Research Guides: English 457/557 Secrets and Scandals: Victorian literature and culture, general background

Some general resources

Gale primary sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources allows researchers to search Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) simultaneously. The Nineteenth Century collections are also available as modules devoted to specific topics such as Politics, Religion, Science & Technology, Travel, etc. To gain access to these individual databases, go to the Library's A-Z Database List and search for NCCO.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Index to scholarly articles covering world history (with the exception of the US and Canada) from 1450 to the present
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
National record of men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. Concise, up-to-date biographies written by named, specialist authors.

Primary Sources: Specific Collections

London Low Life This link opens in a new window
An extraordinary digital collection bringing to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, and inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of the nineteenth century’s greatest city. From salacious ‘swell’s guides’ to scandalous broadsides and subversive posters, the material sold and exchanged on London’s bustling thoroughfares offers an unparalleled insight into the dark underworld of the city. Children’s chapbooks, street cries, slang dictionaries and ballads were all part of a vibrant culture of street literature.
19th Century British Pamphlets This link opens in a new window
19th Century British Pamphlets, created by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the United Kingdom. The digitization of more than 26,000 pamphlets from collections in seven universities in the UK spanning more than one million pages brings together a corpus of primary sources for the study of sociopolitical and economic factors impacting 19th-century Britain.
Victorian women writers project This link opens in a new window
The Victorian Women Writers Project (VWWP) began in 1995 at Indiana University and is primarily concerned with the exposure of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century. The collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more. VWWP contains scores of authors, both prolific and rare.
Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present This link opens in a new window
Provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.

Reference Sources

A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture
The Victorian period was a time of rapid cultural change, which resulted in a huge and varied literary output. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture offers experienced guidance to the literature of nineteenth-century Britain and its social and historical context. This revised and expanded edition comprises contributions from over 30 leading scholars who, approaching the Victorian epoch from different positions and traditions, delve into the unruly complexities of the Victorian imagination.
Divided into five parts, this new Companion surveys seven decades of history before examining the key phases in a Victorian life, the leading professions and walks of life, the major literary genres, the way Victorians defined their persons, homes, and national identity, and how recent "neo-Victorian" developments in contemporary culture reconfigure the sense we make of the past today. Important topics such as sexuality, denominational faith, social class, and global empire inform each chapter's approach. Each chapter provides a comprehensive bibliography of established and emerging scholarship.
Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age
First published in 1972, this book contains a collection of ten essays that document the feminine stereotypes that women fought against, and only partially erased, a hundred years ago. It offers a valuable insight into Victorian culture and society.
A Companion to the Victorian Novel
In this comprehensive and accessible critical overview of the Victorian novel, a number of writers explore the religious, social, political and other contexts of the period and study the various genres or subgenres of the Victorian novel.

Victorian Culture and Society by Adam C. Roberts
Call Number: DA550 .R59 2003 Knight Reference
Publication Date: 2003-06-27
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The 1890s: an encyclopedia of British literature, are, and culture by CEVASCO
Call Number: DA560 .A18 1993 Knight Reference
Publication Date: 1993-03-01