: ‘it was so amusing that you don’t feel a moment’s ennui during the whole performance – a thousand times more amusing than certain lectures and certain novels I know of’.

While many people were content to enjoy the ascent vicariously, others were inspired to pursue a hands-on approach. Smith’s show inspired ‘Mont Blanc mania’, encouraging participation in mountaineering as a popular pursuit. Tour operators such as Thomas Cook were quick to capitalise on the opportunity, conveying eager holidaymakers over to the continent. Smith might have spiced up the leisure time of the more affluent working classes, but not everyone was happy with this transformation. Leslie Stephen (more famous now as the father of Virginia Woolf) was horrified that the Alps were no longer the exclusive preserve of the upper middle class.

Smith’s own ascent of Mont Blanc is the most remarkable episode in this absorbing story. Rather portly in stature and no Bear Grylls, he nonetheless succeeded in scaling the highest peak in the Alps. Although he benefited from local guides, Smith was using equipment that would horrify a twenty-first-century mountaineer. And for much of the ascent, he was three sheets to the wind. He probably wasn’t drunk, as such, but had certainly consumed an inadvisable quantity of alcohol (even a small amount of booze intensifies the unpleasant effects of altitude). Of course, in the mid-nineteenth century, there were no dehydrated meals or sachets of high-energy gel – all the provisions for the ascent had to be carried by the party. And what an impressive list of provisions it was:

60 bottles of vin ordinaire
6 bottles of Bordeaux
10 bottles of St. George
15 bottles of St. Jean
3 bottles of Cognac
1 bottle of syrup of raspberries
6 bottles of lemonade
2 bottles of champagne
20 loaves
10 small cheeses
6 packets of chocolate
6 packets of sugar
4 packets of prunes
4 packets of raisins
2 packets of salt
4 wax candles
6 lemons
4 legs of mutton
4 shoulders of mutton
6 pieces of veal
1 piece of beef
11 large fowls
35 small fowls

Clearly, an audacious attempt on an intimidating mountain was no reason to let culinary standards slip. Smith’s story shows how far you can get with determination, perseverance, and a large dose of chutzpah. John Ruskin, however, was unimpressed, noting with contempt that there had been a “Cockney ascent of Mont Blanc”.

Smith’s successes were legion, but he didn’t get to the top without making a few enemies along the way.  His bumptiousness made him a divisive figure, and his relentless drive to seize every opportunity often gave the impression of a grasping and ruthless nature. He numbered William Makepeace Thackeray, George Augustus Sala, and Charles Dickens among his friends, but fell out with all of them at different times. Most notably, he made an enemy of Dickens after becoming embroiled in the unpleasantness surrounding Dickens’s affair with Ellen Ternan.

Although he died aged only 43, Albert Smith managed to pack much incident into his short life. He was robbed by highwaymen in Italy, narrowly escaped death in a hot air ballooning accident, and dodged arrest in Paris during the June Days Uprising of 1848. Ever the showman, he made good use of these events in his journalism and also on the stage. Even Queen Victoria described him as “inimitable”, an epithet that Dickens famously liked to apply to himself.
I must confess that I’d never heard of Smith before I received the proposal for this entertaining and enlightening book. I was delighted to meet him, albeit at a distance of 150 years. As a man, he’s hard to like, but as a showman he’s impossible to resist.

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNee is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: biography

New book: The Cockney Who Sold the Alps by Alan McNee

May 14, 2015 By Catherine Pope

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNeeWe’re thrilled to announce the publication of The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNee.

Albert Smith is one of the most famous Victorians of whom you’ve probably never heard. During his lifetime, he was a household name, thrilling audiences with his Ascent of Mont Blanc show at London’s Egyptian Hall. An inveterate showman, Smith was also a doctor, journalist, raconteur, novelist, travel writer, and playwright. His many talents were outstripped only by his boundless self-belief and huge personality. Even Queen Victoria described him in her journal as “inimitable”, an epithet Smith’s contemporary Charles Dickens liked to reserve for himself.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-cockney-who-sold-the-alps-albert-smith-and-the-ascent-of-mont-blanc/

Filed Under: News

Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins

April 6, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Harriet by Elizabeth JenkinsTrue crime isn’t usually my cup of tea, but I found myself completely transfixed by Elizabeth Jenkins’s Harriet (1934) last year. Based on the infamous Penge murder trial of 1877, the novel recounts the short life and pitiful death of Harriet Staunton, a middle-class woman with what we would now call ‘learning difficulties’. Although she struggled to read and write, Harriet took great pride in her appearance and enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle with a comfortable income. Her loving mother did everything to make Harriet’s life normal, never imagining her daughter would become the victim of a merciless fortune-hunter.

The charming but callous Louis Staunton quickly wooed Harriet, motivated by the knowledge that wives’ assets were assumed by the husband on marriage. Soon tiring of her odd behaviour, he paid his brother Patrick and sister-in-law Elizabeth to care for Harriet and their baby. Louis then promptly moved in with his lover, Alice. Harriet was subjected to intolerable cruelty, the facts of which became chillingly clear in the sensational trial that followed. Fortunately, Jenkins manages to convey the horror of Harriet’s story without relying on explicit descriptions of torments she suffered. This is very much a psychological thriller, and one told with great verve and insight.

Valancourt Books has just published a new edition of Harriet and I was delighted that they asked me to contribute an afterword. While reading the trial proceedings and researching the background to the case was deeply uncomfortable, I felt that Harriet’s treatment says a great deal about the position of women in the nineteenth century and how easy it was to deny them subjectivity. Louis was able to take advantage of women’s legal vulnerability at the time and Harriet’s mother was powerless to prevent him. On marriage, Harriet’s considerable assets became his to do with as he pleased. She endowed him with all her worldly goods; he gave her nothing. In fact, it appears that Harriet’s plight lent impetus to the campaign for the Second Married Women’s Property Act, which finally allowed women to own property in their own name.

In my afterword, I also explain what happened following the trial, and how Queen Victoria became involved in this extraordinary case. The transcription of the trial is full of revelations, contradictions, and outright denials, all of which Jenkins deftly constructs into a taut and compelling story. Such is the veracity and intensity of her novel, Jenkins actually came to regret having written it. She felt uncomfortable with exploring a real-life case as fiction, and Harriet’s sufferings were particularly difficult to read following the horrors of the Second World War. Notwithstanding the author’s reservations, Harriet remains a provocative and important novel. By placing her victim at the centre of the narrative, Jenkins gives Harriet the attention and respect she was denied as a wife.

For rights reasons, this edition of Harriet is currently only available in the US. For more information, please visit the Valancourt Books website.

Filed Under: News

Mrs Grundy’s Enemies: Censorship, Realist Fiction and the Politics of Sexual Representation by Anthony Patterson

March 8, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Mrs Grundy's EnemiesAlthough originally a character in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough (1798), Mrs Grundy has enjoyed greater fame as the arbiter of nineteenth-century moral standards. In Mrs Grundy’s Enemies, Anthony Patterson selects for his study a range of authors – including Emile Zola, H G Wells, and George Egerton – who courted controversy with their frank portrayal of sexuality. He discusses how the culture of censorship shaped fiction, and examines the ways in which novelists challenged the dominant conservative ideology. Ultimately, Patterson makes a convincing argument that it was the Realists of the late Victorian era who faced resistance to literary innovation, long before the Modernists of the next century. Indeed, Mrs Grundy’s Enemies was also the title of a novel by George Gissing that remained unpublished after his publisher decided it was morally dubious.

In his introduction, Patterson establishes the context of the literary marketplace in which these authors were operating. As he observes, the all-powerful circulating libraries such as Mudie’s “provided one of the most effective means of regulating literature in middle-class Victorian society,” (13) and authors upset them at their peril. The 1857 Obscene Publications Act also posed the threat of legal sanction, as Henry Vizetelly discovered. The publisher was tried twice for his English translations of French novels, and on the second occasion, he was imprisoned for three months.

Zola, as we discover in Chapter 1, was the (low) standard against which British authors were judged. Nana (1880), in particular, offered the terrifying image of a sexually incontinent woman who might serve as a bad example for wholesome English women and imperil the nation’s moral health. La Terre (1887) was even worse, with scenes of rape, incest, and bull bothering. As Patterson argues, Zola’s Naturalism “signifies a watershed for sexual representation in English fiction,” (28) and anything that frightened Mrs Grundy was condemned as Zolaesque.
George Moore was one of the authors heavily influenced by Zola’s Naturalism, and he dominates Chapter 2. Moore fell foul of Mudie’s Circulating Library and eventually persuaded the redoubtable Vizetelly to publish a cheap edition of his novel A Mummer’s Wife (1885). Not content with this coup, Moore also published Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals, a pamphlet in which he launches a blistering attack on Mudie, who he accuses of infantilising the reading public by exercising unwarranted censorship. Moore certainly saw himself as a crusader, “posing as a defender of artistic freedom against the forces of prudery and philistinism” (66). However, as Patterson points out, Moore was simply trying to replace one form of chauvinism with another. While he liked to think of himself as progressive, his heroines faced thoroughly conventional fates and his writing “did little to disturb the hegemony of middle-class men” (95).

In Chapter 3, Grant Allen faces similar criticism. While he depicts an emancipated woman in his notorious novel The Woman Who Did (1895), he ensures she meets with an ignominious end. “In Allen’s bright eugenic future,” Patterson observes, “the position of women remains subservient to men and their ultimate function remains to bear children for the benefit of the race.” (141) Allen was trying to shock, rather than make a radical argument. All gong and no dinner, one might say. Both Moore and Allen railed against censorship, specifically claiming that it ‘feminised’ literature by ensuring that readers had access only to rubbishy romantic novels by women authors. In A Mummer’s Wife, Moore attributes his heroine’s downfall to her love of inflammatory fiction by the likes of Florence Marryat and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. For Moore, women’s popular fiction suggests a morally ambiguous universe in which heroines err and are rewarded with the realisation of their unwholesome desires. Only male authors can be trusted to set a good example.

The women fight back in Chapter 4, with George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright) pointing the finger at men and their desire to silence female voices. When her short story collection Keynotes and Discords (1893) provoked critical outrage, Egerton denounced this censorship as literally man-made. Patterson also considers Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman (1894) and George Paston’s (Emily Morse Symonds) A Writer of Books (1899), with their exposé of hypocrisy in the publishing industry. Unsurprisingly, Mary Cholmondeley’s Red Pottage (1899) and its dramatic censorship scene are central to this chapter. Aspiring author Hester Gresley discovers that her brother has burned her manuscript, refusing to believe that the work of a woman could be of any literary merit. Patterson concludes that the novel “demonstrates how patriarchy limits women’s potential as creative artists through figuring them as immoral, incompetent or reductively dogmatic” (176).

In the final chapter, Patterson advances to the Edwardian period, showing how novels that appear superficially to champion female sexual freedom actually conform to normative models. H G Wells’s Ann Veronica (1909), for example, portrays a sexually liberated woman, but one who is transformed into a dutiful wife by the end of the narrative. There has been no perceptible progress since the publication of Allen’s The Woman Who Did, fourteen years earlier. Wells might have been thematically bold, but he was also keen to uphold the sexual double standard.
Patterson concludes that the censorship debate “should not be simplified into a conflict of progressive writers and conservative critics,” (220) as there were internecine wars, too, especially between male and female writers. While much has been written on gender and the Victorian novel, Patterson’s book presents a new and welcome perspective by focusing on the censorship that was ever-present, yet seldom explicitly acknowledged. Mrs Grundy’s Enemies is lucidly written, compellingly argued, and frequently illuminating.

