My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute.
When I went to the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne to study drama, I felt I’d finally found my place in life.
I was Lady Gaga way before her time. I had a wee kettle for a handbag. Didn’t everyone, at some point? One of the teachers used to call me Dame Flora Robson because I had this big, long Victorian skirt. And I wore a Peruvian hat. It was the 1980s – people were wearing lots of lace.
American culture is very good at interpersonal relationships and people skills, whereas we’re incredibly adept at academics and straightforward 19th-century Victorian education.
The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues – probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life – even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.
I’ve admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it’s what motivated me to go into fashion.
Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed ‘steampunks.’ Although they utilized many of the same tropes and touchstones employed later by twenty-first-century writers of steampunk, in their contemporary hands these devices represented state-of-the-art speculation.
18th century opera is packed with emotion, but contains not a trace of kitsch. Only with the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ of Victorian poetry does the disease begin to grow in our poetic tradition.
Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.
My great-grandfather was in the army in India, and we have photographs of my family there in full Victorian dress. They’re incredibly romantic.
I’ve always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward’s reign.
The late Victorian Era brought in part-time education. Not everybody went to school, but they were supposed to have a decent level of schooling; they went part-time after 12.
I love the idea of exploring the Victorian imagination and what Victorians thought the world of fantasy would look like.
When I was researching the Victorian anti-vaccination movement, those activists often used a vampire as a metaphor for the vaccinator.
Purpose has always been part of Unilever’s DNA. Our founder, William Lever, built a business around the sale of Lifebuoy soap that was not only profitable and sustainable but also helped transform the health of the poor in Victorian Britain.
Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.
Vampires are so old that they don’t need to impress anyone anymore. They’re comfortable in their own skin. It’s this enigmatic strength that’s very romantic and old-fashioned. I think it goes back to something of a Victorian attitude of finding a strong man who’s going to look after his woman.
If I didn’t already sense that I was different, I certainly was reminded, whether by my parents or by the other school kids. Not just reminded. Told… I was made to believe it wasn’t right. If I went a little bit too off – slap! It was Dad’s upbringing and it was Victorian, and that’s the way he was.
I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn’t simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.
Yes, if you lace your corset up as snugly as is humanly possible, it will undoubtedly impede your breathing and make you more likely to faint. But it’s not certain that Victorian women really did that on a regular basis.
The Greens simply don’t understand that a strong economy is the key to a better Victoria for all Victorian families.
Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn’t write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began – the first morning – and I’ve never stopped.
‘The Victorian Internet’ is a must read for anyone interested in the history of technology and in the cycles of hype, boom, and bust that seem to only quicken with each new wave of innovation. Highly recommended.
I don’t watch television, but I saw ‘The Office’ by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We’d do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I’m sitting there watching hours of it.
I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.
The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.
Britain’s passion for Christmas and huge white weddings dates from Victorian times – both were low-key celebrations before Victoria and her PR machine.
I hope I succeed in demonstrating that you may equally find compelling and significant narratives – stories that alter or add to our understanding of history – in unprepossessing places: a Victorian sewer system; a Cold War bunker; derelict hospitals.
One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People’s gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.
Science fiction has never been about the future; it’s always been about the present day whether it’s Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I’m writing about.
As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.
Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they’re good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market.
Among my favorite half-dozen topics is the field of Victorian female explorers, the intrepid women who packed up their parasols and petticoats and roamed the world in search of adventure. Some were scientists, some artists, some unabashed curiosity-seekers who simply went out to see what they could see.
The idea of close encounters of the zero’th kind – which is to say, not a close encounter at all, but simply uncovering evidence that someone’s out there – dates back to the Victorian era.
When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term ‘Puritanism’ as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism.
Nothing seemed to offer more striking proof to the late Victorian mind of the infernal truth of social Darwinism than the supposed demise of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
We’ve lived in our Victorian house for 20 years and the kitchen is the centre of family life – we don’t just eat here, we live here.
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