Focusing on an era that both inherited and irretrievably altered the form and the content of earlier art production, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850-1880 argues that fine art practices and the audiences and markets for them were influenced by the media culture of art publishing and journalism in substantial and formative ways, perhaps more than at any other time in the history of English art. The study centers on forms of Victorian picture-making and the art knowledge systems defining them, and draws on the histories of art, literature, journalism, and publishing. The historical example employed in the book is that of the more than 800 steel-plate prints after paintings published in the London-based Art-Journal between 1850 and 1880. The cultural phenomenon of the Art Journal print is shown to be a key connector in mid-Victorian art appreciation by drawing out specific tropes of likeness. This study also examines the important links between paint and print; the aesthetic values and domestic aspirations of the Victorian middle class; and the inextricable intertwining of fine art and 'trade' publishing.

Drawing on art, literary, journalism, and publishing histories, this study argues that fine art practices of the Victorian period were influenced by the media culture of art publishing and journalism in formative ways, perhaps more than at any other time in the history of English art. The cultural phenomenon of the Art-Journal print is shown to be a key connector in the art appreciation of the era. This study also examines the important links between paint and print; the aesthetic values and domestic aspirations of the Victorian middle class; and the inextricable intertwining of fine art and 'trade' publishing.

The British Jesus focuses on the Jesus of the religious culture dominant in Britain from the 1850s through the 1950s, the popular Christian culture shared by not only church, kirk, and chapel goers, but also the growing numbers of Britons who rarely or only episodically entered a house of worship. An essay in intellectual as well as cultural history, this book illumines the interplay between and among British New Testament scholarship, institutional Christianity, and the wider Protestant culture. The scholars who mapped and led the uniquely British quest for the historical Jesus in the first half of the twentieth century were active participants in efforts to replace the popular image of “Jesus in a white nightie” with a stronger figure, and so, they hoped, to preserve Britain’s Christian identity. They failed. By exploring that failure, and more broadly, by examining the relations and exchanges between popular, artistic, and scholarly portrayals of Jesus, this book highlights the continuity and the conservatism of Britain’s popular Christianity through a century of religious and cultural transformation. Exploring depictions of Jesus from over more than one hundred years, this book is a crucial resource for scholars of British Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This book is a study of the complex relationship between matter and idea that shaped the nineteenth-century culture of art, and that in turn determined the course of still-current accounts of art's nature and value. Fundamental questions about the effects of material conditions on the creation and reception of art arose as early as the nineteenth century, and put important pressures on later eras. The place of class distinctions in the making and reception of art, the relationship between copy and original, the effects of display on art appreciation, even the role of pleasure itself: this book treats these and related issues as productive conceptual challenges with an unresolved relationship to matter at their core. Drawing on recent scholarship on the history of art and its institutions, Material Inspirations places cultural developments such as the emergence of new sites for exhibition and the astonishing proliferation of printed reproductions alongside a wide range of texts including novels, poems, travel guidebooks, compendia of antiquities, and especially the great line of critical writing that emerged in the period. The study vivifies a dynamic era, which is still too often seen as static and unchanging, by emphasizing the transformations taking place throughout the period in precisely those areas that have appeared to promise little more than repetition or continuity: collection, exhibition, and reproduction. The book culminates with the two great critics of the period, John Ruskin and Walter Pater, but it also includes close analysis of other prose writers, as well as poets and novelists ranging from William Blake to Robert Browning, George Eliot to Henry James. Significant developments addressed include the vogue for the representation of Old Masters in the first half of the century, ongoing innovations in the creation and diffusion of reproductions, and the emergence of the field of art history itself. At the heart of each of these the book identifies a material pressure shaping concepts, texts, and works of art.

From chatelaines to whale blubber, ice making machines to stained glass, this six-volume collection will be of interest to the scholar, student or general reader alike - anyone who has an urge to learn more about Victorian things. The set brings together a range of primary sources on Victorian material culture and discusses the most significant developments in material history from across the nineteenth century. The collection will demonstrate the significance of objects in the everyday lives of the Victorians and addresses important questions about how we classify and categorise nineteenth-century things. This volume on ‘Victorian Arts’ will include sources on painting sculpture, book illustration, photography and the much-neglected area of Victorian stained glass.

The 2017 winner of the Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize Providing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of scholarship on nineteenth-century British periodicals, this volume surveys the current state of research and offers researchers an in-depth examination of contemporary methodologies. The impact of digital media and archives on the field informs all discussions of the print archive. Contributors illustrate their arguments with examples and contextualize their topics within broader areas of study, while also reflecting on how the study of periodicals may evolve in the future. The Handbook will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students of nineteenth-century culture who are interested in issues of cultural formation, transformation, and transmission in a developing industrial and globalizing age, as well as those whose research focuses on the bibliographical and the micro case study. In addition to rendering a comprehensive review and critique of current research on nineteenth-century British periodicals, the Handbook suggests new avenues for research in the twenty-first century. "This volume's 30 chapters deal with practically every aspect of periodical research and with the specific topics and audiences the 19th-century periodical press addressed. It also covers matters such as digitization that did not exist or were in early development a generation ago. In addition to the essays, readers will find 50 illustrations, 54 pages of bibliography, and a chronology of the periodical press. This book gives seemingly endless insights into the ways periodicals and newspapers influenced and reflected 19th-century culture. It not only makes readers aware of problems involved in interpreting the history of the press but also offers suggestions for ways of untangling them and points the direction for future research. It will be a valuable resource for readers with interests in almost any aspect of 19th-century Britain. Summing Up: Highly recommended" - J. D. Vann, University of North Texas in CHOICE

Echoing Joseph Paxton's question at the close of the Great Exhibition, 'What is to become of the Crystal Palace?', this interdisciplinary essay collection argues that there is considerable potential in studying this unique architectural and art-historical document after 1851, when it was rebuilt in the South London suburb of Sydenham. It brings together research on objects, materials and subjects as diverse as those represented under the glass roof of the Sydenham Palace itself; from the Venus de Milo to Sheffield steel, souvenir 'peep eggs' to war memorials, portrait busts to imperial pageants, tropical plants to cartoons made by artists on the spot, copies of paintings from ancient caves in India to 1950s film. Essays do not simply catalogue and collect this eclectic congregation, but provide new ways for assessing the significance of the Sydenham Crystal Palace for both nineteenth- and twentieth-century studies. The volume will be of particular interest to researchers and students of British cultural history, museum studies, and art history.