Anthony Patterson’s Mrs Grundy’s Enemies: Censorship, Realist Fiction and the Politics of Sexual Representation is published by Peter Lang, who kindly sent a review copy.

Filed Under: News

Life in the Victorian Asylum by Mark Stevens

February 14, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Life in the Victorian Asylum by Mark StevensThe mention of Victorian asylums often evokes images of despairing souls, incarcerated by sadistic wardens. While we might sigh with relief at our good fortune at living in more enlightened times, archivist Mark Stevens’s insightful new book offers a completely different perspective. Cleverly written in the style of a handbook for new arrivals, Stevens deftly adopts a Victorian tone, but with twenty-first-century sensibilities.

The reader is invited to join the guide on a virtual tour of a typical nineteenth-century asylum – a composite based mostly on the model of Moulsford Asylum in Berkshire. We learn about the architecture, the daily routine, and treatments offered through what is described as “the very latest in lunatic healthcare”. The guide calmly explains the possible reasons for admission, which might include “wandering aimlessly”, exhibiting “unusual facial expressions”, or “a belief that you can predict high tides”. Everything is carefully designed to provide a sanctuary from the outside world, with thoughtfully designed surroundings and professional staff. Well, not all the staff behave professionally. The guide reluctantly relates the story of the chaplain who eloped to Uxbridge with the local schoolmistress, and the porter who couldn’t resist dropping nuts down the dresses of younger colleagues.

It’s clear that the patient is treated as someone who ought to be helped, rather than a burden on the state. As our guide explains, three times the weekly allowance for a pauper in the workhouse is spent on the asylum inmate. This is in recognition that they are not responsible for their condition: they are the deserving poor. The contrast is keenly apparent in the architecture. With generously proportioned windows, elaborate brickwork, and plentiful fireplaces, the asylum presents a welcoming edifice, unlike the minatory appearance of the workhouse. And there’s no pointless labour. Instead, the patients are provided with plenty of reading material and stodgy food – a regime thought to promote well-being and an amenable temperament (it would certainly work for me).

The second half of the book includes a real-life history of Moulsford Asylum, accompanied by an illuminating discussion of Broadmoor – perhaps the most famous institution of its type. Stevens is also the author of Broadmoor Revealed, which explores the lives of its more notorious inmates. The book concludes with some compelling thoughts on the legacy of the Victorian asylum. Stevens acknowledges the views of those who believe the asylum system was simply another instrument of poor law oppression, but urges us to reconsider these institutions as the embodiment of an altruistic belief in the possibility of a better life for those suffering from mental health problems. As he argues, the current provision in the UK is woefully adequate in comparison. While none of us would want to be swaddled in cold flannels or medicated with toxic substances, such treatment was based on imperfect understanding, rather than on deliberate sadism. Victorianists will rejoice in the absorbing detail, acuity, and compassion of this book.

Life in the Victorian Asylum: The World of Nineteenth-Century Mental Health Care by Mark Stevens is published by Pen & Sword Books and currently available in hardback and ebook editions. The publisher kindly sent me a review copy.

Filed Under: books, reviews

Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn Linton

February 8, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn LintonEliza Lynn Linton is an unlikely heroine for me, given she is best known for her anti-feminist articles ‘The Girl of the Period’ for the Saturday Review. While her journalism alerted readers to the dangers of the New Woman in all her guises, Linton’s novels – quite literally – tell a different story.

First published in 1867, Sowing the Wind features an emancipated woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to Linton herself. Like her creator, Jane Osborn works as a journalist on a daily newspaper, managing to thrive in a masculine environment and to earn the respect of her male colleagues. Linton was actually the first woman journalist in England to earn a salary, and was described by Charles Dickens as “good for anything, and thoroughly reliable”.1 Jane works to support her mother, an endearing but unworldly woman, and her recently discovered cousin, Isola.

The bewitchingly beautiful Isola leads a stultifying existence as the wife of St. John Aylott, a tyrannical popinjay more interested in his appearance than in her happiness. He is a grotesque caricature of the Victorian husband, denying Isola her subjectivity and insisting they must share one mind – i.e. his. As an independent and capable woman, Jane is horrified by her cousin’s circumscribed life:

Sacrifice yourself for a good cause if you like – for the progress of principles, for truth, freedom, humanity – but not to foolish whims and fancies like your husband’s.2

Jane memorably dismisses St. John as an “idiotic bit of millinery”, unable to see the point of a man who is neither manly nor strong. She encourages Isola’s steady transformation from passive ornament to woman of convictions, offering both moral and financial support. Once Isola displays even a modicum of resistance to her husband’s demands, he quickly descends into paranoia, then madness. His tempers and pettifogging are contrasted with Isola’s poise and Jane’s unflagging good sense. As a few scholars have identified, there are marked similarities between Sowing the Wind and Anthony Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, published two years later.

By pathologising St. John’s behaviour, Linton emphasises that his behaviour is exceptional, rather than representative of Victorian husbands. Yet Isola’s situation is emblematic of that faced by many women before the legal reforms of the late nineteenth century. With no right to control her own money, she is entirely dependent upon the whims of a domestic god. Having recently separated from her husband, Linton was painfully aware that marriage had very different implications for men and women. She might have been terrified by the potential repercussions of a powerful women’s rights movement, but Linton was far too independent-minded to accept the role of conventional wife. Surely, it is the author who speaks through Jane when she declaims:

Ah, you may talk as you like, Isola!—babies, and love, and the graces and prettinesses are all very fine, I dare say, but give me the real solid pleasure of work — a man’s work — work that influences the world—work that is power! To sit behind the scenes and pull the strings[.]3

Jane Osborn is an intriguing avatar. She is described as a “rude, unlovely boy-woman”, and her colleagues call her “good fellow”, Jack, or Johnnie O. Her ‘otherness’ is stressed throughout the narrative – particularly her unkempt appearance and refusal to acknowledge male superiority – but she is undeniably the hero(ine) of the story. Almost twenty years later, Linton would perform an act of literary transvestism by telling her life story as a man in The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (1885). Perhaps influenced by the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, she felt that she was the soul of one sex in the body of the other. With lesbianism yet to be or understood, she could express her sexuality only through male-identification.

By the end of the novel, Jane is still an outsider, while Isola’s appropriately feminine behaviour is rewarded. Although Linton isn’t making an especially radical statement about marriage itself, the novel is, nevertheless, highly provocative in presenting a clear alternative for women. Jane might think wistfully of a life partner, but, like Linton, she’d rather be single than married to a man like St. John Aylott. Her attraction to Isola, revealed in tantalising hints, cannot be recognised – instead, her passion must be channelled into work.

Quite apart from Linton’s exploration of sexuality and gender, Sowing the Wind is also a joyous example of the sensation novel, with themes of inheritance, concealed identity, and miscegenation. There’s even a parrot. Linton might be infuriating, but she’s never dull.

Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn Linton, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Kate Holterhoff, is published by Victorian Secrets and available in paperback and Kindle editions.

The cover photo for this edition was very kindly provided by Paul Frecker, who runs The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography. The image actually shows a carte de visite of a man suffering from toothache (a curious choice), but I thought it suggested St. John Aylott’s mental anguish.

  1. Fix Anderson, Nancy, Women Against Women in Victorian England: Life of Eliza Lynn Linton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p.66 [↩]
  2. Linton, Eliza Lynn, Sowing the Wind, ed. by Deborah T Meem and Kate Holterhoff (Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2015) [↩]
  3. Sowing the Wind, p. 248 [↩]

Filed Under: books, reviews

New edition of Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn Linton

February 5, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Sowing the Wind by Eliza Lynn LintonWe’re very pleased to announce a new edition of Eliza Lynn Linton’s Sowing the Wind. It’s Linton’s most sensational novel, with a heady mix of miscegenation, inheritance, madness, and croquet.

Our edition includes a critical introduction by Deborah T. Meem and Kate Holterhoff, explanatory footnotes, and additional contextual material.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/sowing-the-wind/

Victorian Secrets also publishes Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland.

Filed Under: News

Elizabeth Gaskell and the Meanings of Home

January 13, 2015 By Catherine Pope

Elizabeth Gaskell's house at 84 Plymouth GroveImagine if your house was given a £2.5m makeover and you weren’t around to enjoy it? Well, that’s what’s happened to Elizabeth Gaskell. Her home at 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester has just reopened to the public after extensive renovations. The Grade II* listed villa had been languishing in a state of disrepair since the death of Gaskell’s daughter Meta in 1913, and narrowly dodged demolition.

Elizabeth Gaskell lived here from 1850 until her death in 1865, and it was where she wrote some of her most famous works – North and South, Cranford, and Wives and Daughters. The imposing nature of the house gives an idea of Gaskell’s literary success. Although the rent at £150pa might seem modest to us, a large residence demanded a large retinue of servants to run it. Gaskell sometimes felt uncomfortable with this conspicuous display of wealth – she was, after all, a chronicler of Manchester’s poor. The trouble with having all the space was also that people wanted to come and stay. Charles Dickens visited once, and Charlotte Brontë turned up three times (on one occasion hiding behind the curtains to avoid having to make small talk with other guests). Nowadays, everybody is welcome. The upstairs has been adapted to host educational. literary and community events, and visitors can also have a poke around the Gaskells’ living rooms. Most importantly, there’s a tea room, too.

The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s FictionOne of the first events was a talk by Dr Carolyn Lambert, author of The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction. In this insightful book, Lambert explores the ways in which Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century idea of home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the external world. By drawing on Gaskell’s novels, letters, and also plans of Plymouth Grove, Lambert shows how this work evinces complex ideas surrounding identity, gender, and sexuality. As the publisher of the book and a friend of Carolyn, I’m very pleased to say that it has been nominated for the Sonia Rudikoff Prize (fingers crossed for the award ceremony in April).

I haven’t yet been able to visit the house, but Catherine Hawley has written a tantalising description over on Juxtabook. You can also find out more on the official Elizabeth Gaskell House website and even follow them on Twitter @GaskellsHouse. Gaskell, I’m sure, would have loved social media.

Filed Under: books, events

Seventy Years a Showman by ‘Lord’ George Sanger

November 15, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Seventy Years a Showman by Lord George SangerOne of the many joys of delving into the nineteenth century is meeting the numerous vibrant characters who inhabited it. I first encountered ‘Lord’ George Sanger when researching the Hyde Park celebrations that marked Queen Victoria’s accession. Over nine days in June 1838, Sanger and his circus family thrilled the crowds with learned pigs and clairvoyant ponies. Their remarkable troupe also included ‘Living Curiosities’: the pig-faced woman, the living skeleton, the world’s tallest woman, and cannibal pigmies. Something for everyone, I’m sure you’ll agree.

To my delight, I discovered that Sanger had written an autobiography. Well, it’s likely to have been ghostwritten by the journalist George R Sims: Sanger, like many nineteenth-century circus folk, was unable to write. In Seventy Years a Showman, Sanger comes across as an indulgent father and benevolent employer who managed everything through a calm benevolence, rather than with a rod of iron. My view of him then shifted after reading The Sanger Story, based on the memories of his grandson, George Sanger Coleman. He recalls how his grandfather often spoke movingly of the death of his daughter Lavinia, but omitted to mention his blind fury when she eloped with a clown. Unusually perhaps for the Victorian period, Sanger’s marriage appears to have been a genuinely happy one. No doubt his wife’s former career as a lion-tamer provided her with invaluable skills.

