1876 Victorian England Revisited (A Time Travel Adventure)

Elisabeth Prescott Ashton takes you back to a Victorian Middle class home. With the help of her family and staff, she escorts you through the house. She also goes into great detail about Victorian culture, etiquette, pursuits and even takes you on walking tours through London. There is also a large list of links and bibliography for the truly serious researcher. And once you have become an expert you can download your very own Honorary Victorian Certificate!

This is a fun site with an almost game like feel. (Kids would love it.) However the creator, Betty Malheiro, has taken great pains to be thorough and accurate on the Victorian era. You feel like you really have time traveled.

Click here to visit 1876 Victorian England

All Things Victorian

Victoriana Lady Lisa
(photo swiped from her website)

The All Things Victorian series is a study of Victorian as well as Edwardian culture and history. It is produced by Passion Projects, the brainchild of Lisa Griffiths and John Grant. Both are authors and Victorian history geeks. Victoriana Lady Lisa appears as a reenactor and lecturer with her traveling Victorian museum. She is also the author of International Steampunk Fashions. John’s passion is photographing old cemeteries full of Victorian statuary. They are now producing a delightful series called All Things Victorian for Cape Ann Television, a non-profit community access station in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Rather than making us all move to Gloucester, John has been kind enough to post the programs on YouTube so the entire world can watch.

Lisa’s knowledge of the era is phenomenal. She has been collecting antiques and reading on the period since she was a little kid. But rather than just showing off her own talent she also brings others onto the program to share their own collections and expertise. Each show narrows in on subject such as Victorian superstitions, fashions and accessories. She has already promised us more. I can’t wait!

John Grant’s YouTube channel featuring both All Things Victorian, as well as his cemetery photography

Lisa’s website: All Things Victorian 

International Steampunk Fashions by Victoriana Lady Lisa

Final Thoughts: Eternal Beauty in Stone by John Thomas Grant

Passing English of the Victorian era

I found a little gem: Passing English of the Victorian era: a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase published in London in 1909 by James Redding Ware. Mr. Ware collected the slang of everyone from hoodlums to the upper crust while it was still fresh in everyone's memory. You can download it free and legally at the Internet Archive (a source I had mentioned in an earlier post.) Now your Steampunk stories can get steamier as you use Victorian slang with confidence.

The Salon

[Editor's note: This website and all of the links no longer work. They appear to have gone to that Great Internet In the Sky. If you know where I can reconnect, please let me know.]
I ran across a little treasure trove of Victorian culture. Sohie Lagace is an engineer by day and a role player by night. One her favorite games is Castle Falkenstein with its Steampunk setting. She has a webpage called "The Salon" that has links to all sorts of Victorian fashion, etiquette, culture, language and technology. Here are just a few of the links:

Victorian Slang Glossary Speech of the Lower Classes

How to Speak Proper Slang for the Upper Classes

The Library Victorian Science, technology, military history, etc.

The Salon is a labyrinth well worth exploring. (Don't worry, you won't get lost.)
  Link to the Salon webpage
[6-28-2014 update: The Salon seems to have vanished. The first three sites I mention are still there.]

Mostly Victorian

Moira Allen shares her vast collection of articles and illustrations from Victorian books and magazines. She has scanned them to pdfs for you to download and has divided them up into categories. Now instead of reading what modern people say about Victorians, you can read what the Victorians said of themselves.

Click here to visit Mostly Victorian

The Victorian School

Just one of their free photos

Started by Stephen and Irene Clark in Somerset, England, the Victorian School website was setup to educate educators how to educate children about the Victorian Age. Stephen and Irene actually have a business visiting schools in the UK, but they are sharing all they know for teachers and homeschoolers around the world so they can do their own Victorian Day. They have articles, projects, free ebooks and pdf printouts, video links, lists of Victorian museums in the UK...well, you’ll just have to go and check it out, won’t you?

Although geared toward kids and educators, there is plenty here for a writer doing research, especially if you need to know anything about Victorian schooling. And the Clarks are constantly adding to their website.

Oh, and you Steampunkers, check out their online store for costumes and accessories.

Click here to go to their webiste: The Victorian School

Victorian Days

I stumbled across a site called "Victorian Days." It is an offshoot of www.AngelPig.net. Apparently it started out as a Barbecue site, that branched out into Southern culture and then got into Victorian society. Rather than the meandering endeavor this might imply, I'm thinking it's a genius with too much in their brain to stay focused on just one subject.

