The Great Victorian Collection


Book Description




Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves


Book Description

During the Victorian age, British collectors were among the most active, passionate, and eccentric in the world. This book tells the stories of some of the 19th century's most intriguing collectors, following their perilous journeys across the globe in the hunt for rare and beautiful objects. From art connoisseur John Charles Robinson, to the aristocratic scholar Charlotte Schreiber, who ransacked Europe for treasure, and from London's fashionable Pre-Raphaelite circle, to pioneering Orientalists in Beijing, Jacqueline Yallop plunges us into the cut-throat world of the Victorian mania for collecting.




The Victorians Collection


Book Description

All three historical romance novels in Simone Beaudelaire's 'The Victorians' series, now available in one volume! Keeping Katerina: The 1840s is a time of increasing social awareness, particularly for progressive cotton mill owner Adrian Bennett and his son Christopher. But one social issue Christopher has never considered much is violence against women. A chance encounter with Katerina Valentino changes everything, as Christopher becomes entranced by the delicate, dark-haired beauty. But is Christopher's tender affection enough to help Katerina heal her broken spirit? Devin's Dilemma: Brighton, England, 1856. For young solicitor Devin Bennett, building his career is his foremost goal. The last thing he expects is Harry: an intense, intelligent and interesting girl Devin can't stop dreaming about. But Harry is hiding something from him, something that might tear them apart and whisk her off to the far side of the world. From the sea-swept beauty of Brighton to exotic Bombay, the Bennett family saga continues in another tale of love beyond the limits of injustice. Colin's Conundrum: Colin Butler is in deep trouble. Years of hard work and frugal living have finally failed, leaving his estate on the brink of disaster. A last-ditch effort to stay out of prison finds him walking the long road to London. Meanwhile, Daisy Grainger - an innkeeper’s daughter in a small town - is looking for a comfortable life away from the man her father has been trying to convince her to marry. When the two meet, instant attraction turns to complications, as a series of misunderstandings leaves the couple married, consummated and trapped. Can Colin and Daisy work together to bring hope in the darkest of situations, or will the unlikely couple meet a rocky end?




The Victorian Illustrated Book


Book Description

US scholars of literature explore how illustrated books became a cultural form of great importance in England and Scotland from the 1830s and 1840s to the end of the century. Some of them consider particular authors or editions, but others look at general themes such as illustrations of time, maps and metaphors, literal illustration, and city scenes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




On Exhibit


Book Description

Why did the Victorians collect with such a vengeance and exhibit in museums? Focusing on this key nineteenth-century enterprise, Barbara J. Black illuminates British culture of the period by examining the cultural power that this collecting and exhibiting possessed. Through its museums, she argues, Victorian London constructed itself as a world city. Using the tools of cultural criticism, social history, and literary analysis, Black roots Victorian museum culture in key political events and cultural forces: British imperialism, exploration, and tourism; advances in science and changing attitudes about knowledge; the commitment to improved public taste through mass education; the growth of middle-class dominance and the resulting bourgeois fetishism and commodity culture; and the democratization of luxury engendered by the French and industrial revolutions. She covers a wide range of genres--from poetry to museum guidebooks to the triple-decker novel--and treats three London museums as case studies: Sir John Soane's house-museum, the Natural History Museum, and the exemplary South Kensington. While On Exhibit provides a fascinating analysis of Victorian society, it also reminds us how modern the Victorians were--how, in crucial ways, our culture derives from the Victorian era. Forging connections among museums, urbanism, and modernity, Black provokes us to examine cultural imperialism and the costs and advantages of cultural consensus.




How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain


Book Description

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.




Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects


Book Description

The Victorian era is famous for the collecting, hording, and displaying of things; for the mass production and consumption of things; for the invention, distribution and sale of things; for those who had things, and those who did not. For many people, the Victorian period is intrinsically associated with paraphernalia. This collection of essays explores the Victorians through their materiality, and asks how objects were part of being Victorian; which objects defined them, represented them, were uniquely theirs; and how reading the Victorians, through their possessions, can deepen our understanding of Victorian culture. Miscellaneous and often auxiliary, paraphernalia becomes the ‘disjecta’ of everyday life, deemed neither valuable enough for museums nor symbolic enough for purely literary study. This interdisciplinary collection looks at the historical, cultural and literary debris that makes up the background of Victorian life: Valentine’s cards, fish tanks, sugar plums, china ornaments, hair ribbons, dresses and more. Contributors also, however, consider how we use Victorian objects to construct the Victorian today; museum spaces, the relation of Victorian text to object, and our reading – or gazing at – Victorian advertisements out of context on searchable online databases. Responding to thing theory and modern scholarship on Victorian material culture, this book addresses five key concerns of Victorian materiality: collecting; defining class in the home; objects becoming things; objects to texts; objects in circulation through print culture.




Georgian and Victorian Board Games


Book Description

As the turn from the 18th to the 19th century approached in Great Britain, more and more parents and teachers embraced a suggestion from the philosopher John Locke that learning might be made a play and recreation to children. 'Georgian and Victorian Board Games: The Liman Collection' includes the most beautiful and rare games of the time collected by Arthur Liman. Showcasing 50 games that were made for both instruction and delight, the book reflects on a transatlantic market that flourished into and through the 19th century. Although games were often printed on linen or board instead of delicate paper, many fell apart due to enthusiastic use. But those that survived open a window onto the time period in which they were created, reflecting its social and moral priorities as well as a wide range of educational subjects. 'Georgian and Victorian Board Games: The Liman Collection' will appeal to both experts and people who will discover this unusual art form for the first time. The oversize format allows for a close inspection and reading of the wonderfully imaginative and interesting information on the museum-quality game boards while reproductions of some of the pages from the detailed instruction booklets allow for an even deeper look into the games and how they were played. The games themselves are beautifully detailed produced by a handful of the best-known publishers of the era, the hand-color engraved games look as vibrant and colorful as they did two centuries ago. Also included in the lavishly produced book are five gatefolds that illustrate the games and their complete instructions and rules so as to allow modern readers to try their hand at these fascinating and historic games.




Victorians Undone


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In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.




Victorian Radicals


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Drawn from Birmingham Museums Trust's incomparable collection of Victorian art and design, this exhibition will explore how three generations of young, rebellious artists and designers, such as Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, revolutionized the visual arts in Britain, engaging with and challenging the new industrial world around them.