From the humblest of beginnings in an overcrowded caravan, the Sangers built a hugely successful entertainment business, ultimately boasting one of the world’s most distinctive brands. This achievement is set against the backdrop of an England that changed beyond recognition during the nineteenth century, with the arrival of the railways, rapid industrialisation, and unprecedented social reform. Along his journey, Sanger encounters Chartists, body-snatchers, and health and safety inspectors, all of whom are treated with equal disdain.

Sanger’s colossal pride (some might say hubris) is evidenced by the self-designated title ‘Lord’. Dismissed in these memoirs as a bit of harmless fun to trump the ‘Honourable’ Buffalo Bill Cody during a legal battle, Sanger retained it throughout his career. His grandson later wrote that it had more to do with conceit, Sanger repeatedly declining a knighthood, as it meant dropping the ‘Lord’.

There was, however, a softer side to Sanger. Notwithstanding the exploitation of the learned pig and the pig-faced lady (actually a bear), he treated his animals well. Ajax the elephant was a particular favourite, and seems to have been more indulged that Sanger’s own children. The elephant’s particularly dexterous tongue repeatedly got his own into bother. Sanger’s admirer G B Burgin remembers how he once stole the produce from a passing greengrocer’s cart:

By the time the greengrocer discovered his loss the last stick of celery had vanished, and old Ajax looked round with an air of innocent wonderment as to what was the matter.

Ajax also managed to get himself wedged in the doorway of a grocer’s shops. While the circus men broke down the brick work to free him, Ajax “stuffed himself with the contents of every biscuit tin and everything else he fancied within the reach of his trunk;” the grocer watched in impotent rage. Not everyone was pleased when the circus came to town.

Sanger’s memoirs end with his retirement to East Finchley and the admission: “I feel that the latter days of my career … have not the interest for my reader that attaches to the earlier period.” But any ideas he might have had of quietly fading away were thwarted. Although he declared “I shall remain a showman until the end of my days,” what followed was probably not what he had in mind.

On 28 November 1911, Sanger’s employee Herbert Charles Cooper attacked him with a hatchet before hurling himself under a speeding train. Sanger’s family maintained this was an unprovoked attack on a harmless old man. Less subjective accounts suggest that Sanger had tormented Cooper, provoking him beyond endurance. Whatever happened – and we can never be certain – Sanger met with an appropriately spectacular end. He was buried in Margate alongside his beloved wife, after thousands travelled to his funeral. Even in death, he attracted a crowd.
Of course, few autobiographies are truly candid, and Sanger undoubtedly exaggerates his achievements and downplays his mistakes. Nevertheless, if even half of it is true, Sanger’s was surely an exceptional life.

Seventy Years a Showman by ‘Lord’ George Sanger (with an introduction by Catherine Pope) is available as an ebook.

Filed Under: News

New ebook edition of Seventy Years a Showman

September 7, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Seventy Years a Showman by Lord George SangerWe’re pleased to announce a new ebook edition of Lord George Sanger’s extraordinary memoirs, Seventy Years a Showman. Sanger was one of the nineteenth century’s most flamboyant figures, and he recalls the remarkable events of a life populated by learned pigs, clairvoyant ponies, and equestrian baboons.

In her new introduction, Catherine Pope reveals how Sanger’s death was as spectacular and surprising as one of his circus shows.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/seventy-years-a-showman/

Filed Under: News

New ebook edition of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men on the Bummel

August 19, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. JeromeWe’re pleased to announce a new ebook edition of Jerome K. Jerome’s comic classic, Three Men on the Bummel, complete with an introduction from biographer Carolyn Oulton and all the original illustrations. This time the men are on wheels as we follow them on a bicycle tour through Germany’s Black Forest. Prepare yourself for cultural stereotypes, disobedient beetles, and many mishaps along the way.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/three-men-on-the-bummel/

Victorian Secrets also publishes Three Men in a Boat, Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters, and Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome.

 

Filed Under: News

George Eliot: The Last Victorian by Kathryn Hughes

June 5, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Cover of George Eliot: The Last Victorian by Kathryn HughesAlthough George Eliot declared biography to be “a disease of English literature,” it hasn’t yet been eradicated, and there have been almost 20 attempts to tell the story of her life and career. The number of Victorian women writers who enjoyed both critical and commercial success can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so Eliot is certainly worthy of all this biographical attention. Of course, George Eliot is just as famous for her unconventional private life as for her novels. Well, I say “private life,” but the details of her adulterous relationship with G H Lewes and subsequent short-lived marriage to John Cross have been the subject of much lurid speculation. There isn’t much new information in Hughes’ book, but her account is lively, insightful, and unashamedly feminist in approach.

Eliot was, and remains, a tricky poster girl for the women’s rights movement. She did a thorough job of flouting convention with a public declaration of agnosticism and bagging another woman’s husband, but had no intention of becoming a figurehead. Eliot insisted on styling herself “Mrs Lewes,” responding snottily to anyone who referred to her as “Miss Evans”. Sceptical of women’s intellectual fitness to vote, she also requested that her royalties were paid directly to Lewes. Her novels might tackle some of the greatest questions of the Victorian era, but for Eliot social change should come gradually – had she lived in the 21st century, she might have written Felix Holt the Liberal Democrat.

While this lack of sorority is disappointing, perhaps just being “George Eliot” was enough to advance the cause: the quondam Mary Ann Evans showed that it was possible for a Victorian woman to maintain a happy (if irregular) marriage and a successful literary career. There is, too, a sense that Eliot craved normality. Her exceptional intellect had already marked her out as different in an age when women were expected to be Stepfordian, so she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself. The common-law marriage with Lewes that outraged Eliot’s family was merely an expedient, allowing her to enjoy a relationship with perhaps the only man who would accept her for what she was. The seriousness with which Eliot took her role as stepmother to his sons indicates that she wanted to subscribe to prevailing notions of Victorian womanhood, rather than to completely reshape them. Needless to say, the implications of this unorthodox marriage were different for husband and wife. While Lewes was lionised, enjoying the stimulation and glamour of the literary world, Eliot was virtually a recluse. Hypocrites such as the political reformer Joseph Parkes thought her behaviour scandalous, despite himself maintaining a wife and a mistress.

The symbiotic Lewes-Eliot partnership intrigues Hughes. Eliot needed Lewes’ encouragement and unflagging praise, while he was dependent upon her four-figure royalty cheques to support his estranged family. Nurturing the talent of George Eliot allowed Lewes to pursue his scientific interests, schmooze at swanky parties, and to maintain a lifestyle well beyond his means as a modestly successful author. Although he was the dominant partner in many respects, few men would have delighted as he did in hearing praise heaped on their wives’ abilities rather than on their own. He bathed in her reflected glory, but in doing so elevated the status of the woman author. As Hughes writes, “he honoured her genius without resenting it”. Rejected by her family, Eliot yearned for love and acceptance, along with the intellectual stimulation necessary to develop her uniquely philosophical style – she found it all in this fussy and flashy little man.

Unfortunately, Eliot’s marriage to John Cross, a family friend more than 20 years her junior, was less successful. Their honeymoon in Venice  is perhaps the most famous in history, with the groom throwing himself in the Grand Canal and having to be fished out by startled gondoliers. We’ll never know what prompted his bid for freedom, but perhaps Cross believed in the misconception of the Victorian woman as asexual, and was thoroughly alarmed when his wife took the initiative. This marriage lasted only seven months, cut short by Eliot’s death in December 1880 at the age of 61. She was buried alongside G H Lewes, the man who knew her best, and without whom she could never have been “George Eliot”.

Eliot emerges from this biography an awkward, fragile, and solipsistic creature struggling with an unwieldy intellect, yet capable of brilliance. Hughes allows her subject to be both remarkable and human, remaining firm but fair, for instance celebrating the genius of Middlemarch but condemning the unrelenting stodginess of Romola. The nuanced and reflective approach leaves the reader with a strong sense of both George Eliot and Mary Ann Evans, with all their idiosyncrasies, contradictions, and limitations sympathetically interrogated.

George Eliot: The Last Victorian by Kathryn Hughes is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: biography, books, reviews

The Victorian Guide to Sex by Fern Riddell

May 25, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Cover of The Victorian Guide to Sex by Fern RiddellAlthough Queen Victoria was supposedly prudish, she popped out nine tiny Saxe-Coburgs and the population more than doubled during her reign. We might think of the Victorians as sexually repressed, but they were clearly at it like stoats. In The Victorian Guide to Sex, Fern Riddell synthesises a wealth of material from marriage guides, newspapers, and the archives to bring us a more sophisticated and composite view of our ancestors.

Unusually, the material is presented through fictional characters, members of The Society of Social Morality, who seek to further human social understanding. Dr Dimmock takes us on a tour of the human body, acknowledging the ghastliness of puberty and issuing a stern warning on the dangers of celibacy. Eschewing the pleasures of the flesh led to blindness, deafness, and “many various foul diseases of the skin”. No wonder monks are always mad in Victorian novels. Dimmock’s message is clear: “Choose Love, Choose Life”. It’s that simple. Of course, one shouldn’t choose a partner indiscriminately. Large-footed men and women are awkward yet reliable, but small-footed persons are “dangerously prone to gaiety and evolutions across the ballroom”.

The modern world, says Mrs Dollymop, is “a befuddling place to navigate”. Fortunately, she is brimming with advice on hair, make-up, and choosing a husband. She advises playing a long game, as “husbands cannot be returned once you have got them home and discovered their flaws” (although if you take counsel instead from Lady Audley, they can be pushed down a well). While Mrs Dollymop apparently suggests a rather limited sphere for women, she takes time out to celebrate the achievements of nineteenth-century rebels such as Annie Besant, Ada Lovelace, and Cora Pearl.

Preserving masculinity is the concern of the Rev. J J James, who urges young men to follow the example of strongman Eugen Sandow, deemed to embody physical perfection. James helpfully includes a guide for flirting: winking the right eye announces “I love you,” while placing the right little finger to the right eye means “Aren’t you ashamed?” It’s a minefield. One should be particularly wary of nervous tics in the presence of women with heavy legs and flat shoes – signifiers of a coarse nature: “Avoid this as you would the pox,” he advises.

Lady Petronella Von Hathsburg brings a certain worldliness to her chapter, eager to ensure marital felicity for both husband and wife. The mysteries of the marriage bed are unveiled and the importance of the female orgasm is stressed. For the woman, “this will arrive as a tinkling pleasure … which she must advertise to her husband immediately”. To ensure that conception occurs, the woman must avoid a “downward situation” by not talking, sneezing, or coughing.

Among Mr Mandrake’s Compendium of Practical Aids is a cure for hysterical behaviour: lay the victim on a waterproof sheet and douse them with a jug of cold water. I might try this on the next UKIP candidate who knocks on the door. While most of the other remedies are quaintly obsolete, a “decent glass of hot gin-and-water at bedtime” certainly sounds like a solution to most ailments. Some of Mr Mandrake’s practical aids are of a more, errrm, manual nature. The Vee Dee Vibrator, which looks for all the world like a giant rotary whisk, was designed to cure muscular pain and debilitating nervous diseases. Well, it would surely take your mind off them. Princess Alexandra was, apparently, an enthusiastic user of Vigor’s Horse-Action Saddle, an odd contraption that was supposed to stimulate the liver (among other things). Filthy cow.

Thanks to his correspondence with ‘Walter’, author of My Secret Life, Lord Arthur Cleveland is able to advise us on “extreme tastes,” such as homosexuality, prostitution, and flagellation. Having attended boarding school, Lord Arthur is under no illusions regarding the sexual nature of men, evidenced in the popular playground game of ‘Cocks-all-around’, where the little savages would compare their lower portions.

