Entrance Hall to Cardiff Free Library.

Floor & wall tiles, with designs for the four seasons by the Victorian illustrator & artist Walter Crane.

Produced by Maw & Co. 1882

The building is now Museum of Cardiff.

#TilesOnTuesday

Oriental pattern with green and blue colours, and white flower heads within the patterning

William De Morgan's design for tiles, with some filled in with watercolour, the sort of pattern he used so spectacularly at Leighton House (from the V@A collections)
victorianweb.org/art/design/d...

Monochrome engraving of the boats approaching Hammersmith Bridge neck-and-neck!

If you enjoyed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat-Race earlier this month, you might like to compare it with the #Victorian ones: this is what it looked like in 1877, when it was, amazingly, a dead-heat! victorianweb.org/history/spor... #sports

Front cover with an illustration of a fiery Dickens, perhaps in the very active of performing... or just imagining!

Dickens on stage, reading to a spellbound audience

Ah, the dynamic author! Despite noting that depth is apt to be sacrificed to breadth in this wide-ranging study, our reviewer, Philip Allingham, can't help falling under the spell of Mark Conrad's "#Dickens The Enchanter"! victorianweb.org/authors/dick...

Mudie's Select Circulating Library lay at the heart of the Victorian publishing system. Karen Wade's site, now at a new URL, makes it possible to explore the library's catalogues as never before, with an index of 22,000 novels by 6000 authors. curatr.ucd.ie/mudies/
#victorian #bookhistory

#BookWormSat Thomas Hood's book length poem, with illustrations by Herbert Railton, 'The Haunted House' (1895) earned praise from Poe, especially the stanza 'O'er all there hung a shadow & a fear, A sense of mystery, the spirit daunted, And said as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is Haunted.'

It shows a photograph of Isabella Bird

Did you know?

In the Victorian era, Isabella Bird defied nearly every expectation placed upon women.

Plagued by chronic illness, she was not expected to live a particularly adventurous life. Strangely, her doctors prescribed travel as a remedy for her ailments.

#Victorian #historian

6:30pm TODAY on @BBCRadio4Extra

From 2023, Omnibus 📻 “A Tomb with a View”

The 2020 book “A Tomb With a View – The Stories & Glories of Graveyards” by Peter Ross, abridged by Anna Magnusson

Read by Andy Clark

#BookchatWeekly #BookwormSat #BookSky

This is extremely useful--could save many trips to big libraries.

Victorian street scene with terraced housing & a corner shop.

Victorian postbox.

Victorian postbox.

The street scene has been recreated with relocated preserved buildings.

Ulster Folk Museum, Cultra, Belfast

#PostboxSaturday

Let's not leave The Mayor of @london.gov.uk decision to chance! Write to Sir Sadiq Khan now to ask him to refuse the plans for Liverpool Street Station.

Information on writing your own letter here:
bit.ly/4844PBo

Thanks to Richard Morrison and The Times for the article.
bit.ly/4sLuExA

"The Birth of Sita" from a relief by John Lockwood Kipling, one of the illustrations here (the baby Sita emerged from a furrow during ploughing)

Wilde in 1876, looking dapper as a young man in checked jacket, waistcoat and suit, with hat and high-collared shirt

Greatly enjoyed this new piece on "Oscar Wilde, Traveller to Italy; Admirer of India," by Rita Severi of the University of Verona, with its material from Wilde's editorship of "The Women's World" www.victorianweb.org/authors/wild...

Two women in woodland carpeted by buebells, one sitting, the other standing, both apparently lost in reverie amid the sea of dappled blue

Such a lovely note to end on: "Bluebells" (1899) was Sir Laurence Alma Tadema's last completed painting victorianweb.org/painting/tad...

Britannia stands on the steps of the gallery as portraits of famous people (Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, etc) are brought in, apparently by themselves, one of them crushing its occupant!

The new National Portrait Gallery opened to the public on 4 April 1896, and #onthisday that year Linley Sambourne greeted it warmly in this Punch #cartoon: "Welcome! Come in, Ladies and Gentlemen! Glad to give you a decent roof over your heads at last!" victorianweb.org/periodicals/...

A tiny nymph sits demurely in the curved stem of the bluebell, which flowers around her

Plaster relief, "Bluebell," 1836, by Richard Westmacott, Jr (1799-1872)--praised in The Art Journal for its "flowing wavy grace" victorianweb.org/sculpture/we...
#sculpture #flowers #spring Bluebells are just coming out into full flower now!

This is a very interesting read, and the story of horses and politics continues with our own 19th century take: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2023/02/10/t...

It shows a photograph of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson studying.

Did you know?

