Tag: victorian england

A Curious New Woman: Veronica Speedwell

It is June 1887, and London is preparing to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, marking the 50th year of her reign. The once young and luminous Queen is now, however, a plump German widow, viewed increasingly by many as little more than a symbolic figurehead. In 1887, the British Empire is vast, covering nearly 25%… Read more →

The Angel of the Workhouse: The Body, and the Body Politic, of Victorian Women with Disabilities

On September 12, 1846, a poet-prince married a “rather plain, thin, faded, hysterical woman [who] was loved for herself as perhaps none of all the world’s famous beauties has ever been.” Perhaps that rather dramatic description is not an entirely fair account of the elopement of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, but their readers’ continued… Read more →

Sunday Morning Medicine

By Jacqueline Antonovich

-Coffee, the Viagra of the 17th century.
-Punishing children in Victorian England.
-Did Jane Austin novels cure WWI depression?
-LGBT history? There’s an app for that.
-Clowns have a history of being scary.
-How to cure a bubble boy.
-A brief history of men’s underwear (get it, brief?)