While much of this material is authentic, Riddell readily admits (albeit reluctantly) that ‘The Femme de Voyage or Artificial Fanny’ might have been a spoof, with no existence beyond the privately circulated magazine in which it appeared. This inflatable device was perfect for travellers, but only those who could afford the equivalent of £12,000. That would pay for an awful lot of prostitutes, but then I suppose they’re more difficult to conceal in your hat.
The Victorian Guide to Sex is part sourcebook, part pastiche, so is difficult to categorise as a book. Although the sources are listed at the back, the lack of footnotes means it’s unsuitable for academic study. What it does provide, however, is an enjoyable read and an informative survey of Victorian sexual tastes and preoccupations. Riddell knows her stuff and succeeds in presenting a rigorously balanced account of this complex subject. From her absorbing book, the Victorian era emerges as no less surprising or contradictory than our own.

The Victorian Guide to Sex: Desire and Deviance in the 19th Century by Fern Riddell is available in paperback.

Filed Under: books, reviews

Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery and Arsenic by Kate Colquhoun

March 23, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Did She Kill Him by Kate ColquhounAnyone who saw the recent BBC documentary Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home knows that arsenic was everywhere in the late nineteenth century. It was used as a beauty product, as a medicine, and also to achieve a vibrant green colour in wallpaper. This ubiquity made it devilishly difficult to prove cases of deliberate poisoning and many murderers probably got away scot-free. When a case did make it to court, the nation was transfixed. Kate Colquhoun’s engrossing book recounts the 1889 trial of Florence Maybrick, a young American woman accused of poisoning her respectable English husband, James. This cause célèbre dominated the press and divided opinion and Did She Kill Him? evokes the febrile atmosphere of the courtroom.

The Maybricks met on ship in 1880, their romance blooming in the middle of the Atlantic. James was a 41-year-old cotton broker and Florence a 17-year-old ingénue, accompanied by her mother. Marrying the following year, they lived in Virginia before finally settling down in their suburban villa in Liverpool. Ostensibly a respectable middle-class marriage, outward appearances masked James’ infidelity and violence. While he spent much of his time in London with his long-term mistress, Florence amused herself by running up large debts and reading questionable novels. As the trial was to reveal, this was a deeply unhappy marriage.

James Maybrick wasn’t just a love rat, he was also a self-medicating hypochondriac who believed small quantities of arsenic to have an invigorating effect. When in 1889 he became ill, James’s response was to dose himself up with even more toxic potions; in the week leading up to his death, he was given no fewer than 20 harmful “medicines” by his doctors. The fatal dose was believed to lurk in a bottle of meat juice, this revolting beverage becoming central to the trial. Florence claimed that James had asked her to add arsenic to his dose, believing it would act as a restorative. While this was initially deemed plausible, the revelation that Florence had been entertaining herself with a flashy young man by the name of James Brierley made her actions appear deeply suspicious. Her habit of soaking arsenic-impregnated fly-papers for cosmetic use strengthened the claims of those who suspected her of mariticide. A bewildered Florence was soon arrested and taken into custody.

As Colquhoun explains, a jury comprising plumbers, grocers, and farmers was “charged with determining one of the most complicated toxicological cases of the day,” trying to establish whether a man addicted to arsenic could have been poisoned by that very substance. In the absence of any hard scientific evidence, Florence’s infidelity soon obscured the facts of the case. Judge James Stephen, uncle of Virginia Woolf, thought Florence had done her husband a “dreadful injury” by having an affair, believing this sufficient grounds for convicting her. Given the death penalty was still in place for murder, this was a staggeringly harsh attitude. The trial became “a national morality fable, the inevitable result of too much spirit or too little independence, depending on your point of view”. For some, Florence was a foolish and impressionable young woman who had attempted to care for her cold-hearted husband; for others, she was a callous adulterer who sought to free herself from a loveless marriage. Queen Victoria, never one to sit on the fence, thought Florence’s infidelity proof of her guilt and demanded that she be judged accordingly. Ultimately, the verdict proved inconclusive, and the debate raged for decades afterwards.

Colquhoun is rigorously impartial throughout her story, refusing to divulge her own verdict on Florence’s guilt, and presenting this labyrinthine case with clarity and verve. She doesn’t spare any gory details, although it’s hard to say whether the account of James’s autopsy or the forensic analysis of a profoundly dysfunctional marriage is more uncomfortable to read. There are no conclusive answers here, but through her effervescent narrative Colquhoun exposes bizarre medical practices, the public appetite for sensation, and the precarious position of the Victorian wife. Like Queen Victoria, I’m not one to sit on the fence: I thought Florence innocent of murder. She struck me as a naive and not very bright woman who was trying to relieve the ennui of her circumscribed existence through a fairly inept attempt at adultery. Even her own mother described her as a “woman of little penetration”. With hardly any money of her own, it was in her interests to maintain this sham of a marriage. You might not agree with my verdict, but you can’t fail to be stirred by a dramatic and moving story told by a gifted historian. This is quite possibly one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in recent times, although we’ll never know for sure. The Maybrick coat of arms bore the motto “Time reveals all” – but not in this case.

Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery and Arsenic by Kate Colquhoun is available in hardback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: books, reviews

The Convert by Elizabeth Robins (1907)

March 2, 2014 By Catherine Pope

The Convert by Elizabeth RobinsLast year saw the 100th anniversary of the death of Emily Wilding Davison, the brave and determined suffragette who attempted to stop the King’s horse during the Epsom Derby. Many have decried the foolishness of such acts, believing that female suffrage would somehow have happened spontaneously, if only these silly women had been patient; others, however, knew that direct action alone would stimulate a response from an apathetic political elite.

Elizabeth Robins, an American actress and author, advocated militancy as the only way of achieving equality, lending her considerable talents to the campaign. Her play Votes for Women! was performed to packed houses after premièring at the Royal Court Theatre in 1907. Directed by Harley Granville Baker, and with input from Henry James and George Bernard Shaw, the production was a resounding hit with critics. As part of her research, Robins attended numerous suffragette meetings and rallies, using some of the dialogue verbatim. In a scene set during a Trafalgar Square protest, the actresses playing the suffragettes even interacted with the audience – much to their delight.
Having divided the proceeds between the WSPU and NUWSS, Robins decamped to the country and started re-writing the play to produce what is now her best-known work, The Convert, published in 1907. As an established novelist, Robins correctly predicted that this format would garner even more publicity for the suffrage cause. The dramatic structure of the play is evident in the novel, giving it tautness and pace; the lively and authentic dialogue also brings some of the atmosphere of the theatre production to the page.

The story centres on Vida Levering, a society beauty who turns personal tragedy into political triumph by throwing her considerable intellect and energy behind the campaign.  She also uses a guilty secret to gain the support of her ex-lover, rising Tory politician Geoffrey Stonor. In Robins’ novel, the militants are portrayed as noble women who care passionately about their cause, rather than as the bitter troublemakers of popular myth. The quotes from hostile men who turned out to heckle the campaigners are taken from real events, showing the danger these women were prepared to endure in order to stand up for their principles.

Although this is a polemical novel, it is also funny and poignant, giving the reader a sense of what it would have been like to have witnessed these tumultuous and momentous times.

The Convert is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: books, reviews

New critical edition of The Beth Book by Sarah Grand

February 25, 2014 By Catherine Pope

The Beth Book by Sarah GrandWe’re thrilled to have published a new critical edition of Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book, edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor. As far as we’re concerned, this is one of the most important novels of the nineteenth century (and actually Catherine’s favourite).

First published in 1897, The Beth Book – Being a Study from the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius, is a semi-autobiographical novel offering a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Grand’s compelling story recounts in vivid detail the childhood of her young heroine, Beth, a spirited and intelligent girl who challenges the constraints placed upon her.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-beth-book/

Filed Under: News

New critical edition of Grania by Emily Lawless

February 25, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Grania by Emily LawlessWe’re very pleased to announce a new edition of Grania by Emily Lawless, edited by Michael O’Flynn.

First published in 1892, Grania is the story of a fisherman’s daughter from the Islands of Aran, off the coast of Galway. Grania O’Malley’s life is circumscribed by family duty and her destiny as wife to her feckless fiancé, Murdough Blake. When she realises he wants her only for her money and property, Grania rejects him in favour of heroism, although with tragic consequences.

With her unique poetic style, Emily Lawless evokes a vivid picture of island life, with its unforgiving landscape and grinding poverty.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/grania/

Filed Under: News

New edition of The Convert by Elizabeth Robins

January 31, 2014 By Catherine Pope

The Convert by Elizabeth RobinsWe’re very happy to announce a new critical edition of Elizabeth Robins’s rousing suffragette novel, The Convert.  First published in 1907 The Convert was based on Elizabeth Robins’ hugely successful play, Votes for Women! which advocated militancy as the only means of achieving female suffrage.

This edition includes a critical introduction by Emelyne Godfrey, explanatory footnotes, bibliography, and further contextual material.

For more information please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-convert-by-elizabeth-robins/

Filed Under: News

Her Father’s Name by Florence Marryat

January 5, 2014 By Catherine Pope

Her Father's Name by Florence MarryatNow that I’ve finished writing my thesis on Florence Marryat (just a few tweaks and proofreading to go), I can take a more objective view of her fiction. Having read all 68 of her novels, it’s fair to say that they are not of equal merit; in fact, some are downright dreadful. With 7 children to support and a predilection for useless husbands, Marryat was obliged to write quickly, often completing a novel within six weeks and seldom revising her manuscripts. Her haste in evident in around half the novels, their pages yielding very little, even for this determined scholar. Every so often, however, Marryat would stun me with a novel of such originality that I was instantly reminded why I wanted to spend all this time and money on writing a thesis that perhaps half a dozen people will read.

Anyway, I’m often asked, “what’s the best Marryat novel?” Of course, pronouncing on “the best” of anything is a tricky matter, as one person’s masterpiece is another’s stinker. Artistically, I think Love’s Conflict (1865) her best novel, as she took great pains with the structure, although some of its power was lost through editorial changes made by Geraldine Jewsbury. For sheer entertainment and stimulation, Her Father’s Name (1876) trumps all the others. This novel has something for everyone: murder, sleuthing, cross-dressing, lesbianism, and hysteria.

The action opens in Brazil, with heroine Leona Lacoste dressed as Joan of Arc. Flanked by a toucan and a goat, she nonchalantly rolls a cigarette, pausing briefly to deflect a sex pest with her pistol. The reader is immediately alerted to the fact that this is no ordinary Victorian heroine. Accused of murder, Leona’s father commits suicide, prompting her to embark upon an international quest to clear his name. Obviously, a young lady couldn’t just go gadding about in the nineteenth century, so Leona dresses as a man and steals the identity of Christobal, a childhood friend who is desperate to marry her. She heads for London, managing to get involved in a duel during the crossing. With Leona there is no faffing about: she shoots her opponent straight in the chest. On arrival, she sneaks into her uncle’s house, posing as a merchant by the name of Don Valera. His adopted daughter Lucilla, a hysteric who has been confined to her couch since the onset of puberty, is overcome with lust, refusing to have any truck with the handsome doctor her parents wanted her to marry. Indeed, Lucilla/Don Valera is seemingly irresistible to nearly everyone, with all the society minxes falling at her feet.

