Check out Kristin Mahoney’s article “Vernon Lee and the Difficulty with Love” in 68.2 where she investigates Lee’s relationship to love and how love operates as a point of difficulty in her writing. Mahoney’s article is linked here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
Victorian Studies
@victstudies.bsky.social
Literary, social, and cultural studies of 19C Britain and beyond. Online submission portal: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/victorianstudies/index Please direct all inquiries to victstu@iu.edu
Happy 160th birthday to H.G Wells! Celebrate Wells by reading Sebastian Egholm Lund’s “The Climate of Utopia: Victorian Hothouses and H.G Wells,” where he explores the ties between Victorian high society, the climate, and utopia in Wells’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦 and 𝘈 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘜𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘢.
It might not feel like it but winter is here! Our newest edition Winter 2026 (68.2) is live now on Project MUSE!
Check out Alex Woloch’s “Criticism and Representation in Dorothy Van Ghent’s ‘The Dickens World’” in 68.1, where he analyzes the relationship between the logic of representation within Dickens’s realist aesthetics and the act of representation that takes place within Van Ghent’s critical essay.
Check out Clara Dawson's blog post about her essay "Shadow Journeys: Avian Movements in Natural History and Poetry in the Nineteenth Century" where she explores the global trade in ornithology and its ties to slavery and empire.
Our latest issue, 68.1, is hot off the press and live on Project MUSE! We are joined by a feathery friend today as we read Clara Dawson's article on birds in poetry in the nineteenth century and Alex Woloch's discussion of Dorothy Van Ghent's "The Dickens World." Project MUSE linked below.
Over Spring Break, one of our interns visited the Oscar Wilde House in Dublin, Ireland! No. 1 Merrion Square North was Wilde's childhood home, and the site of Lady Jane Wilde's weekend literary salons. Photos 2 and 3 show the Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture, located in Monument Park.
Happy Birthday to Charlotte Brontë! Born April 21, 1816, Brontë remains one of the most influential and acclaimed authors in English literary history. Read Ruth Livesey’s “Communicating with Jane Eyre: Stagecoach, Mail, and the Tory Nation."
Check out Heather Brink-Roby’s article, “The Idea of the Majority,” new in 67.4! Here, Brink-Roby examines how Charles Kingsley's early novels embody the "contradictory uses, grounds, and alleged tendencies of thinking" around the "concept of the majority" (559). muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
Check out Alex Murray’s blog post about his article “Gatekeeping: Publishers’ Readers, Gender, and the Literature of the 1890s,” which explores the often reactionary and sexist genre of the reader’s report during the complicated cultural politics of the 1890s.
Spring has sprung in Bloomington! Enjoy the beautiful weather by taking a copy of our newest issue outside! 67.4 is hot off the press and live on Project MUSE! muse.jhu.edu/issue/56511
March 3rd was World Wildlife Day! Check out Toby Harper's 65.2 article, "Fish Pain and Human Sport in Victorian Britain," where he examines Victorian anglers' beliefs about fish pain—"beliefs intertwined with ideas about race, food, civilization, and class" (247). muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
London Fashion Week has officially come to a close, and among the rising trends for Spring and Summer 2026 is lace! Check out Elaine Freedgood’s 2003 article, “‘Fine Fingers’: Victorian Handmade Lace and Utopian Consumption."
The “Race and Global Victorian Studies” cluster in our 67.3 issue is open access! Read here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/56184
67.3's cluster, "Media," includes Damian Sutton's essay, "1865: Cartes de Visite, the Lincoln Conspiracy, and the Evolution of Transnational Imagination." Sutton examines how artistic representations of Jack Sheppard influenced American "cartomania" in the context of the Lincoln assassination.
Congrats to Sebastian Lund for receiving the 2025 INCS Richard Stein Essay Prize for his article, “The Climate of Utopia: H. G. Wells and Victorian Hothouses,” published in the 65.4 issue of Victorian Studies!
In our recent issue, read Casie LeGette’s “Remembering the Morant Bay Rebellion with Claude McKay,” which compares McKay’s “George William Gordon to the Oppressed Natives” with his well-known “If We Must Die,” first published in _The Liberator_ in 1919.
Our latest special issue is hot off the press and live on Project Muse! 📬🎉 67.3 contains essays from @navsa.bsky.social's 2024 conference and covers three essay clusters: Political Events, Race and Global Victorian Studies, and Media. Read here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/issue/...
You may know of Charles Dickens’s 𝘈 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘭, but are you familiar with 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘔𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵’𝘴 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯? Add spookiness to this holiday season by reading Helen Groth’s article, “Reading Victorian Illusions: Dickens's Haunted Man and Dr. Pepper's ‘Ghost’” muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
Is the winter weather inspiring you to pick up a good book and revamp your reading habits? Check out the article linked below from VS Volume 61.4 on Victorian reading practices inspired by authors John Henry Newman and the pictured Christina Rossetti, whose 195th birthday is tomorrow!
November 20th is Universal Children’s Day, a day that promotes the welfare of children. Check out Marjorie Stone’s article from 62.4 where she discusses Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s advocacy for the suffering children of the Victorian working-class.⬇️ muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
67.2 Article Spotlight: Join Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson in her article “Pieced Together: Scrapbooks, Imperial Archives, and the Many Lives of Mermanjan,” as she draws on different sets of “historiographical and theoretical texts" to answer a series of important questions. muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
67.2 Article Spotlight: Ahoy! Matthew P. M. Kerr’s article “Head-Chowder: Kipling’s Wasteless Waters” examines the relevance of Victorian literature to modern day maritime waste studies through the lens of Rudyard Kipling’s 𝐶𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑢𝑠. Batten down the hatches and heave-ho to the link below!
67.2 Essay Spotlight: “Aging and Generations in Margaret Oliphant’s Fiction” Reimagine the utilization of terms like “Baby-Boomer” and “Millennial” by reading Helen Kingstone’s essay on nineteenth-century ideas of generation in the work of Margaret Oliphant (1828-97): muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
Love 𝘈 𝘔𝘪𝘥𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵'𝘴 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 and ever wondered about changing depictions of fairies in the 19th-century U.S.? Check out Vanessa Meikle Schulman’s reflection on writing “Transatlantic Fairy Painting and Social Unrest in Victorian America” in our new blog post, available at the link in the comments!
Good morning! Did you know that our latest issue 67.2 can now be accessed through Project MUSE online? Feel free to check it out and let us know which article you enjoyed the most in the comments below. ⬇️ muse.jhu.edu/issue/55623
Happy Autumn Equinox! Bring on the fall vibes by checking out "Transatlantic Fairy Painting and Social Unrest in Victorian America," by Vanessa Meikle Schulman in our latest issue by using the link below. ⬇️ Project MUSE - Victorian Studies: Volume 67, Number 2, Winter 2025 muse.jhu.edu/issue/55623
Project MUSE - Victorian Studies-Volume 67, Number 2, Winter 2025
muse.jhu.edu
📫 Be on the lookout for 67.2, our latest issue- hard copies are being sent out today! 🧚♀️🧚♂️
67.1 Essay Spotlight: "Gaslighting: The Material History of a Metaphor" Read Grace Franklin's essay on the material history underpinning the concept of psychological gaslighting: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
67.1 Essay Spotlight: "Roots/Routes of Empire: Mary Seacole and Scottish-Caribbean Identity" Read Kenneth McNeil's essay on how ideas of kinship and imperial networks shaped Mary Seacole's Scottish-Caribbean identity: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...