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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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...

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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!

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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!

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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!

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