Victorian Web

The little Faun by the icy-looking waters seems to be watching the fluffed-up birds that perch near him, on the bare branches of an overhanging tree.

"The Beautiful is Fled," by Charles Sims (1873-1928), c.1900: "the Faun, usually associated with Idyllic classicism, shivering in a bleak English river landscape" (Hilary Morgan). But the #birds are are so endearing, all the same! www.victorianweb.org/painting/sim...

Cover of an issue of La Fronde. It looks like a torn back newspaper that reveals a white woman sat pensively at a desk.

Photo of Marguerite Durand. She is a white woman with dark hair.

#OnThisDay, 9 Dec 1897, Marguerite Durand founds 'La Fronde', a French feminist newspaper written entirely by women.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #FrenchHistory 🗃️

CFP: The Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities (JURH) (Submission Deadline: 2/9/26) navsa.org/News/13571281

Colonel Sibthorpe's Elms

open.spotify.com/show/15ja783...

@victorianweb.bsky.social Love the cover art!

Rather a wiry man with a beard, smartly dressed, gesturing as he stands behind a small, quaint table on a platform.

#Dickens on stage at Boston's Tremont Temple, in December 1867. Would like to have been there when he "walked briskly onto the platform in his evening tail-coat with its lapels faced in satin," and started his readings! victorianweb.org/authors/dick...

Christopher Whall's early C20th windows in Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, were one of my personal highlights of 2025.

Colours, texture, draperies, feathers, quarries, all heavenly. @churchartnature.bsky.social @carolineirwin3.bsky.social

Great man of history: Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, Sage of Chelsea, instigated foundation of The London Library; born #OTD 1795.
Portrait of the Carlyles at home in Chelsea painted in 1857 by Robert Scott Tait.
Carlyle’s House Chelsea, National Trust

For day three of our Artist Advent Calendar, poetry and a picture. William Morris & the beautiful ‘Meeting in Winter’ manuscript, from ‘Book of Verse’, made for Georgiana Burne-Jones, 1870. ❄️

For more content and to join our community, become a member of the society- www.pre-raphaelitesociety.org/

🎄 Want to give something special this Christmas? Share the gift of Victorian Society membership!

Members get a year of priority event access, discounts for selected events, and a subscription to The Victorian magazine. As the donor, we'll be thanking you with links to 3 online recorded lectures.

Oh dear, we do quite a variety of work in! Fine if you like rabbit holes, but not so good if you're busy!!

Hand-stitched and appliquéd quilt with red stars in sqaures on a yellow background, and a large central star.

#Winter! Time to snuggle up under a nice warm #quilt! This is Trooper Pearson's quilt: it was quite a "thing" for men to make quilts in the Crimean War, especially if they'd been tailors, as he had been. This is in Auckland now--a fascinating story! victorianweb.org/history/crim...

New Woman writer, George Egerton (pen-name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, link in "What's New")

Rather provocative cover of one of her books.

#Didyouknow that we have a regularly updated "What's New" page? Before December displaces it, do take a look at November's additions—conference announcements, book reviews, art history, new women fiction (see images below), etc. Too much to summarise! victorianweb.org/misc/whatsne...

A young woman stands among wintry trees, her classical robes billowing out behind her, and tall plants in the foreground blown backwards by the same gusty wind.

#Winter... "The Advent of Winter," by Frederick Sandys, 1866, striking the right note for the season with an early Art Nouveau flourish in those billowing draperies... victorianweb.org/art/illustra... #illustration #artnouveau

A square encloses three circles with motifs of stars and leaping tongues of flame, gilded against a dark background

Did you know #Rossetti also designed book covers? Simon Cooke discusses a variety of examples—here's his striking design for his brother's 1865 translation of Dante, suitably cosmic and iconographic victorianweb.org/art/design/b... #art #design #books

It shows a troubled Jesus being comforted by angels when he is being beset by the devil: "Ministering in the Wilderness" -- the feathery wings enclose the scene protectively.

This part of the Reyntiens Angel Window in Southwell Minster, Notts (courtesy of Peter Hildebrand), makes a great advert for Pt 2 of the Visual Theology "Beauty and Faith" conference next May (abstracts due 11 Jan!!). www.victorianweb.org/religion/con... See our whole list of #cfps!