The Victorian sideline is more extensive than most folks would attempt as a mainline. The site map shows dozens of subjects on Victorian culture and etiquette. Each has at the bottom of its page more detailed articles on the topic. I'm not sure how many items there are, but you could spend all day reading. They are well written and appear to be well researched.

Here is the link: Victorian Days site map

The Victorian Peeper

@Tetens (Kristan Tetens) began following me on Twitter. I looked at her bio which reads: "Historian, writer (nonfiction), presenter. This is the Twitter companion to The Victorian Peeper (my blog), and Victorian London (my Facebook page)." Intrigued I clicked on her website.

Oh my word! (as Wendell would say)

Kristan not only has over 100 blogs on Victorian History, check out the sidebar links. It includes: Victorians in the News, New Books (on Victorians), Exhibitions and Events, Charles Darwin, Victorian Festivals, Victorian Traces: 132 Places to Visit, Historic Preservation, history links, resources, search tools, Other Victorian Blogs, Victorian Studies-UK, Victorian Studies-US, Associations, Multi-Media, Pop-Culture, Other Sites of Interest, etc.

Well, don't just sit there! Click on this link and check out Kristan's blog-site. The Victorian Peeper

The Victorian Web

It doesn't look like much when you go to the home page. Just start clicking on icons and start digging. This unpretentious site is probably the oldest and one of the largest on Victorian culture and history. In fact it's older than the internet! It started out as part of Brown University's Intermedia Project begun by Professor George P. Landow. In 1992 when Intermedia ceased it was transferred to Eastgate Systems Storyspace. In 1995 it was translated to HTML. From it's beginnings hundreds of scholars have added to the content. There are links to other sites, but much of it is essays and scans for this site alone. Just about everything is covered here.

Link to: The Victorian Web

Bonus! On the page on how to contribute to this web are hints for students to strengthen their writing. It's spelt out instead of alluded to like too many books and sites do. Some Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Writing

El Centro History Department Website

This is a Gold Mine--and I mean that in the literal sense. It's very easy to get lost in this labyrinth and sometimes difficult to find your way back, but oh, there are some real nuggets here.

These are link pages created by the El Centro College of Dallas, Texas to give students further reading in the History 1301 (to 1877)and History 1302 (after 1877) classes. The courses focus on Texas, but cover much of American history and culture. Below I've put in links to the useful pages for the 19th century.

Industrial Age to 1877 / Civil War / Reconstruction / The Year 1877 / Late 19th Century /
The South 1877-1900 / The West to 1900 / Native American / African American

There are all sorts of links here to numerous to list. Go ahead and explore.

The Quack Doctor

A collection of medical advertisements from 18th and 19th century newspapers and periodicals. We can laugh at these "cures" now, but this was orthodox medicine in their day.

Beyond being entertaining, these can make nice details for a novel--which is how this site got started. Caroline Rance is a writer with an interest in the history of medicine. Her first novel Kill-Grief is set in a 1750s hospital.

To make things easier for you, the blogs are not only listed by post-date, but by malady. So if your hero gets a toothache, you'll know exactly what was available in his time. You might want to think twice if using any of theis "wisdom" on yourself. There's a reason these products aren't around any more.

Link to Quack Doctor

The Virtual Victorian

This site may not be the encyclopedia on all things Victorian that some other sites are, but then it wasn't meant to be. This is a blog-site created by author Essie Fox of London, where she writes short essays on little known subjects of Victorian life.

I'll let Essie describe it in her own words:

"A few years ago I decided to try and write a novel. My story was going to be contemporary but I wanted to use my own home as a setting and, while looking into its history, I soon found myself lured into a virtual Victorian world...from which I have yet to break free.

In this blog, I'm hoping to share some of the facts and fictions that I've discovered during my research. Some will be serious, some less so, but most will be based on, and in, the Victorian era - a fascinating age which often still influences the way we live today."

Where else on the web could you learn about Queen Victoria's bloomers, the Victorian obsession for taxidermy, or Champagne Charlie?

Link to The Virtual Victorian

Arthur LLoyd Website

Arthur Lloyd was an actor, singer, comedian, song writer and music hall performer who lived from 1839 - 1904. He was very famous in his day, but like most Victorian entertainers he is largely forgotten. Since 2001, his great grandson, Matthew Lloyd, has been trying to rectify that by creating a massive website dedicated to him.

If you are doing anything involving Victorian theaters or Music Halls, go here first! This site has over 2,000 pages and 5,000 images on their history. There are photos, programs, songs and posters. Think of it, your character could go to a Music Hall on a particular night and you now know what it looked like, and who was playing there.

