Welcome to the VictorianVoices.net blog! Join me every week (or so) for fascinating inside glimpses of Victorian life, from the elegance of the finest drawing rooms to the dismal surroundings of a debtor's prison.
But, you say, VictorianVoices.net has been online since 2009, so why launch a blog now? The answer lies in a book. In 2024, Pen and Sword Books asked me to author the Victorian volume in their ongoing "How to Survive" series, and I spent the next 12 months laboring over How to Survive in Victorian Britain. (It was definitely a labor of love.) By the time I technically "finished" the book, I realized I wasn't really finished at all. There was still so much more to say, so much more to explore about Victorian life - and this seems to be the most logical place to say it!
My goal in these coming columns is to encourage a better understanding of what the Victorian world was truly like, both in Britain and America. There is a vast amount of misinformation about the Victorian era floating around the Web, and I hope to try to counter at least a bit of that. There are also a great many misperceptions about what Victorian life, and people, were like - often fostered by writers who have a particular agenda to promote. And there are loads of myths just itching to be busted.
More importantly, however, I hope to show the many ways in which the Victorian world intersects with our own. The Victorian era isn't really "over." It is the foundation of our modern world (and keep in mind that Victorians thought they were living in the first truly modern world). The Victorian age has played a major role in shaping the world we live in. Victorian technologies, social changes, and daily customs are still very much a part of our daily, 21st century lives. Our society is formed on the foundation of Victorian inventions, our lives inspired by Victorian thought and creativity. Many of our most important social and charitable movements today are founded on Victorian efforts to correct the injustices of their own era. In short, you might be surprised at how old the origins are of our "brave new world."
A lot of the misinformation floating around the Web (and elsewhere) relates to the lives of Victorian women. Victorian women seem to inspire nearly as much controversy today as they did in the 1800's! Victorian women were involved in some of the most interesting bits of the Victorian world - fashion, etiquette, home management, managing (or being) the servants, social life, and, of course, the issues of education and employment. (I'd include "voting" here except that this was one area that wasn't going to be resolved until well into the 20th century.) You'll probably see quite a lot about women's issues in the columns to come.
I've said that there's a lot of misinformation out there, so how can you be sure there won't be a lot of misinformation in here? I won't pretend that I'll always "get it right." However, with over 12,000 primary source articles already posted on VictorianVoices.net (and several thousand more that I hope to get posted in the next year), I've got a lot of "experts" on Victorian life in my corner to help me out!
If variety is the spice of life, it's also surely the spice of blogs. So I hope to offer an exciting and eclectic mix of posts in the months (years?) to come, including the usual natterings by me, book reviews, guest blogs from authors and other experts, and some Victorian "guest posts" that are as relevant today as when they were written over 100 years ago. I'll also be using this space to let you know about additions to the website (as I said, I have several thousand new articles that I hope to get posted over the next year), as well as when the Victorian Times magazine comes out each month.
The VictorianVoices.net blog will come out every two weeks, for now; I hope to make it weekly (or very nearly so) before too long. So if you love Victoriana, don't risk missing a post! Click the "subscribe" button in the right-hand column to sign up for my very brief newsletter, which will keep you "posted" on the latest blog, as well as on Victorian Times. (If you're already a VT subscriber, there's no need to sign up again; you'll now automatically get blog post notifications as well.) Join me for an ongoing tour of a past era that is still shaping our future!
|
|
Discover thousands of Victorian images in our 