Victorian Studies articles from January 2004

Victorian Studies archives from January 2004

Editors' introduction.
January 1, 2004... Two men, traveling companions, paddle effortlessly with a river's current through long, empty, eventless days; the Government Stationery Office issues a report on wine duties; a Bengali man in London plays a hoax on a British waitress,...

On not paying attention.(mental abstraction)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... I would like to begin by drifting idly down one river and then rowing vigorously--but not at all strenuously--up another. The ultimate destination of both journeys is a certain abstraction of mind. That abstraction, I will argue, is an...

Wave-theories and affective physiologies: the cognitive strain in Victorian novel theories.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... I want to begin with a familiar, and familiarly vexing, question: what do we mean when we use the generic term "novel"? If we stand within the usual institutional and discursive parameters of what today goes under the term "novel theory," we...

The Mind's Sigh: pictured reading in nineteenth-century painting.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... The evolution of painted reading is one long gauntlet thrown down to technique by theme. Victorian art is the last to take it up before the dismantling of realism itself. With the act of reading in real time, of course, a text's unheard...

Reader's block: response.(reading)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... "By-the-by, that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An actress's Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer's Reading of a hornpipe, a singer's Reading of a song, a marine painter's Reading of the sea, the kettle-drum's...

Were Victorian Nonconformists the worst imperialists of all?
January 1, 2004... As the Victorian age recedes into history, with an entire century now separating us from it, there is a danger of forgetting the social importance of English Nonconformity--that is, religious Nonconformity. The church/chapel distinction was a...

"Empire, what Empire?" Or, why 80% of early- and mid-Victorians were deliberately kept in ignorance of it.
January 1, 2004... The context of this short paper (1) is the unease I have been feeling for some time with what seems to have become the accepted wisdom in certain areas of nineteenth-century British studies, and even popularly: that the British Empire in one...

Queen Victoria and India, 1837-61.
January 1, 2004... I. The Blot on the Queen's Head With the passage of the Royal Titles Bill in the summer of 1876, Queen Victoria became Empress of India. Contemporaries saw the measure as a theatrical coup engineered by her prime minister, Benjamin...

Significant evidences and the imperial archive: response.
January 1, 2004... In postcolonial criticism the question of what counts as a significant exception sometimes comes to the fore. Often the imperial discourses of the metropolitan center seem so powerful and ubiquitous that they do not appear to brook exception....

Agencies of the letter: the Foreign Office and the ruins of Central America (1).(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... On 17 July 1851, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), sent a dispatch to his charge d'affaires in Guatemala, Frederick Chatfield, informing him that the Government desired a collection of Mayan ruins for the British Museum....

Outside looking in: colonials, immigrants, and the pleasure of the archive.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... When Helena Michie approached me about participating on this panel, I agreed, but with a good deal of trepidation. She had told me that she was interested in doing a "meta" panel and thought "pleasure" would be a good theme around which to...

Blue books and the Victorian reader.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... Mr. Gradgrind's famous retort "Facts, Facts, Facts" at the beginning of Hard Times (1854) is often invoked to demonstrate the ascendance of utilitarianism in Victorian life. What is frequently overlooked, however, is that while Charles...

Discipline and pleasure: response.
January 1, 2004... Picture the middle-aged John Stuart Mill testifying in 1852 in the House of Lords that the governance of India was enacted through writing (Aguirre 289). Writing and recording, he argued, ensured good practice, another among the many...

Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination, by A. D. Nuttall; pp. xii + 228. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003, $26.00, [pounds sterling]13.75. How best to describe this...

Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time, edited by Christine L. Krueger; pp. xx + 195. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002, $44.95, $19.95 paper. All calendar-obsessed Victorianists must have suffered a trauma in the first...

Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst; pp. xii + 372. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, [pounds sterling]45.00, $74.00. The title, Victorian...

Disraeli's Jewishness.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Disraeli's Jewishness, edited by Todd M. Endelman and Tony Kushner; pp. xxiii + 265. London and Portland: Valentine Mitchell, 2002, [pounds sterling]42.50, [pounds sterling]18.50 paper, $59.50, $26.50 paper. Benjamin Disraeli: The...

Imagined Londons.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Imagined Londons, edited by Pamela K. Gilbert; pp. ix + 257. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, $54.50, $22.95 paper. The title of this collection evokes Benedict Anderson's influential 1982 study of nationalism. According...

