Late Victorian England Research Articles

Shareholders and Shareholding: The Case of the Football Company in Late Victorian England

The early commercialisation of association football in England reached its zenith in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This involved not only the introduction of professionalism among...

"A Thoughtful and Experienced Physician": William Munk and the Care of the Dying in Late Victorian England

William Munk (1816-1898) qualified as a physician in 1837 and practiced in London for more than 60 years. Munk became well known in the medical profession during the second half of the nineteenth century for his emphasis on the importance of narcotics for the relief of pain in incurable disease and was also a recognized authority on smallpox. In addition to his medical practice Munk was the Harveian Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians for almost 40 years and, among other biographical works, single-handedly produced the Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London 1518-1700. His most significant clinical publication, Euthanasia, or Medical Treatment in Aid of an Easy Death, appeared toward the end of his career and was enthusiastically received by the medical and nursing professions. This paper gives a more detailed account of Munk's life and work than has yet appeared and focuses in particular on the contents and contemporary influence of his important late nineteenth century treatise on the care of the dying.

GE0RGE GISSING'S AMBIVALENT REALISM

In this essay I examine one author's peculiar struggle with the implications and expectations of realism in �ction. In late-Victorian England, George Gissing was at the epicenter of the debates about realism in the novel; for many of his contemporaries he was the archetypal writer of realist �ction. His novels seemed to rely on the grim detail and un�inching techniques associated with that school, and in his criticism he returned constantly to the question of "the place of realism in �ction" (the title of an essay he wrote in 1895). But Gissing never reached a stable verdict on the subject. In his masterpiece, New Grub Street (1891), one of his destitute writer-�gures is nicknamed "the Realist" and preaches "an absolute realism"; in the ruthless world of Gissing's modern Grub Street, the catchword is almost everywhere. What is so odd about the novel is how Gissing's portraits of aspiring realists vacillate between genuine sympathy and merciless satire. Sometimes Gissing seems to identify with those who subscribe to a platform of late-Victorian realism; at other times he appears to mock the whole ridiculous affair. New Grub Street effectively dramatizes Gissing's ambivalence about the workings and purposes of realism in the novel. In this essay I study his vexed attitude by considering New Grub Street in relation to Gissing's Augustan satirical precursors, the response to his �ction in the 1890s, and his own critical writings from the era, especially his extensive commentary on Charles Dickens.

Political Life in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury

Political Life in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury

A spiritual leader? Cambridge zoology, mountaineering and the death of F.M. Balfour

Frank Balfour was regarded by his colleagues as one of the greatest biologists of his day and Charles Darwin’s successor, yet the young aristocrat died in a climbing accident before his thirty-first birthday. Reactions to his death reveal much about the image of science and scientists in late-Victorian Britain. In this paper I examine the development of the Cambridge school of animal morphology, headed by Balfour, and the interdependence of his research reputation and his charisma. Contemporaries praised his gentlemanly qualities, making his aristocratic background a part of his scientific character. Yet his reputation for good judgement and his abilities as a leader were severely tested when it began to emerge that the accident that killed Balfour and his guide might have been prevented. Nonetheless, the image of Balfour that emerges from his obituaries is that of a noble hero and outstanding scientist, who lived on in the memories of all who knew him.

‘Imperial Monumental Halls and Tower’: Westminster Abbey and the Commemoration of Empire, 1854–1904

Among the many remarkable changes of the last generation, none is more remarkable than the change in the political ideas uppermost in the minds of men… Today the words ‘Empire’ and ‘Imperialism’ fill the place in everyday speech that was once filled by ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationality’. In the never-ending struggle of political principles, authority rather than liberty seems for the moment to have the upper hand; power and dominion rather than freedom and independence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses; … the national ideal has given place to the Imperial.In March 1904 John Pollard Seddon (1827–1906) and Edward Beckitt Lamb (1857–1932) published an extraordinary scheme entitled ‘Imperial Monumental Halls and Tower at Westminster’. Though never built, it was among the grandest and most visionary proposals London had ever seen and, next to Giles Gilbert Scott’s Anglican cathedral at Liverpool (1904–79), one of the last monumental expressions of Gothic revival architecture in Britain. Designed to immortalize the achievement of the men and women who had laboured to promote and defend the nation’s imperial interests, it was conceived as a lasting testament to the enthusiasm for empire that characterized late Victorian and Edwardian Britain (Figs 1-2).

