Welcome!

I’m a historian by training, and a Victorianist by practice. I’m especially interested in the bits of culture that don’t fall neatly into the conventional domains of History, Art and Theatre History, or Literature, including public lecturing, periodicals and newspapers, ‘talk’ and cultural identities. I’ve recently take up the role of President of the British Association for Victorian Studies

News

The Curran Index.

I’m delighted to have been selected to be the incoming Editor of the Research Society for Victorian Periodical’s Curran Index. The Index supplements and extends the attribution work of the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. It already contains 170,000 attributions across more than 80 periodicals. But of course there’s so much more to be done. Looking forward to this challenge. Contact me if you would like to help!

Recent Blogs

  • The Ten Greatest Living Victorians: the verdict of the readers of the Pall Mall Gazette, 1885

    It is something of a truism that the assembly of Victorian ‘greats’ canonised by contemporary culture bears little relation to popularity or influence visible during the Victorian period itself. In the case of literature, the spread of public libraries in the second half of the century created a considerable body of data about the circulation…

  • Sarah Lewis, author of Woman’s Mission (1839)

    Sarah Lewis must have strong claims to be most widely-known unknown person in Victorian Britain. Her book Woman’s Mission, first published in 1839 and reprinted 16 times in the next 15 years was enormously influential. Along with the contemporaneous works of Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799-1872), including the Women of England (1839), Lewis’ book formed the…