In Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), a book often heralded as one of the first historical novels, Edward Waverley pays a visit to the Baron of Bradwardine at Tully-Veolan. While there, the Baron’s daughter, Rose Bradwardine sings a haunting ballad about “a projecting peak of an impending crag” that had acquired the strange name of ‘Saint Swithin’s Chair.’ Saint…
Nightmares, Ghosts and Ghouls: a spooky October on the blog
Happy 1st of October to all of our readers! This month, we’ll be digging into the dusty digital vaults of the British Library Labs, in order to bring you some of the finest in obscure and forgotten spooky fiction, folklore, poetry, and pictures. And believe me, there’s tons to be getting with – the Victorians…
Insult of the Week: he talked mere drivel
The preacher in residence at St. Hilda’s Church in Donegal, Mr. Vivian, gets a poor review from Charlotte Riddell in her 1888 novel The Nun’s Curse. Although his good qualities are many, and he does excellent work with the sinful and/or suffering members of his parish, his preaching abilities are, frankly, nil. Unlearned, unlettered, uncultured…
Six Great 19th Century Novel Bakes
There are 62 references to cake so far in our 19th- century corpus, ranging from Jane Eyre’s slightly depressing “oaten-cakes” (also found in Shelley’s Frankenstein) to the more lavish offerings of plum-cake, plum-pudding, tea-cake, sponge-cake, and cheese-cake that appear in works by Dickens, Le Fanu and others. Here are a few of the most famous – although…
Image Collection of the Week: A Fleet of Sailing Ships
Today’s image collection comes in honour of that most solemn and dignified of annual celebrations: Talk Like A Pirate Day. And what better source of swashbuckling quotes is there than Robert Louis Stevenson’s formative pirate novel Treasure Island? Not only has this work given us such celebrated tropes as “Shiver my timbers!”, “Yo-ho-ho and a…
Insult of the Week: “…these bungling imitators”
In Chapter 11 of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui, the narrator and Lady Geraldine go for a leisurely stroll around the ornamental buildings in the grounds at Ormsby Villa. On their travels, they happen upon Mrs. O’Connor, Lady Kilrush and “a troop of hoyden young ladies” and are promptly invited to view “a poetical inscription of Lady Kilrush’s,…
Insult of the Week: your desultory vivacity makes your presence a fatigue
In chapter 29 of Middlemarch, a letter from Mr. Casaubon’s cousin Will Ladislaw sparks off an argument between the elderly clergyman and his much younger wife, Dorothea: “You can, if you please, read the letter,” said Mr. Casaubon, severely pointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her. “But I may as well…
Image Collection of the Week: The Victorian illustrator whose designs came to life
Born in London in 1846, Kate Greenaway exhibited a prodigious talent for delicate illustration. She attended the School of Art in South Kensington and completed her education in the Slade School of Art at University College London. She is now celebrated for her charming and nostalgic illustrations of childhood in the English countryside. The British library and the…
Literature, Lyrics and Lexical Diversity: What Do James Joyce, Sir Walter Scott and the Wu-Tang Clan Have in Common?
Inspired by this fascinating study of vocabulary in rap lyrics, by Matt Daniels at Polygraph, my colleague Derek Greene decided to take a similar dive into our own data. Which of our 46 novels includes the widest selection of unique words? I’ll let Derek explain this chart in his own words: I looked at the…
Insult of the Week: Fops
From one gendered insult to another: this week we’re looking at literary fops, or gentlemen that are – in some way or another – a bit too concerned with manners of dress, elegance and fashion. Our featured image (by the wonderful C. E. Brock) comes from John Galt’s 1821 novel The Annals of the Parish…
Image Collection of the Week: Victorian mansplaining
Some visual representations of Victorian mansplaining from the British library corpus for your perusal…
The Art of Beauty: To rouge or not to rouge
Throughout our corpus of nineteenth-century novels, there are numerous references to the transformative power of cosmetics. As well as striving to survive the noxious levels of lead and arsenic in your potions and pastes, you are also tasked with achieving socially acceptable levels of rouging. According to Madam Lola Montez’s 1858 book The Art of Beauty or…
The Sea of Books 