Victorian Studies – Resources

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No matter how you choose to look at it the Victorian period was and remains one of the most fascinating eras in history. From the very fast paced industrialization that took place during that time to the fascinating Bronte sisters, there is such a rich cultural, artistic and historical value to be accrued for studying the various elements that mark this period. Art, literature social and political history, science and industrialization are at the epicenter of this era.

Aptly named so because it is the time during which Queen Victoria reigned (1837-1901), the Victorian period has a lot to offer any and every enthusiast and/scholar. Victorian studies may, therefore, be defined as the study of British culture, art, language, and life during the Victorian age.

By undertaking Victorian studies one can, after a fashion, relive those days gone by and get to understand albeit through the sometimes inadequate lens of modern theories, what exactly art, literature, and life, in general, had to offer.

The Significance of the Victorian Period

There is a very good reason why experts of Victorian and neo-Victorian studies refer to this era as the Golden Period. During Queen Victoria’s reign, Britain truly prospered and became powerful. England literally ruled a quarter of the entire world population and with an ever-increasing demand for goods and services, no epidemic and great healthcare facilities, the population increased markedly.

Factories doing all kinds of work mushroomed during this period improving the living standards of people and providing employment. Horse-drawn carriages gave way to the railways and science took center stage with the advent of telephones, radios, and many more inventions, The nineteenth century was a great time for Britain not just because of the industrial revolution but also because architecture, culture, and art blossomed greatly. Queen Victoria, for instance, was the first monarch ever to be photographed. Monumental strides were made during her rule.

Why study the Victorian Era

Given all there is to know about the Golden period including its history and the histories of the inventors and inventions of the time, institutions have been established with departments and courses dedicated solely to this era. In these institutions students sign up to learn about the history of art, the history of science, great personalities of this era and so much more.

English departments in many universities across the world offer research and training to help students better understand not just language and its evolution during the Victorian period but also Victorian writing and how it was nurtured by poets and novelists of that time. As an arts and humanities student, for example, undertaking Victorian studies allows you to get a better grasp of what truly transpired during the era, how it happened, what influenced the changes that occurred at the time and why.

Supporting bodies and resources

There are several Victorian studies related associations the world over. Worth mentioning perhaps is the North American Victorian Studies Association which was formed in 2002. The main goal of this association is to act as a continental forum that can keep the Victorian period discussion alive through a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches. A resource worth taking note of is Project Muse. This is basically an online database consisting of journals and books reviewed by peers. If you are an enthusiast of the Victorian period then Victorian studies are definitely an option for you.

Check our useful sources for Victorian Studies subject:

• • Gateways
    Academic Info Humanities Gateway

    http://www.academicinfo.net/subhum.html

    Backstage

    http://www.backstage.ac.uk/

    a performing arts gateway for the UK – funded as part of the Research Support Libraries Programme

    Intute: Humanities

    http://www.intute.ac.uk/humanities/

    Victoria Research Web

    http://victorianresearch.org/

    Scholarly Resources for Victorian Research from the History Department, Indiana University

    The Victorian Web

    http://www.victorianweb.org/

    the WWW translation of Brown University’s Context 61, which serves as a resource for courses in Victorian literature

    Victorian Web Sites

    http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Victorian.html

    Many links from a site maintained by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, an Associate Professor at Nagoya University, Japan

    Voice of the Shuttle: Literature in English

    http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3
• • Discussion groups
    JISCmail

    http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/index.htm

    national academic mailing list service facilitating discussion, collaboration and communication within the UK academic community and beyond

    Victoria: 19th century British culture and society

    https://listserv.indiana.edu/archives/victoria.html

    Yahoo! Groups

    http://groups.yahoo.com/

    Sign up to join discussion groups. Search on Victorian
• • Organisations
    Alliance of Literary Societies

    http://www.allianceofliterarysocieties.org.uk/index.html

    umbrella organisation for literary societies in the UK, formed in 1973 with c125 members

    Arts and Humanities Research Council

    http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/

    supporting research into the arts and humanities

    British Academy

    http://www.britac.ac.uk/

    the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences

    British Association for Victorian Studies

    http://www.bavsuk.org/index.htm

    Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship

    http://www.cmyf.org.uk/

    English Subject Centre

    http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/

    part of the Higher Education Academy – supports the teaching of English literature, language and creative writing in UK Higher Education

    The Gaskell Society

    http://www.gaskellsociety.co.uk/

    To promote and encourage the study and appreciation of the work and life of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865).

    Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies

    http://www.nd.edu/~incshp/

    an international group of scholars dedicated to interdisciplinary discussion and research

    The Tennyson Society

    http://community.lincolnshire.gov.uk/thetennysonsociety/

    to promote the study and understanding of the life and work of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    The Victorian Society

    http://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/

    the national society responsible for the study and protection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and other arts.

