Livesey examines Brontë’s use of the stagecoach as “a resistant Tory mode of inscribing an alternative modernity in the era of progress.” Available here on Project MUSE: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
Posts by Victorian Studies
Happy Birthday to Charlotte Brontë! Born April 21, 1816, Brontë remains one of the most influential and acclaimed authors in English literary history. Read Ruth Livesey’s “Communicating with Jane Eyre: Stagecoach, Mail, and the Tory Nation."
Check out Heather Brink-Roby’s article, “The Idea of the Majority,” new in 67.4! Here, Brink-Roby examines how Charles Kingsley's early novels embody the "contradictory uses, grounds, and alleged tendencies of thinking" around the "concept of the majority" (559).
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Murray focuses on readers from the publishing house John Lane at The Bodley Head, which is most well-known for publishing the provocative Yellow Book magazine. Murray’s article, now open access, and his blog post are linked here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl... and here: iupress.org/connect/blog....
Check out Alex Murray’s blog post about his article “Gatekeeping: Publishers’ Readers, Gender, and the Literature of the 1890s,” which explores the often reactionary and sexist genre of the reader’s report during the complicated cultural politics of the 1890s.
In this issue, check out Ingrid Hanson’s article, “‘The Beauty of Life’: Reciprocity, Aesthetics, and Ecological Ethics in Vernon Lee and William Morris,” where she explores both authors’ arguments about the role of reciprocity in human and nonhuman relationships, justice, and equality.
Spring has sprung in Bloomington! Enjoy the beautiful weather by taking a copy of our newest issue outside! 67.4 is hot off the press and live on Project MUSE! muse.jhu.edu/issue/56511
March 3rd was World Wildlife Day! Check out Toby Harper's 65.2 article, "Fish Pain and Human Sport in Victorian Britain," where he examines Victorian anglers' beliefs about fish pain—"beliefs intertwined with ideas about race, food, civilization, and class" (247).
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Here, Freedgood explores the genre of the Victorian lace book and the lasting effects of the lace making practices on commodity, culture, and consumption. Read here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
London Fashion Week has officially come to a close, and among the rising trends for Spring and Summer 2026 is lace! Check out Elaine Freedgood’s 2003 article, “‘Fine Fingers’: Victorian Handmade Lace and Utopian Consumption."
Also in this cluster, read "Race, Postcards, and the Visual Politics of Chinese Indenture in the South African Gold Mines,” by Ge Tang.
The cluster includes “Staging Exploration: Kalulu, Kadu, and the Lectures of Henry Morgan Stanley,” by Brian H. Murray, and “Toward a Poetics of the Plantationocene: British Plantations and Sinophone Rubber Literature,” by Tianyun Ha.
The “Race and Global Victorian Studies” cluster in our 67.3 issue is open access! Read here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/56184
Stay tuned for our final 67.3 feature, "Race and Global Victorian Studies."
Our "Media" cluster also features "Spotting Rossetti in the Newspaper: A Proposal for 'Neuro-Genre,'" by Francesca Colonnese, and "Algorhythmics and Media Concepts: Ada Lovelace's Notes to 'Sketch of the Analytical Engine,'" by Roger Whitson.
67.3's cluster, "Media," includes Damian Sutton's essay, "1865: Cartes de Visite, the Lincoln Conspiracy, and the Evolution of Transnational Imagination." Sutton examines how artistic representations of Jack Sheppard influenced American "cartomania" in the context of the Lincoln assassination.
Read the article here: muse.jhu.edu/article/928562, and learn more about the prize here: incsscholars.org/competitions...
Congrats to Sebastian Lund for receiving the 2025 INCS Richard Stein Essay Prize for his article, “The Climate of Utopia: H. G. Wells and Victorian Hothouses,” published in the 65.4 issue of Victorian Studies!
Finally, Guy Beiner's essay “Memorability in an Age of Memorialization: The Great Famine and Remembrance of ‘Events’ in Victorian Ireland" continues the section's analysis of memory and Victorian political events.
Also in Political Events, read “The 1857 Uprising: A Global Imperial Event?,” by Porscha Fermanis and “A Myth Besieged: How Indian Political Violence Transformed a Popular Genre of British Fiction,” by Robert Jenkins.
In our recent issue, read Casie LeGette’s “Remembering the Morant Bay Rebellion with Claude McKay,” which compares McKay’s “George William Gordon to the Oppressed Natives” with his well-known “If We Must Die,” first published in _The Liberator_ in 1919.
Our latest special issue is hot off the press and live on Project Muse! 📬🎉 67.3 contains essays from @navsa.bsky.social's 2024 conference and covers three essay clusters: Political Events, Race and Global Victorian Studies, and Media. Read here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/issue/...
You may know of Charles Dickens’s 𝘈 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘭, but are you familiar with 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘔𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵’𝘴 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯? Add spookiness to this holiday season by reading Helen Groth’s article, “Reading Victorian Illusions: Dickens's Haunted Man and Dr. Pepper's ‘Ghost’”
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Is the winter weather inspiring you to pick up a good book and revamp your reading habits? Check out the article linked below from VS Volume 61.4 on Victorian reading practices inspired by authors John Henry Newman and the pictured Christina Rossetti, whose 195th birthday is tomorrow!
November 20th is Universal Children’s Day, a day that promotes the welfare of children. Check out Marjorie Stone’s article from 62.4 where she discusses Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s advocacy for the suffering children of the Victorian working-class.⬇️
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67.2 Article Spotlight:
Join Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson in her article “Pieced Together: Scrapbooks, Imperial Archives, and the Many Lives of Mermanjan,” as she draws on different sets of “historiographical and theoretical texts" to answer a series of important questions.
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67.2 Article Spotlight: Ahoy! Matthew P. M. Kerr’s article “Head-Chowder: Kipling’s Wasteless Waters” examines the relevance of Victorian literature to modern day maritime waste studies through the lens of Rudyard Kipling’s 𝐶𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑢𝑠. Batten down the hatches and heave-ho to the link below!
67.2 Essay Spotlight: “Aging and Generations in Margaret Oliphant’s Fiction”
Reimagine the utilization of terms like “Baby-Boomer” and “Millennial” by reading Helen Kingstone’s essay on nineteenth-century ideas of generation in the work of Margaret Oliphant (1828-97): muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...