As a sensation novel, Her Father’s Name relies heavily on coincidence and other improbabilities, such as trains running on time, but its wit and exuberance are joyous. I’m not going to spoil the plot, as I hope you’ll read it for yourself. Also, I’m not going to delve too deeply into my interpretations at this stage, as I’ve written quite a lot about the novel in my thesis. No doubt other readers will find all sorts of things that I failed to spot. Of course, you might well say that cross-dressing was hardly a new theme in Victorian fiction (see also E D E N Southworth’s The Hidden Hand and George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel), but I reckon that Marryat was the first to use this theme to make a strong feminist argument. After nearly four years of writing about this novel, I still love it, and Her Father’s Name epitomises why Marryat is such an important writer.

Yes, I liked the novel so much, I published it. Our edition, complete with introduction and notes by Greta Depledge, is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: books, Florence Marryat

Will Warburton (1905) by George Gissing

December 31, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Photo of George GissingI’ve always been slightly chary of Will Warbuton, having been warned that it features a happy ending. Anyone familiar with Gissing’s novels will know that he is relentlessly bleak, and anything else would be plain wrong. Much to my relief, misery still abounds in this story, and Gissing’s characteristic obsession with money, sex, and class is evident throughout.

Will Warburton is an essentially cheery soul whose financial security is destroyed by the recklessness of an unreliable friend. Having only a few hundred pounds in the bank and a widowed mother and a sister to support, the middle-class Warburton resolves to buy a grocery business in South London. Although resigned to this twist of fate, he struggles with the “sickening weariness of routine” and the humiliation of serving behind a counter. Emasculated by his ill-fortune and class relegation, he is easy prey to a dishonest landlady, who exploits his meagre and hard-won income. Indeed, Warburton epitomises Gissing’s ubiquitous trope, that of the man whose iniquitous social position is determined by his financial situation.

Warburton’s fortunes are juxtaposed with those of Norbert Franks, an initially idealistic painter who craves the popular success that will give him enough money to marry. By pandering to commercial tastes, he finds himself the possessor of a considerable fortune and also the hand of Rosamund Elvan, the woman coveted by Warburton. Here there are clear parallels with Gissing’s masterpiece New Grub Street, in which true artist Edward Reardon starves in his garret, while Jasper Milvain successfully exploits the literary marketplace. However, Warburton’s honesty and hard work are ultimately rewarded by modest prosperity and the love of Bertha Cross, a woman who can see the gentleman trapped in the shopkeeper’s apron. Having earned enough money to employ two assistants, he makes a tentative ascent up the social ladder, and contents himself with a reliable, if monotonous, living. Initially merely performing the role of grocer, he eventually embraces it, thereby finding inner peace.

It is Warbuton’s mother-in-law, the appropriately named Mrs Cross, who really steals the show. Trapped indoors on a modest income, her only sport is to make the maid’s life a misery. While most of her domestic drudges tire of being underpaid and underfed and simply find a better position, Martha decides to rebel, demanding “Is that a dinner for a human being, or is it a dinner for a beetle?” After appeasing her gnawing hunger with cheap gin, she proceeds to smash Mrs Cross’s dinner service, finally chasing her round the kitchen table with a poker. It can only be imagined that such antics will relieve the monotony of Warburton’s quotidian existence. Perhaps mindful of following Mrs Cross’s example, Warburton’s sister Jane decides to take up paid employment in her friend’s horticulture business, even though her brother doesn’t “much care for that idea of girls going out to work when they could live quietly at home”.

Will Warbuton met with popular success and favourable reviews, a rare combination for Gissing. Alas, it was his last completed novel and published posthumously, so he was unable to enjoy the rewards of his labours. The author’s failing health is evident in the short chapters and thinness of some scenes. Had he been spared a little longer, I’m sure Gissing would have added the texture that characterises his greatest novels and further developed some of the implications of his intriguing plot. Notwithstanding these compromises, Will Warburton remains one of Gissing’s most endearing creations.

There aren’t any decent editions of Will Warbuton currently in print, but I downloaded a free Kindle version.

Victorian Secrets publishes George Gissing’s Demos, Thyrza, and Workers in the Dawn.

Filed Under: books, reviews Tagged With: George Gissing

New critical edition of Not Wisely, but Too Well

November 13, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Not Wisely, but Too Well by Rhoda BroughtonWe’re delighted to have published a new critical edition of Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well, edited by Tamar Heller. This is not only a good read, but also a very important novel in terms of literary censorship, as Broughton was obliged to “expunge it of coarseness” before it could be published. Notwithstanding the extensive editorial changes, Broughton’s novel remains a pioneering portrayal of female sexuality, or what Geraldine Jewsbury called “highly coloured & hot blooded passion”.

The original and shocking conclusion is included in the appendices, along with details of other revisions, and also a selection of contemporary reviews.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/not-wisely-but-too-well/

Filed Under: News

New book: The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction

October 24, 2013 By Catherine Pope

The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s FictionWe are very pleased and excited to announce the publication of our first monograph, Carolyn Lambert’s The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction. In this beautifully written study, Carolyn Lambert explores the ways in which Elizabeth Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the external world.

The Meanings of Home has been met with a warm critical reception. The Gaskell Journal described it as “Satisfying, comprehensive and thoroughly enjoyable to read,” while Women: A Cultural Review concluded that “Lambert does justice to her subject, offering a sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of a writer who put the conflicting aspects of her own experience to rich fictional use.”

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-meanings-of-home-in-elizabeth-gaskells-fiction/

 

Filed Under: News

The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester

September 9, 2013 By Catherine Pope

This is a preprint of a review published in Britain and the World, Volume 6, pp. 298-300.

Cover of The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon WinchesterThe title of this book is slightly misleading, as the reader learns little of Alice Liddell, the girl who famously inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Instead, in this slim volume, Simon Winchester focuses his attention on Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and his adventures in photography. We learn about Dodgson’s experiences as an awkward youth and his circumscribed life following admission to Christ Church College, Oxford, where he took holy orders and, therefore, a vow of celibacy.

While living at Oxford, Dodgson acquires his Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, which arrives with considerable ceremony in a straw-packed wooden crate. His excitement is almost palpable as he unpacks the paraphernalia associated with this pioneering medium, a “confection of shiny mahogany and brass and glassware” (50). Winchester deftly captures the sense of wonder surrounding this magical blend of art and science, with its complicated equipment and eye-wateringly acrid chemicals. This shy and partially-deaf mathematician found the world much easier to deal with when mediated through his camera lens.

Unusually in a book about photography, there is only one photograph: the notorious “Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid”. This collodian picture, taken in the garden of Christ Church on a summer’s day in 1858, has formed much of the evidence for Dodgson’s alleged paedophilia. It shows the six-year-old Alice, dressed as an urchin and leaning against a wall. Her ragged dress is slipping off the shoulder and her left nipple is just exposed. Her facial expression is difficult to interpret: some see it as sultry or seductive, others as boredom. Given the interminable exposure times in the early days of photography, the latter seems far more likely. The provocative pose has meant that the subject matter has completely overwhelmed Dodgson’s technical achievement in producing such a clean, sharp image when still in the early days of mastering his technique.

In telling the story of this controversial photograph, Winchester tackles many of the popular myths surrounding Charles Dodgson. He discusses the fact that the Victorians (about whom we are all fond of generalising) would have viewed this image as one of innocence, rather than sexual precocity or exploitation. They were able to appreciate the sensuousness of childhood without recourse to the sensual. The author also makes clear that Alice’s family were in attendance for all of the eleven portraits Dodgson took over the course of thirteen years. In fact, Winchester shows that Dodgson was more interested in courting Alice’s sister Ina, who was three years her senior. To the 21st-century reader, that doesn’t place him in a much better light, but such May-December arrangements were unremarkable at the time. Although we shall probably never know the reason behind the subsequent irrevocable rift between Mrs Liddell and Dodgson, Winchester argues that it is just as likely to have been caused by the disruption of his visits as by any unease as to his motivation. Few harassed mothers of large families would appreciate the continual presence of a bumbling academic.

Winchester handles the issues of paedophilia with great sensitivity, avoiding sensation, and considering Dodgson’s behaviour within the context of nineteenth-century sensibilities, rather than our own. Ultimately, Winchester gives Dodgson the benefit of the doubt. This might come across as equivocation in some writers, but instead he is thoughtful and fair-minded, avoiding either simplistic condemnation or peremptory exoneration. The most obvious limitation of the book is the lack of photographs – there is only one small picture of Alice Liddell, although Winchester does examine it in meticulous, almost forensic, detail. While the author does a masterful job of recreating the other visual images in his sumptuous prose, it is, nevertheless, an odd experience not actually seeing them on the page. The book is also frustratingly short – just 93 pages – although its brevity does belie its density, encompassing as it does the history of photography, along with an insightful account of Dodgson’s life. The Alice of the title remains largely hidden, however.

Ironically, even the author himself was unable to view the original photograph that has so profoundly influenced our view of Dodgson. It remains locked inside a basement vault at Princeton University’s Firestone Library, safe from the destructive elements, thereby contributing further to the sense of mystery surrounding this pivotal episode in photographic and literary history. As Dodgson’s diaries were extensively redacted and the adult Alice Liddell declined to discuss her relationship with him, the truth behind this intensely unsettling photograph will never be known. This book, therefore, seeks to discuss the issue calmly and objectively, rather than to reach conclusions or to pass judgement. In a sympathetic, but not indulgent, account, Winchester is successful in conveying, but not defending, the complexities of a curious and enigmatic man.

The Alice Behind Wonderland is available in hardback and Kindle editions

Filed Under: books, reviews

How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore

August 4, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy MooreIf anything is guaranteed to get my feminist dander up, it’s the idea of wifely perfection, and this enthralling book had me seething from start to finish. On a summer’s day in 1769, wealthy (but unprepossessing) bachelor Thomas Day visited the orphan hospital in Shrewsbury to choose himself a wife. This was not the way a gentleman usually embarked upon courtship, even in the eighteenth century, but at the grand age of twenty-one, Day had already decided that his womanly ideal did not exist: therefore, he would have to create her. He required someone “completely subservient to his needs and whims and utterly in thrall to his ideas and beliefs”.

Considering himself an Enlightenment thinker and an empiricist, Day carefully selected Ann Kingston (orphan no. 4.579), who he renamed Sabrina, believing she would respond favourably  to his rigorous programme of education and training. To hedge his bets, he also bagged himself Dorcas Car, orphan no. 10,413 from an orphanage in London, who was lumbered with the unlikely name of Lucretia. As Moore writes, Day was able to procure these vulnerable infants as easily “as he might buy two shoe buckles”.

It is fair to say that Day was obsessed with the writings of Jean-Jaques Rosseau, and subscribed to his philosophy with all the critical reason of a religious zealot. He was particularly enthused by Rosseau’s novel Emile, the central thesis of which argued that children were essentially good, but became corrupted by the influence of society. Although Rosseau had never intended his work to be a parenting manual, it formed the basis of the extraordinary regime in which Sabrina and Lucretia were forced to endure cold, hunger and pain, alongside an academic curriculum designed to make them a fit companion to a man who considered himself uncommonly clever. Day declared that within twelve months he would decide which of the two girls had the potential to become the perfect wife: “Would he choose the auburn-haired and brown-eyed Sabrina or the blonde-haired and blue-eyed Lucretia? Who would be the lucky winner of the contest to become Mrs Day?” This curious reality show inspired wonder and disgust in Day’s friends, and has a similar effect on the modern reader, who can at least observe the ghastly spectacle from a safe historical distance.

