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Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture examines how literary fairy tales were informed by natural historical knowledge in the Victorian period, as well as how popular science books used fairies to explain natural history at a time when 'nature' became a much debated word.
Who was Mary De Morgan and why should she be dragged out of the shadows cast by her illustrious parents, her male siblings and the members of the Arts and Crafts circle in which she moved? Why should the academic spotlight be shone onto her life and works? De Morgan (1850–1907) was undoubtedly a woman of her time: she was unmarried and therefore one of the million or so “odd” women who had to earn their own living, which she did mainly by writing. She was one of the many who took part in the great effort to “improve” the lives of the poor in the East End of London; she was caught up in the spiritualist phenomena, not only because her mother was an ardent supporter and practitioner,...
The fourth volume of Rudyard Kipling's letters, now collected and edited for the first time, continues the story of his life from the end of the Edwardian era through the Great War, a crisis in Kipling's life as well as in that of the world. The years before the war saw the publication of Rewards and Fairies and Songs from Books. In politics, the great issue was Irish home rule and the fate of Ulster. At the outbreak of the war Kipling devoted himself to the struggle. He wrote patriotic verse, made recruiting speeches, and traveled as a correspondent to the French and Italian fronts. He published no new fiction, only what he wrote as correspondent and propagandist: France at War, The Fringes of the Fleet, and The Eyes of Asia. In 1915 his only son, John, was killed in the Battle of Loos; at the same time Kipling began to suffer from the undiagnosed ulcer that would torment him for the rest of his life. His last volume of poems, The Years Between, published in 1919, embodies the suffering and bitterness of these years.
This anthology brings together 14 of the best Victorian fairy tales, by major period writers as well as specialists in the genre, to show the vibrancy of the form and its ability to reflect our deepest concerns. From whimsy to satire, the stories reveal the preoccupations of the age and celebrate the value of the imagination.
A scholarly monograph devoted to Jane Morris, an icon of Victorian art whose face continues to grace a range of Pre-Raphaelite merchandise. Described by Henry James as a 'dark, silent, medieval woman', Jane Burden Morris has tended to remain a rather one-dimensional figure in subsequent accounts. This book, however, challenges the stereotype of Jane Morris as silent model, reclusive invalid, and unfaithful wife. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as the biographical and literary tradition surrounding William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the book argues that Jane Morris is a figure who complicates current understandings of Victorian female subjectivity because she does not f...