The site also has period maps and a timeline that tells what else was going on in a particular year.

Link to: arthurlloyd.co.uk

The Gentleman's Page

Unfortunately most websites on the Victorian male are tongue in cheek. This one is a serious, well researched site. Created by Walter Nelson, the Gentleman's Page is dedicated to the "proper behavior and attire for the 19th Century American Man," and focuses on 1860 to 1900. He also has a collection of vintage photographs he has scanned and posted. The site was created with costumers, performers, and reenactors in mind, so he does go into detail.

Hey, Walter actually does this for a living! (Yes, that's Walter Nelson on the left.) He works with museums, schools, historical societies, etc. and has provided historical expertise to the History Channel, A&E, Showtime and Disney. Here is a segment Walter Nelson did for Pen & Teller's show. Victorian Etiquette

I wonder if Walter knows that he helped "train" Wendell for his work as a Temporal Anthropologist in the Victorian Age?

Link to: The Gentleman's Page

Averyl's Attic

This site is a grab bag of Victorian life, etiquette, fashion, dining, art, and poetry. Many of the posts being reprints of period articles.

This website was created by Hillstock, LLC, which sells vintage stock images and greeting cards. Averyl's Attic also has free Victorian electronic clip-art for private, non commercial use. That's one of them to the left. You can use up to three on a blog site, provided you let people know where it came from.

Link to Averyl's Attic

The Victorian Era

I'll let Geerte tell you about her blog site in her own words:

My name is Geerte, and I have been writing this blog for a while now, because I think all the fun and interesting things about the nineteenth century are too good not to share! Many people still the nineteenth century was boring, prudish, or uptight. While there is a bit of truth in it, there are many funny, silly and interesting things as well. I hope to give you a taste of them through my articles.

On this blog you will find some light reading and fun facts about the 19th century. I like to find the more unusual information because I think that all info on Impressionism or steam engines can be found elsewhere. I also talk about books a lot, mostly because that is something I really like. Apart from that, this blog features pictures, famous Victorians, art, architecture, music, literature, and fashion, and movies.

Link to: The Victorian Era

Victorian History

Bruce Rosen has been posting essays on Victorian history and society since September 2006 and has a huge collection on just about everything. His well written essays include pictures and links to historic sources.

In his own words "These short essays are based on more extensive research and are usually extracts from longer pieces." I'm not sure who this mysterious Bruce Rosen is, but I'm betting he's a professional historian--or should be. If the man lived in the 27th Century, he would definitely be a candidate for Temporal Anthropologist--or at least a close friend of Dr. Wendell Howe.

Link to Victorian History

Victorian Women

If you want to know what the Victorian Woman was reading, check out Billie Jane's blog, Victorian Women. She owns a large collection of Victorian periodicals and uploads samples from them. She is currently posting a romantic serial, but already has many non-fiction articles and news stories posted. To the side she has the entries filed by decades. Jane also takes requests if you are interested in a particular topic.

Link to her site: Victorian Women

Charles Booth Online Archive

All right, you are writing a historic romance set in late Victorian London. Middle class girl is in love with poor boy but dad wants her to marry wealthy guy. Now, exactly where does everyone live?

In 1898-99 Charles Booth did a survey of London showing exactly where all the economic classes lived. It divided London into seven classes, from the very wealthy to the worst slums. Below the 1899 map is a modern map so you can compare the two. (Modern map does not show economic state, just what is there now.)

Click on the little map on the left to pinpoint a particular neighborhood. You may not be able to read street names easily, but it does give enough reference to find it on a modern map.

Now you don't have to guess, or steal a street out of a Victorian novel everyone else has used. Or worse go by what is there today. Some of those posh neighborhoods are no longer posh, and some neighborhoods have gone the opposite direction!

Link to: Booth Poverty Map & Modern Map

The Victorian Dictionary

Created by writer Lee Jackson this is a Gold Mine! Although focusing on London it is probably the best site out there on Victorian culture. Much of it is original documents! Great place to also get place names to drop. He covers about every topic and is constantly adding to this collection. He also has a large collection of "penny dreadfuls" and Punch cartoons.

Lee Jackson has also published a book of this site, as well as some mystery novels set in...well, you guessed it. Haven't read them yet, but I'm sure the man knows his subject very well!

This is the first place I head when I need to know details on the day to day life of the Victorians.

Link to: The Victorian Dictionary
Link to Lee's blog site with updates and additions: The Cat's Meat Shop. Lee describes this as an appendix to the website.