The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society, and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (review)

The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society, and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (review)

"Unfit for human consumption": tuberculosis and the problem of infected meat in late Victorian Britain.

By the 1890s, questions about tuberculous meat in Britain served to transform the issue of infected meat from an ill-defined to a concrete threat. Veterinarians, building on European inoculation (or transmission) experiments, played a prominent part in constructing the debate, with medical officers of health following. With the emergence of bacteriology in the 1880s, a consensus emerged about the dangers of tuberculous meat: Robert Koch's identification of the tubercle bacillus in 1882, and the connection he saw between bovine tuberculosis and the disease in man, provided confirmation of the disease's danger to man. It was from this point that veterinary and public health interests diverged. Whereas a general agreement had been reached, the extent of the problem remained open to doubt. Confusion revolved around two issues: the localization of infection, and the question of cooking. The latter was thought to make tuberculous meat "safe," as attention shifted to the problem of milk; whereas the former frustrated efforts to combat the sale of meat showing signs of infection.

"Some Imperial Institute": Architecture, Symbolism, and the Ideal of Empire in Late Victorian Britain, 1887-93

This article explores the relationship between architecture and imperial idealism in late Victorian Britain. It traces the development of the Imperial Institute in the South Kensington section of London from conception to completion, considering the proposals that surrounded the scheme in relation to the sociopolitical context within which it emerged. Sources such as letters, guidebooks, newspapers, journal articles, official publications, and government documents are drawn upon; from them an interpretation of the building is offered that moves beyond issues concerning style and patronage to broader cultural implications. The institute evolved as a consequence of the changing circumstances then affecting British foreign and imperial affairs, and commonly held beliefs relating to empire were reflected in the building's architecture. Analysis of the leading ideas that shaped the scheme formally and spatially reveals that the edifice was intended to stand literally as an emblem of the apparent strength and unity of the British empire. The importance of the institute as an architectural idea, therefore, lies not only in its attempt to give symbolic form to a concept of empire that was at the heart of late Victorian concerns, but also in the way it sought to mark and distinguish London as the center and capital of that empire.

Schizophrenia in late Victorian and Edwardian England

Schizophrenia in late Victorian and Edwardian England

‘Full of mercy and good fruits’

‘Full of mercy and good fruits’

English fairy tales; and, More English fairy tales

The first compilation of the full first-edition texts of the classic fairy tale collections by Joseph Jacobs, with Jacobs' original prefaces and annotations. In these two classic collections, first published in 1890 and 1894, Joseph Jacobs combined folklore, children's literature, and the eclectic scholarship of the Victorian era to create a storehouse of tales that inhabited the imaginations of children and adults for generations. Here readers first met Tom Tit Tot, Molly Whuppie, and Jack the Giant-Killer, and first read the stories of the Three Little Pigs, the Three Bears, and Henny-Penny. Jacobs' daring collections challenged conventional thinking about the meaning of folk, the individual artistry behind folktales, and the boundaries between folklore and literature, anticipating modern developments in folklore studies. His original editions of these 87 classic tales, along with the original illustrations, are reprinted in this new volume, offering readers an unsurpassed understanding of the development of the classic fairy tale in late Victorian England. Reprints Jacobs' original versions of these 87 classic tales exactly as they were first published more than a century ago Illustrated with the original block prints by John Batten

Katherine O'Donovan and Gerry R. Rubin, eds., Human Rights and Legal History: Essays in Honour of Brian Simpson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 321. $70.00 (ISBN 0–19–826496–8).

Katherine O'Donovan and Gerry R. Rubin, eds., Human Rights and Legal History: Essays in Honour of Brian Simpson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 321. $70.00 (ISBN 0–19–826496–8). - Volume 21 Issue 2

Österreich-Konzeptionen und jüdisches Selbstverständnis. Identitäts-Transfigurationen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. (Conditio Judaica 35) by Hanni Mittelmann, Armin A. Wallas