    The William Morris Society

    http://www.morrissociety.org/

    aims to make the life and work of Morris and his associates better known
• • Other sites of interest
    19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

    http://www.nineteen.bbk.ac.uk/

    from Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

    1901 Census for England and Wales

    http://www.1901census.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

    A2A

    http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/

    Access to archives contains catalogues describing archives held throughout England and dating from the 900s to the present day.

    Aspects of the Victorian Book

    http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/intro.html

    from the British Library

    Bolles Collection on the history of London: London atlas

    http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/city-view.pl

    a digital archive on the topography of London.

    BOPCRIS

    http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/

    (British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service) Unlocking government publications: a web-based finding tool for over 23,000 British Official Publications from 1688 to 1995

    British History Online

    http://www.british-history.ac.uk/

    from the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust

    Charles Booth Online Archive

    http://booth.lse.ac.uk/

    a searchable resource giving access to archive material from the Booth collections of the British Library of Political and Economic Science [BLPES] (the Library of the London School of Economics) and the University of London Library. The archives of the BLPES contain the original records from Booth’s survey into life and labour in London, dating from 1886-1903.

    Charles Darwin

    http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html

    the complete works online

    Charles Dickens Page

    http://charlesdickenspage.com/index.html

    from David Purdue, links to online texts of many of Charles Dickens’s works, together with biographical information and information about the context of his works

    Corvey Women Writers

    http://www2.shu.ac.uk/corvey/CW3/

    on the Web CW3 An electronic guide to literature 1796–1834 from Sheffield Hallam University – a database containing material on 417 women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries and literary works published by them, based on the holdings of the Corvey Library

    Crace Collection of maps of London

    http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/crace/

    from the British Library

    Darwin Correspondence Project

    http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/index.php

    with the complete, searchable, texts of around 5,000 letters written by and to Charles Darwin up to the year 1865.

    Evanion Collection

    http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/evancoll/

    of Victorian printed ephemera at the British Library

    Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915

    http://erps.dmu.ac.uk/

    catalogue records from the annual exhibitions

    Gaslight

    http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/

    discussion list which reviews one story a week from the genres of mystery, adventure and The Weird, written between 1800 and 1919

    The Gissing Newsletter

    http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/gissing/newsletter-journal/contents.html

    the full text from 1965-2000

    Historical directories

    http://www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/

    digital library of local and trade directories for England and Wales, from 1750 to 1919

    Internet Library of Early Journals

    http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/

    a digital library of 18C and 19C journals

    Literary Resources – Victorian British

    http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/victoria.html

    part of the Literary Resources collection maintained by Jack Lynch, English Department, Rutgers University, Newark.

    The Mark Rutherford Resource

    http://www.concentric.net/~Djfrench/main.htm

    The aim of this site is to make Mark Rutherford (pseudonym of William Hale White)‘s work more widely known (particularly his journalism), and to act as a forum for discussions about him.

    Monuments and dust: the culture of Victorian London

    http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/london//

    the work of an international group of scholars now assembling a complex visual, textual, and statistical representation of Victorian London. Based at UCL and the University of Virginia.

    Nineteenth century serials edition (NSCE)

    http://www.ncse.ac.uk/index.html

    free, online edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers.

    Online Literary Criticism Collection

    http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/

    From the Internet Public Library (IPL), can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period.

    Proceedings of the Old Bailey

    http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

    London’s Central Criminal Court 1674-1913

    Rossetti Archive

    http://www.rossettiarchive.org/

    the complete writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti – a hypermedia archive

    Science in the nineteenth century periodical

    http://www.sciper.org/

    searchable electronic index to the science content of sixteen nineteenth-century general periodicals

    Stanford’s library map of London 1862-1871

    http://www.mappalondon.com/

    Victorian illustrated newspapers and journals

    http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/victoriannews/index.html

    select list from the British Library

    Victorian Sensationalism Online

    http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~mactavis/vso/

    focuses on several aspects of Victorian sensationalism, especially the sensation novel — its authors, texts, and sensational popularity

    Victorian Women Writers Project

    http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/

    from the University of Indiana

    Who’s Who in Victorian Cinema

    http://www.victorian-cinema.net/

    a biographical guide to the world of Victorian film.

    William Hone: the Bio-text

    http://www.uab.edu/english/hone/

    a web project by Kyle Grimes at the University of Alabama, Birmingham

    William Morris Gallery

    http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/william-morris

    housed in the 18th Century Water House, Morris’ family home, 1848 to 1856, and set in Lloyd Park in Walthamstow