Policing the Victorian Town: The Development of the Police in Middlesbrough, c. 1840-1914.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Policing the Victorian Town: The Development of the Police in Middlesbrough, c. 1840-1914, by David Taylor; pp. xv + 237. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2002, [pounds sterling]47.50, $65.00. The Making of a Policeman: A Social...

Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History, 1840-1918.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History, 1840-1918, by Pat Jalland; pp. 380. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002, $55.00 Australian, $65.00. The academic literature on death, dying, and loss from the social sciences...

Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930, edited by Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner; pp. xix + 316. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, [pounds sterling]45.00, $65.00. Shifting...

Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government, by Nadia Urbinati; pp. xii + 293. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, $37.50, [pounds sterling]26.50. Mill on Nationality, by Georgios...

Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs: Music as Social Discourse in the Victorian Novel.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs: Music as Social Discourse in the Victorian Novel, by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre; pp. xxvii + 226. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002, $49.95. Music, whether heard at church or public concerts, or through...

Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, volume 2, edited by Jeremy Dibble and Bennett Zon; pp. xvi + 325. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2002, [pounds sterling]55.00, $99.95. Economic retrenchment in British academic music...

Charles Villiers Stanford.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Charles Villiers Stanford, by Paul Rodmell; pp. xx + 495. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2002, [pounds sterling]57.50, $99.95. Even before his death at the age of seventy-one in 1924, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford had become something...

Douglas Jerrold: A Life (1803-1857).(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Douglas Jerrold: A Life (1803-1857), by Michael Slater; pp. xii + 340. London: Duckworth, 2002, [pounds sterling]25.00, $35.00. Douglas Jerrold (1803-57) was regarded by the mid-Victorians as part of a triumphant comic triumvirate. Now...

Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A Publishing History.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A Publishing History, by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra; pp. xvi + 332. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002, $55.00. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra has aptly subtitled her book. Christina Rossetti and...

The Victorian Illustrated Book.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The Victorian Illustrated Book, edited by Richard Maxwell; pp. xxx + 440. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2002, $45.00, [pounds sterling]34.50. Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian England, by...

Multiple Wives, Multiple Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800-1875.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Multiple Wives, Multiple Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800-1875, by Joan DelPlato; pp. ix + 259. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002, $85.00, [pounds sterling]68.00....

Imperial Subjects, Imperial Space: Rudyard Kipling's Fiction of the Native-Born.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Imperial Subjects, Imperial Space: Rudyard Kipling's Fiction of the Native-Born, by John McBratney; pp. xxvii + 224. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2002, $39.95, $22.95 paper. While most recent studies of Kipling have focused...

Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot, by Alicia Carroll; pp. xi + 179. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003, $39.95. Victorian authors had diverse and complicated relationships to the British empire. Like other Britons at home,...

Watching Hannah: Sexuality, Horror and Bodily De-formation in Victorian England.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Watching Hannah: Sexuality, Horror and Bodily De-formation in Victorian England, by Barry Reay; pp. 200. London: Reaktion Books, 2002, [pounds sterling]22.00, $35.00. Love & Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby & Hannah Cullwick, by Diane...

The Flirt's Tragedy: Desire Without End in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The Flirt's Tragedy: Desire Without End in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction, by Richard A. Kaye; pp. viii + 246. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2002, $32.00, [pounds sterling]24.50. "Flirtation," Richard Kaye...

Proust's Cup of Tea: Homoeroticism and Victorian Culture.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Proust's Cup of Tea: Homoeroticism and Victorian Culture, by Emily Eells; pp. xii + 220. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002, [pounds sterling]45.00, $79.95. The cover of this succinct and knowledgeable book displays a monochrome...

Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius, by Barbara Belford; pp. xii + 383. London: Bloomsbury, 2001, [pounds sterling]25.00, $34.95, [pounds sterling]8.99 paper, $23.00 paper. Oscar and Bosie: A Fatal Passion, by Trevor Fisher; pp. xviii + 267....

Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions, edited by Joseph Bristow; pp. xi + 334. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, $41.95. Xiaoyi Zhou's contribution to Wilde Writings describes the 1929 performance of Oscar Wilde's Salome in...

Comments & queries.
January 1, 2004... COMMENTS & QUERIES are welcome via e-mail. Our address is VICTSTU@INDIANA.EDU. ON THE COVER is George Dunlop Leslie (1835-1921), Alice in Wonderland. N.d. Royal Pavilion Libraries and Museums, Brighton and Hove. Photography courtesy of...