Conducted by Barbara Onslow
designed for my past and present students, especially the part-timers. I post, not the solid course material appropriate to internal university websites, but those "Tit-Bits" of information which make studying Victorian literature and culture such fun.
I am developing the site so that it reflects the eclectic style of popular Victorian magazines, as well as drawing on their rich content. I am not attempting to publish a new issue every month. Instead there will be additions and alterations to existing pages, new pages added and, occasionally others withdrawn, according to their seasonal topicality, and the current emphasis of my work. Some of this material will be held in the new Archive pages, which will also contain notes on any items that have been withdrawn from the site. There is some emphasis on Victorian women's magazines and the work of Victorian women journalists.
In one respect I am unashamedly "un-Victorian" in sticking to sans-serif fonts which are easier on the eye on a screen.
P.S. If you are among the many visitors from all over the world who arrived here by search engine, or even "by accident" looking for something else - a warm welcome too! I hope you leave us either edified or entertained, or both, and plan to visit again; and do feel free to contact me with any relevant question whether or not you are a student.
CHANGES TO THIS HOME PAGE
CHANGES TO THIS HOME PAGE
Image of a Fairy Godmother working changes in a heading decoration to the Household Hints section of a cheap woman's magazine of 1895
Since I set up Victorian Page in late June 2007, the number of additional pages made the length of this Home Page unwieldy. The separate Contents Page now shows in detail the topics on each page. An important feature is the list of links to incidental paragraphs. For instance, although I have not yet set up a page dealing with the magazine genres Competitions and Promotions, there are two paragraphs illustrating different kinds of magazine competitions on two separate pages. Among topics included in the list are the "New Woman" (4 items) and "Crime" (2 items). Previous visitors to this site can also check on the Contents Page what has been moved into the Archive.
You can get an overview of pages from the Menu Bar on the left-hand side of each page of this site, but please note that there are sub-pages to some Menu items. For example by clicking "Ladies' Page" you are taken to that page and the sub-menu then reveals buttons for other pages, currently covering Victorian advice on beautiful hair and cosmetics, and some aspects of Victorian fashions.
You can get an overview of pages from the Menu Bar on the left-hand side of each page of this site, but please note that there are sub-pages to some Menu items. For example by clicking "Ladies' Page" you are taken to that page and the sub-menu then reveals buttons for other pages, currently covering Victorian advice on beautiful hair and cosmetics, and some aspects of Victorian fashions.
Most pages in the main menu contain an introduction to the genre or topic as it features in Victorian magazines. See the Contents Page for further details, and the new Jottings Page for further background to new pages and additions.
CONTENTS PAGE - List of articles and topics on each page
EDITOR'S JOTTINGS - Notes, Comments and Snippets
FEATURES PAGES - Material of general interest
LADIES' PAGE - Fashion, Beauty, Home and Domestic concerns
LADIES' FEATURE PAGE - Variable - on any Ladies' Page topic
LITERATURE PAGE - Fiction, Poetry and Criticism
ADVERTISING PAGE- Victorian Advertisements
EDITOR'S MAILBAG - Readers' Correspondence & Contact Me
ARCHIVE PAGES - Access to "out-of-date" seasonal pages
NEW!
As the Editor's Mailbag is beginning to fill up I have started a new page - Victorian Agony Aunts - covering answers to readers' worries, and the Mailbag itself has a new introduction to Victorian Readers' Letters to the Editor. This is in addition to material added late last year - an intriguing puzzle from a correspondent in the Editor's Mailbag and a question of Victorian courtship and etiquette on the Agony Aunts page.
The Editor's Jottings page will from now on include any material directly addressed to present and former students, as well as other short items.
RECENT ADDITIONS
Victorian fashion journalism - In addition to Sam and Isabella Beeton's pioneering work in bringing high fashion to the British middle classes on the Ladies' Page - Fashion
I have now included material on the treatment of fashion in the cheap weekly papers of the 1890s. The article on Rational Dress for sporting activities, which focuses on the increasing popularity of "knickerbockers", has now been completed.
For garden lovers there is new material on Victorian bulb-growing -especially hyacinths- and some examples of the Language of Flowers in Late Summer Gardening. This has been removed to the Archive but is fully accessible. Most recently I have also included - especially for flower arrangers - the the rather complicated instructions for using Mr Tye's Hyacinth Bottle (see Ladies' page feature on Gardens).
