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… Mike Leigh’s “Peterloo” (2018) 18 Nov 2018 Reviewed by Stephen Basdeo As a fan of English radical history (did I mention I once wrote a book about Wat Tyler?), I was really looking forward to Mike Leigh’s…
18th century… Passo di Lupo: An Italian Bandit 12 Nov 2017 An outlaw’s life was not a merry one: in the 1820s, banditry in Italy was rife; at this time, a young travel writer named Charles Macfarlane was touring the country…
19th Century… E. L. Blanchard’s “The Mysteries of London” (1849-50) 16 Dec 201616 Dec 2016 My previous post was about Thomas Miller’s continuation of G. W. M. Reynolds’ penny blood The Mysteries of London (Reynolds and Miller’s series were published between 1844 – 1848 and…
19th Century… Pernicious Trash? “The Prince of Archers, or, The Boyhood Days of Robin Hood”(1883) 16 Oct 2016 There is now before us such a veritable mountain of pernicious trash, mostly in paper covers, and “Price One Penny”; so-called novelettes, tales, stories of adventure, mystery and crime; pictures…
