inspiration

Image: James Duffield Harding, The Great Exhibition of 1851

Please note that this list is meant to inspire rather than to prescribe. You are free and encouraged to work outside the boundaries of this list if you wish. Come talk to me if you are in doubt, but do some research first and have a sense of what interests you.

Art & Culture

• An item or exhibit at the 1851 Great Exhibition. An account of a visit to the Exhibition. A piece of paraphernalia related to the Exhibition.
• An object related to the massive rise in visual culture in the Victorian period. Think about photography, stereoscopes, zeotropes, phenakistoscopes, magic lanterns, panoramas, paper “peepshows,” the first motion picture camera, etc.
• If you’re interested in photography, try to narrow down your focus to a particular set of photographs or photographer. E.g. Julia Margaret Cameron or Lewis Carroll (particularly his photos of little girls). Or perhaps you’re interested in the rather gruesome practice of taking pictures of dead loved ones, especially babies!
• Freak shows, circuses, and other public forms of entertainment. For some inspiration about Victorian freak shows, take a look at http://vll-minos.bl.uk/learning/cult/bodies/freak/freakshow.html
• Museums and Galleries: there is a HUGE expansion of these in the Victorian era. The National Gallery, the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), and so many more. You might want to investigate an aspect of one of these.
• If you’re interested in art, you might look into art & sensation (and scandal!) For instance, in 1870 John Everett Millais has the first (and only) experiment with a female nude (The Knight Errant). More about Victorian nudes in this book!
• How about some theatricals? The famous actor Richard Mansfield plays the role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the stage, and the audience are so amazed at his transformations that there’s some speculation about whether he might be Jack the Ripper (!) Or perhaps consider Pepper’s Ghost, an invention by Henry Dircks in 1862 of a “ghost” appearing on the stage!
• Interested in fashion? What about the dubious creation of the electric corset!?
• Victorian Britain saw the huge expansion of advertising. You might want to look into some of these fascinating advertisements.
• Interested in Victorian architecture? Perhaps you want to focus on a particular building, like the re-built Westminster Palace (where Parliament still sits; the building includes Big Ben), which the Victorians rebuilt after it burned down. Or Tower Bridge. Or the Crystal Palace.

Technology and Science

• There is so much new technology in the Victorian era, from steam trains to new factory equipment, from electricity to the telephone, from new vehicles to telegraphs, from pneumatic tires to the first flushing toilets! Can you find a way to narrow one of these topics down? Consider, for instance, the standardization of time with the creation of train timetables, or the new experience of rushing through the countryside on a train, or the opening of a new line. Or perhaps focus on the laying of telegraph cables across the Atlantic in 1866, quite an engineering feat!
• Mesmerism and “animal magnetism.”
• Mediums—levitation! Spirit photography! Table-tipping!
• Resurrection men/Body Snatchers! Provided bodies to the growing number of doctors needing them for science. There’s some fascinating coverage of scandals and trials related to this.
• Debates about Darwinian evolutionary theory.
• George Merryweather’s creation of the tempest prognosticator (a really cool looking little instrument!)

Literary

• Many Victorian novels—including sensation novels—were adapted for the stage. You might be interested in researching one of these.
• If you’re interested in something more strictly literary, perhaps think about the impact of a particular text. Examples might include Darwin’s Origin of Species. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” The publication of a particular sensation novel, perhaps.
• Other literary topics: the popularity of the Penny Dreadful. The impact of the Circulating Library. Fears about what women were reading.

Sensational Events and Scandals

• How about sensational events? The boy (Edward Jones) discovered in Queen Victoria’s bedroom! The Mordaunt divorce trial. The arrest of Annie Besant after she published a pamphlet about contraception! The scandal of Effie Gray, wife of famous critic John Ruskin, who sued for an annulment because he had never consummated the marriage!
• One of the eight assassination attempts on Queen Victoria.
• Spring-Heeled Jack—a winged, fire-breathing creature prowling the streets of Victorian England!
• Mummy unwrapping parties and Egyptomania!
• Jack the Ripper: there’s a lot to research here. Perhaps consider one element of the search for the killer.
• The Rugeley Poisoner, William Palmer: A doctor with a love of women and gambling, William Palmer constantly needs to find a way out of sticky situations. The papers speculate that poison is his chosen method of escape when more and more people close to him suddenly become ill and die.
• Interested in Victorian murder cases? Perhaps murderpedia.org might offer some inspiration…!
• The Trial of Ernest Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park, who dressed in women’s clothes and who were arrested in 1870
• Vivisection scandals and debates. The Victorian era saw a huge reaction against vivisection, or experimentation on living animals. Frances Power Cobbe founded the first anti-vivisection organization in 1875.

International Events, National Events, etc.

• The Obscene Publications Act is the first law to deal specifically with pornography in print (1857)
• There was a war somewhere in the Empire every year that Victoria was on the throne! Important ones included the Crimean War, the Boer War, and the Indian “Mutiny” (Indian Rebellion). You might investigate one aspect of one of these. For instance, the Indian “Mutiny” in 1857 was an uprising against British Rule. There are some fascinating photographs surrounding this, especially ones by Felice Beato.
• The death of Prince Albert in 1861 and its impact on the queen, who becomes something of a recluse after this. If you’re interested in Queen Victoria, you might also consider investigating her marriage, scandals related to her son Bertie, or even the rare archive film footage that exists of her. You can find a lot of information on this site.
• The Great Irish Famine (1845-49)
• Cholera epidemic in London in 1854
• Shipwrecks and train wrecks. How about the Staplehurst rail crash in 1865 that killed 10 people—Dickens was on that train!

Social Justice Issues

• In 1885 W. T. Stead publishes The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, an exposé of child prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette. We will investigate this in our class after we have finished this project.
• If you’re interested in child labor or factory labor, you might want to focus on a specific text (e.g. Browning’s “The Cry of the Children”) or on photographs.
• What about workhouses, places to house the poor who could not afford to feed or house themselves? Dickens writes about the conditions in workhouses in articles and in Oliver Twist. The Andover Workhouse scandal involved inmates scavenging meat off old bones they were tasked with crushing.

Some General Resources To Get You Started

• Victorian Web – A comprehensive resource created by George Landow at Brown University that contains thousands of articles on Victorian literature and culture: http://www.victorianweb.org
• British Library: Victorian Britain – “historical sources and articles written by experts that reveal the everyday reality of living in Victorian Britain.” There’s a lot of great visual content on here, including advertisements and photographs. For inspiration, take a look at the articles section (written by Liza Picard).https://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain
• British Library: Discovering Literature (Romantics and Victorians). A wide range of articles and collection items (including great visual content) related to both the Romantics and the Victorians. Browse the “themes” for inspiration.https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians
• BRANCH – a “searchable, reliable, peer-reviewed, copy-edited, easy-to-use overview of the period 1775-1925.” Offers a wealth of short articles by scholars on noteworthy events on a timeline (you can also search by topic by clicking on “topic clusters”).http://www.branchcollective.org
• The Victorian Dictionary: Exploring Victorian London – A rather eclectic web dictionary created by Lee Jackson, who compiles excerpts from books, articles, images, and pamphlets about Victorian London. You might want to consult this site, but if you use any of the texts quoted make sure you find the originals. http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm
• Old Bailey Online – A searchable edition of almost 200,000 criminal trials held in London’s central criminal court between 1674 and 1913.https://www.oldbaileyonline.org
• Books:
  • Victorian Things by Asa Briggs
  • What the Victorians Did for Us by Adam Hart-Davis