Research Guides: Victorian Era (1837-1901) : Meridian School Research Guide: Books & e-books

Victorian culture in the library

The Victorian City
...portrait of everyday life on the streets of Dickens' London.The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the capital grew from a compact Regency town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5 million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen. Technology—railways, street-lighting, and sewers—transformed both the city and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction. Now Judith Flanders, one of Britain’s foremost social historians, explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dickens’ novels, showing life on the streets of London in colorful, fascinating detail.From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved Englishnbsp;novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and cruelties. Judith Flanders leads us through the markets, transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chop-houses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor. From the colorful cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus, to the many uses for the body parts of dead horses and the unimaginably grueling working days of hawker children, no detail is too small, or too strange.
Victorian House: Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life In Victorian England
The Victorian age is much closer to us in time than we might believe. Yet at that time, in the most technologically advanced nation in the world, people buried meat in fresh earth to prevent mold forming and wrung sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. Such household drudgery was routinely performed by the grandparents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been.Judith Flanders's book is laid out like a Victorian house, taking you through the story of daily life from room to room.
The Oxford Companion to the Brontës
The Oxford Companion to the Brontës aims to provide both comprehensive and detailed information about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontës--the three sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, together with their father and their brother Branwell--all of whom were published writers. This is a unique and authoritative reference book for the research student and the general reader.
Victorian Childhoods
The experiences of children growing up in Britain during Victorian times are often misunderstood to be either idyllic or wretched. Yet, the reality was more wide-ranging than most imagine. Here, in colorful detail and with firsthand accounts, Frost paints a complete picture of Victorian childhood that illustrates both the difficulties and pleasures of growing up during this period. Differences of class, gender, region, and time varied the lives of children tremendously. Boys had more freedom than girls, while poor children had less schooling and longer working lives than their better-off peers. Yet some experiences were common to almost all children, including parental oversight, physical development, and age-based transitions. This compelling work concentrates on marking out the strands of life that both separated and united children throughout the Victorian period.
London: Water and the Making of the Modern City
As people crowded into British cities in the nineteenth century, industrial and biological waste byproducts and then epidemic followed. Britons died by the thousands in recurring plagues. Figures like Edwin Chadwick and John Snow pleaded for measures that could save lives and preserve the social fabric. The solution that prevailed was the novel idea that British towns must build public water supplies, replacing private companies. But the idea was not an obvious or inevitable one. Those who promoted new waterworks argued that they could use water to realize a new kind of British society--a productive social machine, a new moral community, and a modern civilization.
Food and Cooking in Victorian England
Nine recipes serve as entry points for detailing the history of food production, cooking, and diet throughout Queen Victoria's reign in England. More than that, however, Broomfield offers an introduction to the world of everyday dining, food preparation, and nutrition during one of the most interesting periods of English history.
The Victorians
Wilson singles out those whose lives illuminate the 19th century--Darwin, Marx, Gladstone, Kipling, and others--and explains through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended.
Our Victorian Education
This groundbreaking book combines a historical interpretation of Victorian educational debate with a critical overview of contemporary educational thought. Traces the roots of contemporary educational practice in the values of Victorian thinking Combines detailed consideration of Victorian sources, literary and non-literary, with reflections on their legacy in the 21st century Reflects on questions of social class, religion, and gender as the Victorians defined them in relation to educational ideals Suggests challenging connections between literary and social history and contemporary dilemmas.
Hatred and Civility : The Anti-social Life in Victorian England
To understand hatred and civility in today's world, argues Christopher Lane, we should start with Victorian fiction. Although the word "Victorian" generally brings to mind images of prudish sexuality and well-heeled snobbery, it has above all become synonymous with self-sacrifice, earnest devotion, and moral rectitude. Yet this idealized version of Victorian England is surprisingly scarce in the period's literature--and its journalism, sermons, poems, and plays--where villains, hypocrites, murderers, and cheats of all types abound.