AUSTRIAN STUDIES, II, 2OO3 217 Take, for example, education. Gay's arresting chapter, 'Alibis forAggression', includes a well-differentiated analysis of institutionalized aggression, tracing the debates underlying the gradual decline in corporal punishment. But as a social institution, schools are only brieflymentioned, university and technical education virtually ignored. Did education really play somuch less significant a role in the making ofmiddle-class culture than neurosis? Maybe to the individual. But hardly to the societywhich it so changed. Similarly, although the (popular) press receives some attention, there is littleattempt to convey how the communications revolution changed human perceptions. Part of the problem lies in the difficulty of using Schnitzler's witness tomediate theflavour of generational difference. Schnitzler isa great synchronie, but not a diachronic medium. And he isquintessentially a figure of the lateVictorian bourgeoisie, not of theEuropean orAmerican bourgeoisie per se.He simply lacks that 'representative' quality which thatgreat scholar ofVictorian England, G. M. Young, saw invested in those diverse 'exemplary' figures and texts which could allow his 200-page Portrait of an Age (1936) to distinguish so acutely between early-, mid- or late-Victorian Britain. 'Middle-class culture' as described here excludes many of the achievements and contradictions of the 'bourgeois century'. The problem lies not in the book, but in its subtitle. 'Schnitzler's Century' is a searching and original study of the human being and writer Arthur Schnitzler and of the insightswhich each can offer the student of later-nineteenth-century bourgeois culture. Trinity College Dublin Eda Sagarra ?sterreich-Konzeptionen und j?disches Selbstverst?ndnis. Identit?ts-Transfigurationen imig. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ed. byHanni Mittelmann and Armin A. Wallas. (Conditio Judaica 35). T?bingen: Niemeyer. 2001. 329 pp. 56,00. isbn 3-484-65135-0. Why was the situation of theJews inAustria, inparticular the loyaltyof theJews to theHabsburg Empire, so markedly different from their situation inGermany? Perhaps because there the so-called Jewish Question' was only one of a number of 'national' questions in a multi-national framework, and the severity of any antagonism thus became somewhat diffused; perhaps because the Habsburg authorities favoured Jews as a Germanizing influence, possibly the only true Staatsvolk of the eastern crownlands. Such questions and hypothetical answers informthedeliberations in thepresent volume. The diversity and mixture of cultural and linguistic orientations were immensely rich in theHabsburg Empire before 1918, and in this respect underscore the great attraction of intercultural visions; at the same time, however, theAustrian experience also highlights the resistance to interculturality and itscollapse (cf. 'Introduction', pp. 7-8.). Appropriately, thevolume opens with two informative and considered articles on the liberal era and the patterns ofJewish assimilation in themultinational context of the time. If thischaracterized thepolitical background to a potentially productive symbiosis, then 'Vienna 1900' certainly saw an unleashing of creativity which stretched from the literary and artistic, the scientific and psychoanalytical, to the musical and to aspects of popular culture (with its subtle subtexts thematizing the Austrian conditiojudaica, which Stephen Beller graphically adumbrates as the 'triumph of Jewish modernity' [p. 50] in his discussion of the 'Brautkleid mit 2l8 Reviews Rei?verschlu?' in the operetta Im wei?enR??t). Some of thefigures discussed in the various contributions on this defining period are Beer-Hofmann, Freud, Schiele, Schoenberg and Mahler. In subsequent articles the focus turns to Prague and the positions ofMauthner, Werfel, Brod and others in the nationality struggles of the Bohemian capital; then the perspective shifts to three figures ofMoravian-Jewish extraction; thence to Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, as promoters of the so-called Habsburg myth, and to the revolutionary counter-myths ofHugo Sonnenschein and Albert Ehrenstein. The subsequent three contributions address various aspects ofAustrian culture during theNazi period and itsremembrance, be it theportrayal of Mauthausen inpost-war literature,Austria-related poetry before and after 1945, or the attitude of an individual likeJosefWeinheber towards Austria and theReich. Articles on the 'Reconstruction of theVienna Jewish Community after 1945' and on the theatre landscape inpost-war Austria as a source fora re-emerging Austrian identityduring thatperiod extend the scope of thevolume firmlyinto thepost-1945 period. Here, the rapid politicization of theatreprogramming seems tohave delayed the chances of using thedramatic medium fora progressive and reflective departure by quite some decades. Of the...

Women and British Aestheticism, and: The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England (review)

In her account of women writers in A Room of One's Own (1929) Virginia Woolf, in keeping with the dominant note of literary history, leapt from George Eliot to her contemporaries, leaving a gap of over half a century. Recent years have seen the straightening of the record as the New Woman fiction that burgeoned in the closing years of the nineteenth century has been restored to history. But, as Talia Schaffer and Kathy Alexis Psomiades note in their illuminating introduction to Women and British Aestheticism, feminist scholars' preference for politically active texts—a criterion which New Woman fiction fulfils more obviously than the work of female aesthetes—has led to their overlooking the important part played by aestheticism in women's self-definition in the early twentieth century.

