Research Guides: ENGL 4325/5325- Victorian Literature: British Class System

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Epochs of Fashion- Victorian Era (1837-1901)
Information about the dresses of the Victorian Era and how society, religion, and industry impacted clothing worn.
Victorian Era Fashion: Clothing Trends and More Rachel Lockett | Fashion, Society, World History | November 1, 2024
Article detailing Victorian fashion
Gentleman's Gazette- Early Victorian Men’s Clothing: Black Dominates 1840s – 1880s
Details of Victorian men's fashion
Truly Victorian- Sewing Patterns of the Victorian Era
Pictures, descriptions, and patterns of Victorian clothing by era.
Victoria & Albert Museum- Corsets, crinolines and bustles: fashionable Victorian underwear
It was often the structures beneath Victorian clothing that gave women's fashion its form. Corsets (also known as stays) moulded the waist, while cage crinolines supported voluminous skirts, and bustles projected a dress out from behind. Fashionable Victorian women wore an array of other undergarments, from corset covers that hid the lines of their stays, to petticoats for added volume and warmth. Exactly what was worn and how it was made changed rapidly throughout the era, influenced by forces like technological innovation and shifting attitudes towards gender.

The Season by Kristen Richardson
ISBN: 9780393608731

Publication Date: 2019-11-19
Historical Etiquette Etiquette Books in Nineteenth-Century Western Cultures by Annick Paternoster
ISBN: 9783031075780

Publication Date: 2022

This book is a groundbreaking study of etiquette in the nineteenth century when the success of etiquette books reached unprecedented heights in Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. It positions etiquette as a fully-fledged theoretical concept within the fields of politeness studies and historical pragmatics. After tracing the origin of etiquette back to Spanish court protocol, the analysis takes a novel approach to key aspects of etiquette: its highly coercive and intricate scripts; the liminal rituals of social gatekeeping; the fear for blunders; the obsession with precedence.

The Victorian middle classes-British Library
Liza Picard explores the expansion of the middle classes.
The middle classes: etiquette and upward mobility- by Kathryn Hughes
Professor Kathryn Hughes describes how the expansion of the middle classes in the 19th century led to a new emphasis on upward mobility, etiquette and conspicuous consumption.

Articles

Cowen, David. "LIBERTY, LAISSEZ-FAIRE AND LICENSURE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITAIN". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 43(1) 1969. pp. 30-40.

Kohlmann, Benjamin. "The Victorian Crisis of Laissez-Faire: George Eliot, Political Economy, and the Common Good". History of Political Economy. 48(4) 2016. pp. 681-704.

See

Jarvis. " The political and Economic Scene". In The Romantic Period. pg 1-25.

Mitchell, Sally. " Parliament". In Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia.

Laissez-Faire andthe Victorians by Evans. BBC History Trails. BBC - History - Laissez-faire and the Victorians

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: social and political issues - by Simon Avery
From industrialisation to slavery, Dr Simon Avery looks at the 19th century social and political issues that fed into Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry.
Middlemarch: reform and change -by John Mullan
Middlemarch is set in the period leading up to the 1832 Reform Act. Professor John Mullan explores how George Eliot uses the novel to examine different kinds of reform and progress: political, scientific and social. -
Reform Acts-Victorian Web

The working classes and the poor-British Library
The Victorians liked to have their social classes clearly defined. The working class was divided into three layers, the lowest being ‘working men’ or labourers, then the ‘intelligent artisan’, and above him the ‘educated working man’. In reality, things were not so tidily demarcated. Temporrary link until the British Library fix website issues.
Charles Booth and the Survey into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903)
Provides an index to the original records of Booth’s Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, an extensive study of working class life undertaken between 1886 and 1903, which is archived at the London School of Economics and Political Science library. Also contains a great deal of digitized material, including police notebooks and the Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, in which maps of London were color-coded to indicate the poverty level and social class in different area.

ENGL 4325/5325- Victorian Literature

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