Fortunately for her, Lucretia turned out to be “invincibly stupid”, and was paid off with £400 and apprenticed to a milliner, a very good outcome for one who’d had such a bad start in life. Sabrina was left on her own with Day, who was determined to create her in his own image. She suffered torments such as Day dropping hot was on her bare back and arms, sticking pins in her flesh, and firing weapons dangerously close to her head – all of which were supposed to build strength of character, and presumably a high tolerance for unreasonable behaviour. Astonishingly, this routine did not form the basis of a successful relationship and Sabrina, too, was dismissed. Day’s experiment had failed with the realisation that girls generally aren’t biddable creatures.

He next turned his asinine attentions to Honora Sneyd, who was at least someone closer to his own age and also in a position to make her own decisions. Although initially attracted by his lively (if misguided) mind, “[t]here was just something about Day’s vision of married bliss in a remote hovel in complete subservience to his every whim that apparently didn’t appeal”. Day was repeatedly drawn to clever, independent-thinking women, but was then astonished when they didn’t reciprocate the feelings of a rather grubby-looking despot. He wanted a wife to be intelligent to serve his needs, not so she could pursue her own interests; he simply required a woman who could understand what he was blathering on about and indulge his pseudo-intellectualism. As a wealthy man, Day truly believed he could have whatever he wanted, and he can’t be faulted on his perseverance.

Day is a thoroughly objectionable, yet oddly compelling figure. As with many biographical subjects, it is his contradictions that make him fascinating –  an adamant abolitionist, he saw nothing wrong with enslaving and abusing his victims; applauded for his liberal views on women’s education, he strongly resisted any idea of female subjectivity. It would be easy to present Day as a risible character, but Moore is tactful in presenting his fallacious ideas, without indulging their more egregious manifestations, and never hiding her glee when women get the better of him and his disastrous schemes.

Reading the blurb for this book, I feared it might be a relentlessly miserable and disturbing read; however, Wendy Moore is a gifted storyteller, handling her material with great verve and wit. As with her previous books, the archival research is used to build a rich and satisfying narrative and it is full of illuminating and ghastly detail. How to Create the Perfect Wife epitomises the historic powerlessness of women, but also showcases their remarkable resilience.

How to Create the Perfect Wife: Georgian Britain’s most ineligible bachelor and his quest to cultivate the ideal woman by Wendy Moore. Available in hardback and Kindle editions.

 

Filed Under: biography, books, reviews

Robert Elsmere by Mrs Humphry Ward

July 27, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Front cover of Robert ElsmereWhen Mrs Humphry Ward first had the idea for her bestselling novel Robert Elsmere (1888), she wrote to her publisher that it was all planned and that she would take “five quiet months in the country to write it. It will be two volumes”. The gestation period of what she referred to as her “baby” was actually three years and her patient publisher was appalled to receive a 1,358-page manuscript, containing nearly three-quarters of a million words. Pruned to a more portable 800 pages, this story of religious doubt became a literary phenomenon, sparking controversy and selling by the truckload.

It’s hard to imagine now that a novel about a clergyman experiencing a crisis of faith should become a bestseller, but then it is easy to underestimate the centrality of religion during the Victorian period.  While for some people developments in geological and evolutionary science had already weakened the authority of the Bible, it was the historicist approach to biblical criticism that seriously undermined its status. By studying the Bible in its historical context, its more controversial tenets could be dismissed as anachronisms, rather than accepted as timeless decrees. Furthermore, textual errors showed the Bible to be disappointingly fallible.  This “enlightenment” was hugely disruptive to a profoundly Christian society, and many sought to explore the relevance of their faith in the modern world.

Robert Elsmere opens in the Lake District, with loving descriptions of the Westmoreland countryside. The serious-minded Catherine Leyburn prevaricates over whether she should accept the marriage proposal of young clergyman Robert Elsmere, or stay at home to care for her widowed mother. Love triumphs over duty, and the couple move to a new living in Surrey. Here Elsmere is given access to Squire Wendover’s library, containing a large collection of books on biblical criticism, and he engages in long debates with intellectuals intent on testing his faith.  Rather than becoming an atheist, Elsmere pursues the philosophy of “constructive liberalism,” stressing the importance of social work among the poor and uneducated. He moves to slums of East London, where he establishes the New Brotherhood of Christ.

Elsmere’s tergiversations captivated the reading public, with the novel selling more than 1 million copies. Ward bagged around £4,000 in royalties, which today would put her in the millionaire author bracket. Her earnings would have been significantly higher if it weren’t for the absence of international copyright laws. Many cheap US editions were rushed to press to cash in on this runaway success; some were sold as loss leaders for just 4 cents, and others were given away free with every cake of Maine’s Balsam Fir Soap.  Remarkably, a US playwright was desperate to adapt Robert Elsmere for the stage, but Ward refused. Not everyone appreciated Ward’s heterodoxy, and William Gladstone wrote a 10,000-word review, detailing his objections to the novel.

I discovered Robert Elsmere five years ago and was astonished that such an extraordinary novel was no longer in print. It seems that publishers were deterred by its size and complexity. However, thanks to the sterling editorship of Miriam Burstein, I’m pleased to say that the Victorian Secrets edition is now published. It was certainly a labour of love, and it took us several years to get it to press (only slightly less time than Ward spent writing it). The marvel of modern technology means that it is reduced to “just” 682 pages, and those with bad backs can download the Kindle edition.

Robert Elsmere certainly isn’t a page-turner, but its importance to the Victorians means it remains a significant and interesting book.

Filed Under: books, reviews, Victorian Secrets Tagged With: Victorian Secrets

New ebook edition of In the Secret Theatre of Home by Jenny Bourne Taylor

July 27, 2013 By Catherine Pope

In the Secret Theatre of Home by Jenny Bourne TaylorWe’re very happy to announce a new ebook edition of Jenny Bourne Taylor’s classic study of Wilkie Collins, In the Secret Theatre of Home. In his 1852 novel Basil, Wilkie Collins’ narrator concludes that “those ghastly heart-tragedies laid open before me … are not to be written, but … are acted and reacted, scene by scene, year by year, in the secret theatre of home.” Taking this memorable quote as her starting point, Taylor demonstrates how Victorian psychology is central to an understanding of the complexity and vitality of Collins’s fiction, exploring the boundaries of mind/body, sanity/madness, and consciousness/unconsciousness.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/in-the-secret-theatre-of-home-wilkie-collins-sensation-narrative-and-nineteenth-century-psychology/

Filed Under: News

More amusing Victorian short story titles

July 18, 2013 By Catherine Pope

As my last post on amusing and bizarre Victorian short story titles proved so popular, here are some more of my favourites:

  • Her Majesty the Flapper: Episodes in Her Career
  • Cupid the Entomologist
  • Much-married Grandma
  • In the House of Bondage
  • The Romance of a Pair of Slippers
  • Borrowing a Parrot!
  • Progressive Whist and the Muffin Man
  • The Fatal Ears
  • Carter’s Incandescent Cats
  • Vocation: A Story of Misguided Enthusiasm
  • Other People’s Cake
  • Caveat Emptor: The Story of a Pram
  • A Bottled Villain
  • How the Maiden Saved the Earwigs
  • Limpy, Bachelor of Love
  • The Potted Palm Speaks
  • The Stockings: A Tale of the Last Election
  • Mrs Twiggit’s Mint Sauce
  • A Middle-Aged Cherub
  • The Shrimp in Aspic; or, The Balcony Scene
  • The Nuremberg Living Egg
  • The Celestial Carp
  • Up the River with a Lunatic
  • Warned By a Mouse
  • The Tinned Parrot

Alas, my digitisation project has nearly come to an end, but I shall keep the papal eye open for more examples.

Filed Under: random

Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England by Neil McKenna

May 20, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian EnglandTo be decadent in an age of utility was unforgivable, as Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton were to find out in a trial that scandalised London in 1870. Better known as Fanny and Stella, the two young clerks were arrested and charged with outraging public decency by dressing as women and “conspiring to incite others to commit unnatural offences”.  As there were no specific laws against cross-dressing and “unnatural offences” (ie buggery) were difficult to prove, the court case was as oblique as it was sensational.  In this enthralling account, Neil McKenna chronicles the arrest and cross-examination of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park by using court transcriptions and letters between the accused and their circle. Where there are gaps, McKenna uses his imagination, inhabiting their world seamlessly and appropriating the colourful language of fin-de-siècle London.

The jury took just fifty-two minutes to find Fanny and Stella “not guilty”, but the damage to their reputations had already been done, and they were obliged to adopt an uncharacteristically low profile. The building was already surrounded by a crowd baying for the “He-She Ladies,” as they were dubbed, and the press were obsessed with exposing them to ridicule.  Both had tried desperately to conform to traditional ideas of Victorian masculinity, but it wasn’t for them. They delighted in the camp seediness of the demi-monde, putting on performances and attracting attention (and business) from handsome young men. Stella had even managed to bag herself an aristocrat, Lord Arthur Clinton, with whom she lived as husband and wife. As her elective “sister”, Fanny often stayed with them, too. Their lively milieu included gaudy prostitutes called Lady Jane Grey and the Maid of Athens.

Although some of their activities would raise eyebrows even in today’s more permissive society, Fanny and Stella’s “crimes” were victimless. It came as a great surprise, therefore, to find themselves in a police station and subjected to deeply humiliating examinations. Even more surprising was the revelation that they had been under surveillance for a whole year, with police officers watching them day and night and also rummaging through their belongings. The court case served only to expose the hypocrisy and bigotry of those who sought to entrap them, especially those who derived perverse pleasure from their ordeal. The failure of the authorities to prosecute Fanny and Stella came as a huge relief to the liberal-minded, who feared that a guilty verdict would have initiated a crusade against anyone who dared to be different.

While Fanny and Stella had more detractors than supporters, their own families were surprisingly sympathetic.  Indeed, Mrs Boulton almost steals the show when she takes to the witness box. She loved her son for who he was, tenaciously supporting him throughout and not giving a hoot what anybody thought. Her refusal to believe that Stella was touting for business came across at the time as affecting innocence, but a modern cynic might see it as craftily disingenuous.

McKenna’s writing style is unashamedly camp as his subjects, but it suits the book perfectly, giving a sense of their exuberance and vivacity. His genuine enthusiasm and affection for the subject is evident on every page. The research is impeccable and story placed firmly within its historical context, without distracting the reader from the stars of this show.  Usually consigned to the footnotes of Victorian history, here Fanny and Stella are given the prominence they deserve.

Fanny and Stella is available in hardback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: books, reviews

Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England

May 9, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Inconvenient People by Sarah WiseThe trouble with reading a lot of Victorian potboilers is that they start to seem like reality. The madwoman in the attic is a pervasive image throughout nineteenth-century culture, from Bertha Mason, through to Laura Fairlie and Lady Audley. In this gripping and insightful study, Sarah Wise reveals that it was actually husbands who were most at risk of being detained against their will. It makes sense when you think about it: men were the main inheritors of wealth, also assuming their wife’s property upon marriage. Consequently, there was a “high bar” set for men to prove themselves fit to control that wealth, and every incentive for their enemies to demonstrate otherwise.

In Inconvenient People, Wise focuses on twelve case histories, embellishing them with details from many more, and the depth of research builds a rich narrative. Some of the stories are harrowing, other plain bizarre, and there’s also the occasional moment of levity, such as the man who thought one of his legs belonged to Madame Vestris. Wise has an acute eye for comic detail, but never trivialises the subject.