In the Victorian era, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became Britain’s first qualified female doctor by exploiting a loophole in the medical system.

Women were barred from attending medical schools, so she pursued her education privately.

#Victorian #history

Horse and large-wheeled contraption being driven flat out

Muybridge giving a talk in front of one of his projected images, on the cover of the Illustrated London News

Born in Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey #OnThisDay 1830, Eadweard James Muybridge, famous for having captured the earliest scenes of horses and other animals (including humans) in motion. victorianweb.org/photos/muybr...
#photography #film

Memorial stone carved by Thomas Woolner in 1851, the year after Wordsworth died, with his profile, and flowers on each side of it.

Celandines on a sunny bank, bright yellow amidst the little green leaves

Can't let the day go without remembering that #Wordsworth was born #OTD 1770. One of the flowers carved on his memorial stone would be the celandine, which is out now: "There is a flower that shall be mine, /
'Tis the little Celandine." victorianweb.org/sculpture/wo...

The young woman, a basket of flowers over one arm, looks lovingly down at the baby held on her other hip, beautifuly dressed in a white gown and lacy bonnet. The pair are dappled by sunlight.

James Jebusa Shannon's touching portrait of a flower-girl with her baby--he'd spotted her on the sea-front at Eastbourne. The picture, of 1900, caused a sensation at the Academy; it was bought by the Chantrey Bequest, and hung in the Tate victorianweb.org/painting/sha...

The risen Jesus moves back a little as an awestruck Mary Magdalene, still holding her anointing pot, raises a hand towards him.

Wishing a Happy #Easter to all who celebrate, with this lovely Noli Me Tangere window (attributed to) Jean-Baptiste Capronnier, after 1884, at St Paul's, Heslington, Yorkshire (photo: Rita Wood). victorianweb.org/art/stainedg... #stainedglass

The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Sulphur: London: Smith, Elder, 1844 [i.e. 1843-1846] http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40020102

The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Sulphur: London: Smith, Elder, 1844 [i.e. 1843-1846] (source: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40020102 #nature #illustration #art

A.W. N Pugin intended St Giles church in Cheadle to be 'a perfect revival of an English church of the time of Edward I.' In the east end of the church is the ‘Easter Sepulchre’ inspired by the Mediaeval founder's tomb at Hawton in Nottinghamshire.

Photo: Michael Garlick, CC by SA 2.0

#Easter

It shows an illustration of people walking while crowds watch. One competitor is shown having his sweat wiped with a sponge.

Also:

The atmosphere inside these events could feel almost theatrical.

Music played, vendors sold refreshments, and spectators watched for signs of collapse or sudden bursts of energy.

The conditions were punishing.

#Victorian #walking #history

Downloadable Resource | Irish Folklore and Fairy tales in the Work of WB Yeats

🧚 Are you interested in Irish Folklore, and Fairy tales in the Work of #WBYeats?

This #downloadable resource introduces students to primary and secondary sources from the #Yeats collection at the @NLIreland: www.nli.ie/learn/downloadable-resou...

A picturesque house with several chimneys and a gabled roof, by a country lane--a labourer is walking along the lane carrying a pitchfork. An idyllic old-world country scene.

Charles and Catherine Dickens (formerly, Hogarth) spent their week-long honeymoon here at Chalk House, Kent, immediately after their wedding at St Luke's, Chelsea #Onthisday 1836 victorianweb.org/painting/has...

A rocket with several compartments speeding through space to a huge moon....

It seemed like fantasy once! A rocket making for the moon, an illustration from Simon Cooke's essay on early "science romance" victorianweb.org/art/illustra... #MoonMission

5 figures in three compartments, resting, bearing and picking grapes from the vines. The last person, seated, waits to pay the labourers.

Died #OTD 1949, the sculptor Margaret Giles, whose bas-relief, "Labourers in the Vineyard," can be seen in Regent's University, London. As with faith, so with studies: it's never too late to reap the rewards of labour! victorianweb.org/sculpture/gi...
#sculpture

A small girl, barefoot, smilingly holding up some picked wildflowers, gathered in her smock.

"A Spring Nosegay" by Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793-1872)
"Recognition was ever-present during her life, but has been sadly absent since her death." victorianweb.org/painting/car... #womensart #painting

Adult goats and their young living precariously in the rocky landscape, with two rabbits in the corner among some greenery

An illustration by the artist Jemima Blackburn: "The High Hills are a refuge for the Wild Goats; and the Rocks for the Conies" (Psalm CIV, 18). Among Blackburn's friends were Landseer, Ruskin & Millais victorianweb.org/art/illustra... #womensart #illustration #animalart