As the Editor's Mailbag is beginning to fill up I have started a new page - Victorian Agony Aunts - covering answers to readers' worries, and the Mailbag itself has a new introduction to Victorian Readers' Letters to the Editor. This is in addition to material added late last year - an intriguing puzzle from a correspondent in the Editor's Mailbag and a question of Victorian courtship and etiquette on the Agony Aunts page.
The Editor's Jottings page will from now on include any material directly addressed to present and former students, as well as other short items.
Victorian fashion journalism - In addition to Sam and Isabella Beeton's pioneering work in bringing high fashion to the British middle classes on the Ladies' Page - Fashion
I have now included material on the treatment of fashion in the cheap weekly papers of the 1890s. The article on Rational Dress for sporting activities, which focuses on the increasing popularity of "knickerbockers", has now been completed.
The image above shows a detail from one of the illustrations on the new Victorian Fashion page - a plate from the 1870s. Others are taken from the previous two decades.
There are also additions to the article on Victorian hairstyles and hair treatments, and that on Victorian Cosmetics.
There are also additions to the article on Victorian hairstyles and hair treatments, and that on Victorian Cosmetics.
COMING SOON!
I am currently planning a feature on Victorian travel articles. Both this and the promised additions to the Christmas Supplement and the Gardening pages have been delayed. Apology and explanation on Editor's Jottings.
I am currently planning a feature on Victorian travel articles. Both this and the promised additions to the Christmas Supplement and the Gardening pages have been delayed. Apology and explanation on Editor's Jottings.
FOOTNOTES
A solecism on the web - but an academic prop - so I'll compromise by leaving out the numbers.
"Conducted by" was the term used by some Victorian magazines rather than "Edited by". In referring to correspondence, however, "Editor" was almost always preferred.
Tit-Bits was the title of a highly popular magazine run by Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe).
"Victorian" for my purposes is used to refer to what some historians term "the long nineteenth century" approx 1790-1914. The majority of the content will fall strictly within the years of Queen Victoria's reign, but for certain topics those dates are too restrictive.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON IMAGES AND REFERENCES
IMAGES: This is a personal free website, not a subscription one, so if you know my slide lectures please don't expect the same high quality reproduction of images! The slides are produced professionally; and whilst I may occasionally use one here, my aims on Victorian Page are simply to offer additional material which adequately illustrates particular points in the articles, and to add a bit of Victorian decoration to break up the text. Should you, however, for any reason make use of an image from this site please follow the guidelines under the COPYRIGHT note below.
REFERENCES: Students working on essays or dissertations may be surprised to see that I haven't included detailed references to my primary sources. This is because of my concern about inadvertent plagiarism from websites which contain short quotations and extracts, as this one does. If you read an entire essay on line and find an appropriate quotation for yourself that is one thing; but, if detailed references are included in a collection of short extracts it is all too easy to "lift" a telling sentence or paragraph which cost the author much time and trouble to find, and pass it off as the result of your own library researches. So if you do happen upon something useful for your assignment here you should find a guideline to my source for you to follow up, or alternatively you may cite this website. See COPYRIGHT NOTE below.
COPYRIGHT
I do not knowingly publish on this site any material in copyright for which I have not obtained permission. Should I have done so inadvertently please inform me so that the material can be removed. See Editor's Mailbag for contact details.
Unless otherwise stated Barbara Onslow is the author of and holds the copyright of the articles published on this site. Readers are free to use material for personal and private, but not commercial, uses on the following conditions.
Use of it in typed, printout or written forms should be acknowledged by quoting the author, date accessed and website.
Use of it on a non-commercial website should give a link to this page.
Thank you for respecting the work of others.
Barbara
Onslow is a writer and lecturer. She began her career as a journalist but has taught in the college
and university sector for many years, latterly at the University of Reading. She is the author of Women of the Press in Nineteenth Century Britain (Macmillan/Palgrave
2000) and numerous articles, reviews and encyclopedia entries on
subjects in her specialist field - Victorian magazines and their women
contributors. Most recently she has contributed a substantial number of entries to the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism. She is a member of the Society of Authors. Details of lecturing, writing and research she undertakes are included in her profile on their listing of authors.
CONTACT ME via this link
The design at the top of each page is taken from an engraving of the New Printing Press at the office of The Times newspaper c. 1860; the caption-free images marking the Christmas supplement are based on larger illustrations in the Supplement itself, and the others are from a woman's magazine of 1872.
© The contents of this website Barbara Onslow June 2007
This website last updated May 20th 2009 Visitors to this Home Page