The case I found most haunting was that of Edward Davies, a socially awkward tea trader from London, whose mother confined him to a lunatic asylum so that she could seize his share of their flourishing business. His gaucheness was almost his undoing, with every action seen as confirmation of his insanity. He suffered greatly from the loss of privacy and dignity; continuously under surveillance, even his bowel movements were observed and measured.

Of course, the stereotypical madwoman in the attic did have some basis in fact, perhaps epitomised by the unhappy wife of the uncelebrated author, Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Wise made me squeal with delight when she described his “flatulent, mouldy prose style’. He didn’t have much to commend him as a human being, either – sending his children to a boarding house when they were will, and insisting they addressed him as “Mr Bulwer”. Bulwer-Lytton also mistreated his bewitchingly beautiful wife, Rosina. When eight months pregnant, he made her repeatedly climb the library stairs to fetch books, kicking her in the torso when she protested. This was one of many violent attacks. Unlike many Victorian women, Rosina refused to suffer in silence, publicly humiliating her husband whenever she got the chance. When he campaigned to be elected as an MP, Rosina made a surprise appearance at the hustings, prompting him to run away in terror (some accounts claim he fainted). She then lectured the assembled throng on her husband’s shortcomings. Bulwer-Lytton wreaked his revenge by having her confined to an asylum, beyond the reach of friends and family. Even there she was able to attract attention, loudly proclaiming to passers-by that Disraeli was a sodomite and having an affair with her husband. Although her remaining years were marred by bitterness and ostracism, Rosina did at least have the satisfaction of outliving her husband by seven years.
The redoubtable Georgina Weldon was more effective at curtailing her own husband’s attempt to bury her away. In court, she successfully challenged both him and the mad-doctors who had tried to snatch her at his behest. Her experiences subsequently influenced a change in the lunacy laws, as she had clearly demonstrated how a sane person could be detained for no good reason.

As Wise observes, part of the problem lay in the definition of “sanity”, which she describes as “a Mad Hatter’s tea party of shifting positions”. All too often, “insanity” meant a failure to conform to somebody else’s expectations. Unfortunately, some lessons were not learned, and the book concludes with the depressing story of three women discovered languishing in an asylum in the 1970s. Between them, they had served 110 years for having a child out of wedlock in the 1920s. It’s a particularly chilling example and one that illustrates perfectly the abuse of power that underpins our definition of madness.

Inconvenient People is an important book and one that contributes an enormous amount to our understanding of the nineteenth century.

Filed Under: books, reviews

New critical edition of Evenings at Home in Spiritual Seance

May 1, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Evenings at Home in Spiritual Seance by Georgiana HoughtonWe are very pleased to announce a new critical edition of Georgiana Houghton’s Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance, edited by Sara Williams.

Spanning the years 1870–1881, this book documents the everyday, yet astonishing, experiences of spirit activity within the domestic space of the Victorian parlour. Through the intimacy of her diary-like prose, Houghton conjures cosy images of spirits laying the table for tea in what she called the “interblending of the heavenly and the mundane”. She is equally comfortable communicating with her beloved pet dove as she is with the archangel Gabriel, living an unassuming yet spiritually rich life, filled with people of this world and the next.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/evenings-at-home-in-spiritual-seance/

Filed Under: News Tagged With: spiritualism

New ebook of No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War

May 1, 2013 By Catherine Pope

No Place for Ladies: The untold story of women in the Crimean War by Helen RappaportWe’re very pleased to announce a new ebook edition of No Place for Ladies.

The pioneering work of Florence Nightingale has become legendary, but in this book  Helen Rappaport champions the contribution of the women whose stories have gone largely untold – the nurses, cantinières and army wives who played a vital, but often overlooked, role in the theatres of war. Mary Seacole’s establishment of ‘The British Hotel’ near Balaclava supplied fatigued soldiers with much-needed comforts and medical attention, earning her the love and respect of many men, but no official recognition.  This book gives her achievements the attention they deserve.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/no-place-for-ladies-the-untold-story-of-women-in-the-crimean-war/

Filed Under: News

Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport

April 25, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Capturing the LightAnyone who has developed their own photographs will recall that miraculous moment as the image slowly materialises before your very eyes. The story behind the discovery of this alchemical technique is no less exciting.

As with most good stories, there is a rivalry at its heart, albeit an unintentional one. During the 1830s two men on opposite sides of the Channel threw their considerable talents into one quest: to permanently capture a camera image on paper. Their characters couldn’t have been more different. Louis Daguerre was a flamboyant artist of humble parentage and limited education; Henry Fox Talbot had been born into the English landed gentry and went on to graduate from Cambridge. Talbot was the archetypal gentleman scientist, funding his hobby with a generous trust fund; Daguerre, meanwhile, was obliged to earn while he learned, becoming an extraordinarily accomplished painter of stage effects. Notwithstanding their differences, both men managed to simultaneously develop their own process for ‘capturing the light’.

In Capturing the Light, Helen Rappaport and Roger Watson unravel the drama surrounding these pioneering men in alternate chapters, conveying the complexity of scientific ideas through clear and engaging prose. Those on Talbot reflect the orderliness of a man who blessed future biographers with 10,000 letters and 300 notebooks. While his life is meticulously documented, Daguerre’s is obfuscated by a web of apocryphal stories and the cultivation of a personal mythology.

Contrasted with the mercurial Daguerre, Talbot comes across as rather ponderous, and it comes as no surprise when the enterprising Frenchman grabs all the glory with his daguerreotype. Although Talbot had by then perfected his own calotype process, it was Daguerre’s invention that was announced to the world in January 1839. His notebooks show that the original idea had popped into Talbot’s head while on honeymoon at Lake Como in 1833, yet he didn’t stir himself to publish any papers. Thanks to this dithering, Talbot earned the ridicule of his peers and even to this day has never received the credit he deserves. Possibly far worse was the disappointment of his mother, Lady Elisabeth, who devoted her remaining years to chivying him into action, outraged that her clever son has proved so inept at self-promotion.

While Talbot kicked himself, the scientific community seized on these new discoveries, quickly refining them into the processes we recognise today. The press were divided, with one newspaper dismissing photography as “drawing by sunshine”, and another exhorting its readers to tie photogenic paper to the tail of a kite so “when it comes down you will have a view of the earth upon it” (an early form of Google Streetview, perhaps?) Others were quick to spot more covert applications. In 1839 the Morning Post reported on a jealous French husband obtaining photographic evidence of his wife’s infidelity and successfully presenting it in court. By the end of the century, the same newspaper was marveling that the camera had “become as indispensable as the bicycle”. These days photography has become an almost everyday activity, and even an inadvertent one. When clearing personal data from a mobile phone recently, I was astonished to discover over 200 photos of the inside of my handbag.

Capturing the Light reads like a  historical thriller, the well-paced narrative evoking both the exhilaration and frustration experienced by those in the vanguard of scientific discovery.

Victorian Secrets publishes No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War by Helen Rappaport

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No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War by Helen Rappaport

March 8, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of No Place for Ladies: The untold story of women in the Crimean War by Helen RappaportAs Russophobia gripped Britain, the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 provoked joy among many who wanted to give the “Rooshians” a jolly good beating. At the forefront of the warmongers was Queen Victoria, who longed to don armour and join soldiers on the frontline. But this imagined glory soon faded to reveal the harsh realities of conflict, and the queen spent much of her time writing letters of condolence to bereaved families, and also quietly funding the fitting of prosthetic limbs for the injured.

The bungled Charge of the Light Brigade left the reputation of the British military in tatters, and the subsequent squabbles were just as unedifying. Further battles were similarly devastating, leaving thousands dead or seriously wounded, and the bitterly cold weather compounded the prevailing sense of misery. Finally, the authorities back home realised that help was needed and despatched a part of thirty-eight nurses. Among them was Florence Nightingale, a remarkable woman whose forceful character often dominates accounts of the Crimea. Although in the book Helen Rappaport credits Nightingale’s many achievements, her focus is on the women whose stories remain largely untold: Fanny Duberly, the energetic and indomitable officer’s wife, whose eyewitness accounts of key battles give us a uniquely vivid perspective on the human (and equine) cost of war; and Mary Seacole, the Jamaican-born nurse who overcame institutional racism in her determination to help the men risking their lives.

It is Mary Seacole who really shines in Rappaport’s magnificent book. Although she had considerable nursing experience, Seacole was turned down as an official volunteer on the grounds that a “West Indian constitution is no the one best able to bear the fatigue of nurse,”  a spectacularly offensive and fatuous claim, given Britain’s earlier willingness to exploit black women as slaves. Undaunted, Seacole simply paid for her own transport, establishing herself just outside Balaclava. There she set up ‘The British Hotel’, providing home comforts to the military, and also acting as “doctress, nurse, and mother”. Although she attracted criticism for running what was in some respect a clubhouse, that was exactly what the men wanted, and the prices paid by officers meant that Seacole could distribute free food to the poor soldiers. Apart from making life more comfortable for her visitors, Seacole also possessed the same skill and experience of a male doctor, and her medical interventions improved the recovery prospects of many wounded men.

Given her significant contribution, it is hard to fathom why Mary Seacole has been effectively whitewashed from our history. If Lords Cardigan, Raglan and Lucan can be remembered for their incompetence, then why shouldn’t Seacole be immortalised for her bravery and compassion? Historians, including Helen Rappaport, have done much to raise awareness, but some of this good work has been undone by Michael Gove in his misguided attempt to remove Seacole from the National Curriculum. While it is true that her contribution specifically to the nursing profession did not rival that of Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole is undeniably an important part of our history, and a figure who represents our diversity. Let us celebrate this enterprising and inspirational woman.

No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War is available in a Kindle edition.

Filed Under: books, ebooks, reviews, Victorian Secrets

Thyrza by George Gissing

March 5, 2013 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Thyrza by George GissingFirst published in 1887, Gissing intended Thyrza to “contain the very spirit of London working-class life”. He spent long hours researching the novel in south London, watching and listening to the inhabitants as they went about their business.  His story tells of Walter Egremont, an Oxford-trained idealist who gives lectures on literature to workers, some of them from his father’s Lambeth factory. Thyrza Trent, a young hat-trimmer, meets and falls in love with him, forsaking Gilbert Grail, an intelligent working man who Egremont has put in charge of his library.

Thyrza is one of Gissing’s most memorable characters. Although blessed with an artistic sensibility, she is faced with the insuperable difficulty of rising beyond her social class, a trick Gissing himself had achieved. Her determination to succeed makes her vulnerable to the charms of Egremont, who vacillates between her and the middle-class Annabel Newthorpe. As is often the case with Gissing, ambition leads to betrayal and disillusionment and the ending is far from happy.

Thyrza is the embodiment of Gissing’s preoccupation with sex, class, and money, and through her he exposes a society intrinsically opposed to social mobility. The juxtaposition of rich and poor is illustrated in the accompanying maps, specially drawn by the folks in the Geography Department of UCL.

This isn’t a particularly uplifting read, but it’s perhaps Gissing’s greatest artistic achievement, and also his most sympathetic portrait of London’s poor. In a letter, Gissing wrote, “Thyrza herself is one of the most beautiful dreams I ever had or shall have. I value the book really more than anything I have yet done.” Contemporary critics praised Gissing’s “profound…knowledge of the London poor” and his “courageous presentation of truth”.  This “truth” included describing the “meanness and inveterate grime” of the Caledonian Road and a Lambeth “redolent with oleaginous matter”. Perhaps it’s one to save for a sunny day.

Victorian Secrets publishes George Gissing’s Demos, Thyrza, and Workers in the Dawn.