The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (review)

In Edwardian England eugenics was very topical. Guests at polite London dinner parties discussed the threat of the "unfit" and the virtues of the "lethal chamber." In Whitehall, Home Secretaries pondered the merits of sterilisation of "mental defectives" and by 1908 the massive Royal Commission into the Feeble-Minded, designed to answer questions about the nature of defectiveness and how to deal with this "threat," was under way. Given the volume of debate, and the important social policies that resulted from these deliberations, the relative lack of attention to the history of eugenics in Britain is surprising. There is a rich corpus of good articles, theses and chapters, and pioneering work by historians such as G. R. Searle, but in comparison to North America, where the historiography on eugenics is extensive, the volume of British work looks remarkably thin. Perhaps this state of affairs reflects the difference between a culture where sterilisation laws were enacted, and one where the campaign for sterilisation largely failed. Nevertheless why Britain preferred segregation to sterilisation is an important question, one that stands to tell us much about the nature of British culture and politics.

Making medicine scientific: John Burdon Sanderson and the culture of Victorian science

Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: From Evangelical to Medical Officer of Health ONE: Choosing Medicine TWO: Medical Officer of Health PART II: Making a Career in Medical Research THREE: Before the Germ Theory: The Cattle Plague of 1865-1866 and the State Support of Pathology FOUR: From Clinician-Researcher to Professional Physiologist: Making the Pulse Visible FIVE: Becoming a Research Pathologist: The Rise of Laboratory Medicine in Britain SIX: Focusing on Physiology: Capturing the Venus's-Flytrap's Electrical Activity PART II: The Medical Sciences: Critics and Allies SEVEN: Physicians, Anti vivisectionists, and the Failure of the Oxford School of Physiology EIGHT: A Corner Turned? Experimental Medicine in Late Victorian Britain List of Abbreviations Appendix: Researchers Associated with Burdon Sanderson in Britain Notes Index

Lord Salisbury's world: conservative environments in late-Victorian Britain

Lord Salisbury (1830–1903) is now a subject of intense historical attention. This important study moves away from conventional biography and presents an original portrait of the mental world inhabited by late Victorian Conservatives at the time when their world-view was coming under severe strain. At the centre of the picture is the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, but Lord Salisbury's World does not simply tell the story of his life and politics. Instead, it asks sensitive questions about how the political, intellectual and religious environments of the late Victorian period seemed to one of its sharpest intellects, and it situates Salisbury and his immediate entourage in a wide landscape of relationships, perceptions and problems. Professor Bentley takes the reader into Conservative assumptions about time and space, property and society, religion and the state, and the past and the future - the very language in which they expressed themselves.

British women's anti-suffragism and the forward policy, 1908-14

This article reinstates prominent female leaders within the organised opposition to women's suffrage in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. More specifically, it focuses upon the evolution of a positive, constructive anti-suffragism, labelled the Forward Policy by Mary Ward and other women campaigners who were active in the period leading up to the First World War. These women participated in contemporary citizenship debates through their writings, through their commitment to social action, and through their sometimes problematic relationship with male antisuffragism. The article concludes that women's anti-suffragism deserves closer study in its own right, and through its supporters’ own records, as well in relation to suffragism and the wider women's movement.

Relinking Work and Leisure in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The Emergence of a Police Subculture

Studies of the history of leisure have emphasized the separation between work and leisure which developed with the growth of industrial society. Only scant attention has been devoted by historians and sociologists of leisure to the continuing links between work and leisure throughout the nineteenth century, as reflected in recreational activities organized by employers for their employees. Such attention as has been paid to the subject has concentrated on industrial workers, largely ignoring the more systematic and extensive provision of leisure in work organizations belonging to the public sector. In an attempt to explore linkages between work and leisure in this emerging sector, the article focuses on the English police force and will address the following questions. What did the authorities aim to achieve in imposing control through leisure? How did the policemen react to such policies and was this strategy successful? What prompted the social and economic elite to become involved in moulding entertainment for police employees, and what was the impact of police leisure on the community at large?