19th Century… A Victorian “Commonplace Book” 11 Jul 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I recently got hold of a “Commonplace Book” which dates from 1859. Commonplace books have been a feature of home life since at least the 1600s. Most…
19th Century… Playing Robin Hood in the Victorian Nursery 21 Jun 202021 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo Thomas Rowland argues that for most of the “mythic” outlaw’s history, “Robin was much more a character of ludic texts, of play games and festival culture, than…
19th Century… “The Vision” by Robin Hood (1841) 16 Jul 2019 Everyone of course loves to investigate appearances of the name of Robin Hood in medieval court records. One of these days, it might finally be proven who the “real” Robin…
19th Century… The Awakening Conscience 27 Jun 201927 Jun 2019 By Stephen Basdeo William Holman Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience (1853) is one of my favourite Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Holman Hunt was a religious man and this was a companion piece to…
19th Century… Robin Hood of the Anti-Corn Law League 12 May 2019 By Stephen Basdeo While physical archival research remains the “bread and butter” of the work of any historian, the rise of online repositories of primary sources have proved to be…
19th Century… The Politics of Victorian England’s “Vicious Republican”: G. W. M. Reynolds (1814–79) 13 Feb 2019 By Stephen Basdeo It’s quite possible that you’ve never heard of George William MacArthur Reynolds (1814–79). His prolific writing career has been overshadowed somewhat by his contemporaries such as Charles…