Locating items by floor

Worldcat@SU is the library's online catalog. Search it to identify the books, e-books, DVD's, CD's, and more in our library's collection. The library uses the Dewey Decimal System to assign a unique call number to every physical item in the building. Each item has a location as well, such as Reference, Reserve, Special Collections, etc.

When you have identified an item in Voyager that you want to locate, note the entire call number as well as the location. If you search Voyager on a mobile device, you will have the call number and location with you as you go into the stacks.

The library's collection spans all three floors of the building, with the Main (circulating) collection split among the three floors by call number:

000-199 First Floor

200-759.3 Second Floor

759.4-999 Third Floor

Some helpful call numbers:

391.00942 for costume in 19^th Century London

305.4 for social conditions in Victorian London

820.9 for Victorian literature

941.081 for general Victorian history

Voyager - for items at our library

Worldcat@SU is the library's online catalog. Search it to find out what books, e-books, videos, DVD's, CD's and more are available in our library's collection. You can start with a Keyword search on your topic. This will look for your search term in the entire bibliographic record for an item -- title, author, subject, contents, etc. Keyword searches can help you identify book chapters devoted to your subject, too. Advanced Keyword searching will enable you to construct more complex searches, specifying a combination of subject or title keywords, formats, languages, locations, and more.

It is especially helpful to know subject headings used for your topic so that you can do a Subject search. Always ask a librarian for help if you are not finding what you need. It may simply be a matter of figuring out the right terminology.

Here are a few examples of subject headings relevant to this class (used in Voyager and many other databases as well):

Anti-imperialist movements--Great Britain--History--19th century

Art, Victorian--England

Art and Society--Great Britain--History--19th century

Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847-1922

Chartism

China--History--Opium War, 1840-1842

Cholera--England--History

Cholera--Great Britain--History--19th century

Church and education--England--History-- 19th century

Civilization, Modern--British Influences

Crimean War, 1853-1856

Criminals--Great Britain

Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Diseases and history

Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804-1881

Economics--Great Britain--History--19th century

Edison, Thomas A. (Thomas Alva), 1847-1931

Education--Social Aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century

Emigration and immigration--History--19th century

Engels, Friedrich, 1820-1895

England--Social life and customs--19th century

England--Social conditions--19th century

English fiction--19th century

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism

Enlightenment--Europe

Etiquette for children and teenagers--Early works to 1800

Feminism--Great Britain--History--19th century

France--History--Revolution, 1789-1799

Great Britain--Civilization--19th century

Great Britain--Colonies--Africa

Great Britain--Colonies--History

Great Britain--Foreign Relations--19th century

Great Britain--Politics and government--1760-1820

Great Britain--Religion--19th century

Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century

Great Britain--Social Life and customs--19th century

Great Britain--History--Victoria, 1837-1901

Great Britain--Politics and government--1837-1901

Human Rights--Africa, Sub-Saharan--History--19th century

India--Relations--Great Britain

Industrial revolution--England--History--19th century

Industrial revolution--Great Britain

Jack, the Ripper

Labor--England--History--19th century

Literature and society--England--History--19th century

London (England)--Social conditions--19th century

Machinery--Great Britain--History--19th century

Marx, Karl, 1818-1883

Middle class women--England--London--History--19th century

Poor--England--London

Poor families--England--London--History--19th century

Prime Ministers--Great Britain--Biography

Public health--Great Britain--History--19th century

Realism in literature

Romanticism--Great Britain

Sanitation--History--19th century

Slaves--Emancipation--West Indies, British--History

Slums--England--London--History--19th century

Social Classes--Great Britain--History--19th century

South African War, 1899-1902

Technological Innovations--Great Britain--History--19th century

Telegraph--History

Urbanization--Great Britain--History--19th century

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901--Family

Women and literature--England--History--19th century

Women--Employment--Great Britain--History--19th century

Women--Great Britain--History--19th century