Snap of a book titled Female Printmakers, printsellers, and print publishers in the eighteenth century: the imprint of women c. 1700-1830

A little treat on my day off, because I deserve it 💚

And somewhere there, possibly just at the extreme left of the painting, was the celebrated #TurkishBaths, at what was then number 11, Leinster Street, where James Joyce's Leopold Bloom had a warm bath, not having time for a Turkish one. www.victorianturkishbath.org/_3TOPICS/Ato... 🗃️ #C19th

‘A woman actually voted!’: Lily Maxwell and the Manchester by-election of November 1867 - The History of Parliament More than half a century before the partial enfranchisement of women in 1918, Lily Maxwell, a Manchester shopkeeper, cast a parliamentary vote. Dr Kathryn Rix

#OnThisDay 1867 Lily Maxwell cast her vote at a by-election in Manchester, despite women being excluded from the parliamentary franchise. Find out more here: historyofparliament.com/2025/03/14/l...

Portrait of Queen Victoria on the front cover of an issue.

Eliza Lynn-Linton, quite elderly, sitting in an elaborately carved high-backed chair, with a heavy curtain on one side and the leaves of tall house-plants on the other--very Victorian!

We have a fascinating series on women journalists in the Lady's Pictorial, contributed by Philip Jackson. The second series was published #OnThisDay 1893, and featured a portrait of the prolific journalist, and novelist too, Eliza Lynn-Linton victorianweb.org/periodicals/...

On the Origin of Species: landmark work published #OTD 1859 by Charles Darwin, influential English naturalist, geologist and pioneer of evolutionary theory.
Portrait 1830’s by George Richmond
Bodleian Library @bodleian.ox.ac.uk
@tomgauld.bsky.social | @newscientist.com

YouTube video by Research Society for Victorian Periodicals How to Get Published in Academic Journal

📽️ The recording from our widely popular #RSVPDigiEvent "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal" is now live. We had a record-breaking 101 registrants for this panel! Since we did not quite hit that number in attendance, we know many will be interested to watch/re-watch: youtu.be/sP5Y1iicKJ0

White church with tal slender spire, standing out against a blue sky with swirls of cloud, between banks of foliage, a small churchyard at the east.

St Margaret treading down the serpent but looking very demure and calm, with a blue and red cloak over a green garment, the whole lancet bordered in a bright blue with floral motifs.

Here's a very fine steeple for Sunday -- St Margaret's, "The Marble Church," Bodelwyddan, Clwyd, in Wales (architect, John Gibson). And here's St Margaret herself, in one of the windows. #stainedglass victorianweb.org/victorian/ar...
(photo: Colin Price)

Young woman in red, leaning on a blue-and-white tiled fireplace against a tapestry background, reading a book, with a cat sitting on the rug beside her

Our #art historian Dennis T. Lanigan is working on Walter Crane, and here's Crane's #painting of his wife soon after their marriage, with the #cat completing the picture of domestic bliss! (Credit: Leeds Art Gallery) victorianweb.org/painting/cra...

A lone woman in a shawl carrying a basket in a white hilly landscape, with the sky glowing palely yellow ahead, casting the same light on a hill close by. It is a path though... footmarks can be seen along the route she follows. Colour is all, here.

Chilly, chilly, chilly! Though not quite as chilly as Atkinson Grimshaw's haunting figure in this mysteriously empty winter landscape! victorianweb.org/painting/gri... #painting

God revealing his powers to Job, with scenes of the creation to be marvelled at: a striking book cover.

Do read our recent #review of Denae Dyck's "Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination"! It's by Taten Shirley, & here's William #Blake's wonderful "When the morning stars sang together" on the cover, a brilliant choice victorianweb.org/religion/rev...

Paolo and Francesca by Alexander Munro Preserving a moment in marble

More close looking at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's
Pre-Raphaelite works, this time thinking about Alexander Munro's Paolo and Francesca serenatrowbridge.substack.com/p/paolo-and-...
@preraphaelitesoc.bsky.social #preraphaelite #art #sculpture #dante #nineteenthcentury #birmingham

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

Good to see the problems facing our colleagues @britishlibrary.bsky.social being raised here by @hetanshah.bsky.social (of @britishacademy.bsky.social). If this had happened in France it would be considered a national problem to be urgently addressed! www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Award: Sally Mitchell Prize (Submission Deadline: 12/1/25) navsa.wildapricot.org/News/13564135

Rows of crisscrossing slanted squares separating intricate patterns of golden flowers and foliage in studded circular frames.

Wonderful #Tiles in the chancel at St Oswald's, Ashbourne, part of the refitting by George Gilbert Scott. Such intricate patterns, & a fascinating study of them by Rita Wood! victorianweb.org/art/design/c...

The first council of Queen Victoria 1838, by Sir David Wilkie, Scottish artist born #OTD 1785; known for Scottish genre scenes loved by Sir Walter Scott, he was Principal Painter in Ordinary to William IV & Queen Victoria, and first to sketch her likeness as reigning monarch.
Royal Collections Trust