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New ebook of Victorian Curiosities by Jeremy Nicholas

March 4, 2013 By Catherine Pope

We are pleased to announce a new ebook edition of Victorian Curiosities by Jeremy Nicholas.

Based on Don Lemon’s 1890 Everybody’s Scrapbook of Curious Facts, this collection of stray Victoriana is the perfect book for odd moments. Its charm lies in its total unpredictability and in the sense of disbelief and wonderment it generates in the modern reader.

No sooner have you discovered the advantages of ‘Greasing Soldiers’ Feet’ than you are confronted with ‘Executions Everywhere’ — the methods employed, country by country, of dispatching criminals. Next, you might stumble across ‘Newspaper Names in the Far West’, ‘Language of the Parasol’, ‘The Flapping of a Fly’s Wing’ or advice on ‘When to Pare the Finger Nails’ — subjects which rise to a bewildering height of triviality. Who could fail to be entranced by such life-enhancing serendipity?

Lemon’s original entries are complemented by a selection of contemporary illustrations.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/victorian-curiosities/

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New edition of Thyrza by George Gissing

March 4, 2013 By Catherine Pope

We’re very pleased to announce our new critical edition of George Gissing’s Thyrza, edited by Pierre Coustillas.

First published in 1887, Gissing intended Thyrza to “contain the very spirit of London working-class life”. His story tells of Walter Egremont, an Oxford-trained idealist who gives lectures on literature to workers, some of them from his father’s Lambeth factory. Thyrza Trent, a young hat-trimmer, meets and falls in love with him, forsaking Gilbert Grail, an intelligent working man who Egremont has put in charge of his library.

In a tale of ambition, betrayal and disillusionment, Gissing’s heroine aspires to purity and self-improvement. Trapped by birth and circumstance, she is unable to escape her destiny. Thyrza Trent is the embodiment of Gissing’s preoccupation with sex, class and money, and through her he exposes a society intrinsically opposed to social mobility.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/thyrza/

 

Filed Under: News

The Victorian City by Judith Flanders

December 18, 2012 By Catherine Pope

Cover of The Victorian City by Judith FlandersMuch as I would like to pay a visit to Victorian London, I fear my acute olfactory sense would send me scurrying back to the 21st century. Fortunately, in The Victorian City Judith Flanders has allowed me to experience the sights, sounds and dubious smells of the heaving metropolis without leaving my armchair.

During the nineteenth century, London’s population doubled, exacerbating the problems of poverty and squalor that have become so emblematic of the age. While Charles Dickens is famed for his literary imagination, he was also a keen observer of the life that teemed all around him. He thought nothing of walking 30 miles per day (and often by night), and during these excursions would chronicle tiny details of the era that has come to be named after him. As Flanders points out, “in Dickens’ own time, the way people lived was not Dickensian, merely life,” and it was a hard life. Young watercress-sellers would tramp the streets for hours on end, just to earn a few pence – hopefully enough to buy them a hot potato or some whelks on the way home. Pie-sellers also scratched out a meagre leaving, their margins eaten away by the Corn Laws. To the delight of small boys, however, they would always toss a coin: if the customer won, he got the pie for free.

Those with better-paid work could afford to take the omnibus, but that was precarious mode of transport. In the 1840s, buses were equipped with straps that ran along the roof and were attached with hooks to the drivers’ arms. When passengers wanted to alight on the left-hand side of the road, they pulled the left strap, and vice versa, with inevitable results. While a coach might guarantee more control over the final destination, it was not conducive to conversation. As Flanders observes, the noise would have been deafening – what with the horse’s hooves, the wheels, and the general throng – and Dickens’ characters would often ask the driver to stop so that they might hear one another speak.

Although Dickens is central to the narrative, Flanders deftly handles a variety of voices, including George Augustus Sala, Arthur Munby, and even ‘Walter’, the pseudonymous author of the eleven-volume erotic memoir My Secret Life. What emerges from the cacophony of Victorian London is a clear and captivating evocation of what it must have been like to live in this extraordinary age. The detail is meticulous but never ponderous, and nothing fails to fascinate. The Mayhew-style vignettes of people and places are punctuated by insights into key events that encapsulate London life: the Berners Street Hoax, the Tooley Street Fire, the Regent’s Park Skating Disaster, and the funeral of the Duke of Wellington.

Fellow Victorianists will delight in the wealth of information this book contains and Flanders is a perfect tour guide for the Victorian City: insightful, intrepid, witty and engaging.

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London is available in hardback and Kindle editions. I am reliably informed that Primrose Hill Books will send copies with personalised dedications anywhere in the world.

Filed Under: books, reviews Tagged With: Dickens, london

The Day Parliament Burned Down by Caroline Shenton

December 16, 2012 By Catherine Pope

Cover of The Day Parliament Burned Down by Caroline Shenton“Never was a spectacle so much enjoyed,” wrote Letitia Landon of the fire that destroyed the old Palace of Westminster on 16th October 1834.  Hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch open-mouthed, as eight centuries of tradition went up in smoke. There was no need to inform King William IV of this terrible event – the flames were clearly visible from Windsor Castle, some twenty miles away. Queen Adelaide allegedly deemed the fire “divine retribution” for the great Reform Act of 1832, which had egregiously extended the franchise, bringing the country perilously close to democracy. Others saw it differently: an elderly man was arrested for cheering in delight, “This is what we wanted – this ought to have happened years ago.” But there was no agency involved; incompetence had succeeded where Guy Fawkes had failed.

Lord Melbourne referred to the fire as “One of the greatest instances of stupidity on record,” and it’s difficult to disagree with him. The problem started when staff set about burning tallies, wooden sticks that had been used as receipts in an old sinecure-ridden department. The immense heat generated melted the copper flues under the Lords’ Chamber and then the blaze took hold. Although floors were burning hot and almost unbearable to stand upon, staff merely commented “hmm, it’s a bit toasty in here,” while hopping from foot to foot. In the grip of inertia, they declined to take action until it was too late. When a visitor commented on the heat and smoke, deputy housekeeper Mrs Wright informed him there was nothing to worry about. By 6.30pm, flames exploded from the roof and astonished bystanders were treated to an unprecedented display.

Fortunately, other people conducted themselves with more professionalism, such as James Braidwood, superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, who bravely fought to control the fire, and Thomas Phillipps, a distraught antiquary who desperately tried to rescue irreplaceable parliamentary records from the flames. Heroism was not restricted to bipeds – Chance, the fire brigade dog, leapt straight into the centre of the action, although his precise contribution is unknown.

In The Day Parliament Burned Down, Caroline Shenton provides a gripping hour-by-hour account of the conflagration and its immediate aftermath. The clever way in which the day unfolds gives the reader a sense of being themselves an eyewitness, albeit from a safe distance. Shenton embraces a rich array of material, from the official enquiry report, through to private letters and diaries. Although the focus is on one day, it is set neatly within its historical context, recreating a vivid sense of a tumultuous age characterised by poverty and protest. This book is history at its best, told by an historian with a firm grasp of her subject and talent for telling a story.

The Day Parliament Burned Down is available in hardback and Kindle editions

Filed Under: books, reviews

The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising

December 11, 2012 By Catherine Pope

The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern AdvertisingAs someone who doesn’t really have her finger on the pulse of the 21st century, I’ve only just caught up with the TV series Mad Men, which appears to be all the rage. The hero is Don Draper, a rather shadowy and shady advertising executive with a knack for creating brands. Although he is supposedly based on some real-life admen from the 1960s, he actually has a much early antecedent in the form of Thomas Bish.

Virtually unknown today, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Thomas Bish (1779-1842) was reputedly more famous than the prime minister himself. As an entrepreneur and accomplished self-publicist, he was courted by royalty, politicians and other people of note. Most of Bish’s creative talents were channelled into promoting the old state lottery, which raised the equivalent of £2 billion for good causes and also made him a very wealthy man. Hiring the essayist Charles Lamb as a copywriter and George Cruikshank to illustrate his advertisements, Bish professionalised ad campaigns. The techniques he pioneered include spin doctoring, graphic design, modern typography, direct marketing, and even early market research.

The state lottery was a precarious business, and entirely at the whim of the government. It was also open to abuse, and Bish was obliged to repeatedly dodge charges of corruption and fraud. Mindful that his luck might run out, in 1821 he set about reviving the fortunes of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, a slightly seedy venue favoured by George IV and his cronies. Bish’s rebranding and relaunch was an enormous success, with crowds flocking to enjoy the entertainment. Among the professionals he hired was the extraordinary Madame Hengler, a tightrope walker and impresario who died in spectacular fashion when the store of fireworks she kept at home suddenly went off one night. She is immortalised in Thomas Hood’s ode as “Starry Enchantress of the Surrey Garden!”

Like many rich and successful men, Bish soon turned his attentions to politics. Notwithstanding the great advances of the 1832 Reform Act, politics remained a murky business: parliamentary seats were won through money and influence, with the barest nod towards democracy. A long campaign of dirty tricks eventually bagged Leominster for Bish, a remote Herefordshire constituency that had abolished the ducking stool only in 1809. While the means certainly weren’t dignified, they were justified by the end, as Bish was hailed as one of the most hard-working and honourable MPs. He campaigned vigorously to ban capital punishment and slavery, and also to repeal the corn laws, making him one of the few genuinely radical politicians of the period.

Most significantly, Bish was a staunch defender of Ireland, lobbying tirelessly for Westminster to intervene and avert the impending famine. His pamphlet A Plea for Ireland argued persuasively that the Irish parliament should again be held at Dublin, thereby giving the area a much needed economic boost. Bish also promoted Ireland as a tourist destination, realising that its unique beauty was a strong selling point. Although his stance won him the friendship of Daniel O’Connell, his Westminster colleagues remained inert. It was possibly frustration that prompted Bish to give up politics in 1837, and he instead devoted his energies to the exhilarating sport of hot-air ballooning. His success was mixed, and one of the first duties of the newly-crowned Queen Victoria was to award a pension to the wife of Robert Cocking, who became Britain’s first aerial fatality.

After his death in 1842, Bish disappeared almost without a trace – remarkable for a man so adept at self-promotion. However, his legacy remains in many of the advertising techniques we think of as “modern”, and in the seemingly inexplicable excitement generated by the National Lottery. While Bish was certainly a flawed and often ruthless character, his genuine concern for Ireland and determination to abolish slavery make him also a very endearing one.

The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Filed Under: books

New edition of All Sorts and Conditions of Men by Walter Besant

December 5, 2012 By Catherine Pope

All Sorts and Conditions of Men by Walter BesantWe’re pleased to announce a new edition of Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men.

First published in 1882, the novel chronicles daily life in the East-end district of Whitechapel Road, where people go about their business with an air of quiet resignation. Their lives are transformed by the arrival of Angela Messenger, a young Girton-educated heiress who assumes the identity of a dressmaker so that she might gain an understanding of this “striving, eager, anxious humanity”. Meanwhile, Harry Goslett learns he is not an aristocrat but the son of a lowly army sergeant. Determined to return to his true roots, he moves to the East End, ending up in the same boarding house as Miss Messenger. The two discover a mutual interest in social reform, imagining a Palace of Delight to provide “a little more of the pleasures and graces of delight” for the local community.

Although subtitled ‘An Impossible Story’, the novel inspired the building of the People’s Palace on Mile End Road, opened by Queen Victoria on 14 May 1887. The palace housed a concert hall/ballroom, a gymnasium, a library, a swimming pool, an art school, and a technical college.

Find out more at: http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/all-sorts-and-conditions-of-men/

Filed Under: News

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