Victorian America/England/India/Spain...

Here's the thing- I've recently decided to switch the time period in my current project [you can read my rambling on my El Jay, if you wish].

Here's the other thing: I have never written in this time period before.

And I intend to begin revising...soon.

I would love you forever if you told me anything- weird trivia tidbits, things you think everyone else knows but want points anyway- about Victorian life and government. The four countries in the title are my settings (as far as I know O_O) but it's alternative history, so setting isn't quite as meticulous.

Know anything about those batty Victorians? ^_^ Got any links? In exchange, I have an extra kidney, a few pints of blood, or...I can critique. If you're not into, you know, body parts.

A few topics to rack your brains:

- What are some rules of etiquette for traveling, or for dancing, or eating?

- What are the basics of clothing?

- What sort of things were rude?

- What sort of things were happening in government?

- Crime and punishment, sans Raskolnikov.

- Medicine- and how were doctors respected? Scientists?

Here's a link - http://www.victoriana.com/

This site covers quite a wide variety and I'm sure it will answer at least some of your questions.

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/sochistov.html - This one has quite a lot of info too.

As to what was rude:

Any exposure of large amounts of skin, hence both men and women would wear bathing suits that covered everything up, as well as get changed in tents, if they were on the beach.

Discussion of sex - sex was a largely taboo subject.

And other things of the sort. You could probably find more info on one of the sites kitty mentioned.

Good luck!

Hey hon,

You've already got my opium project, here are some other things that I've gathered over time.

Overview on Victorian England -- Victorian England: An Introduction

VRW: Victorian Research Web

Victorian Women Writers Project

Woman's History Then & Now

Victoria's Past: All sorts of stuff on Victorians

Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian England: an article

Sexuality & Modernity: Victorian Sexuality

Victorian Web: Attitudes toward sexuality and sexual identity

Victorian Sexuality in Vampire Literature

Mrs. Beeton's The Book of Household Management

Isabella Beeton: Wiki entry

Victorian England

English Express: Victorian Period and Daily Life

Victorian London

Victorian Literary Studies Archive

Victorian Era Directories

Some Films, TV, & Literature

The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton
Bramwell
Monk Series by Anne Perry
Thomas & Charlotte Pitt series by Anne Perry
Daniel Deronda
Nicholas Nickleby
Sherlock Holmes
Washington Square
Murder Rooms
Anything by George Eliot
Four Feathers (2002)
Four Feathers by A.E.W Mason
The Linnet Bird by Linda Holeman

Oh, I forgot.

Victorian Drug Stats

Victorian Substance Abuse

Famous Victorian Murders

Defining; the victorian era

Sherlockian.net: England and Victorian Era

Victorian Cartoons

Poisoning in Victorian Times

Victorian England

A Time Traveller's Guide to Victorian England

Victorian Morality: Wiki entry

Poverty and Families in the Victorian Era

Victorians: Links

Britain 1800s

I can't be bothered to list web sites but they called ice cream hokey pokey for some reason. They also said "Dash it!" a lot.
I know more but I'm too tired to write.

Oh Sam. Brave Sam.

Most people have already named the web sources I'm familiar with, but there are a few more:
This list, which is put together primarily for steampunk writers but contains some interesting information. Very little of it is sourced, though.

There's also an amaaaazing book that my creative writing teacher has called What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England... whew, mouthful. It has a bunch of stuff about daily life, the kind of stuff history books don't cover. See if you can get your paws on a copy, it's really useful.

Some PG-13-rated facts:

Basically, a big emphasis on nice, proper manners. This was, to an extent, to cover up a society that had kind of a seamy underbelly (at least in the city, e.g. London - I suppose the country was a little quieter). People referred to their legs as "limbs" because ankles were just too risqué to talk about, and yet prostitution rates were higher than at any other period in British history.

The extent of this went so far as to censor classical art and literature, things that we wouldn't dream of doing today. In Stratford I remember seeing a Victorian copy of "The Family Shakespeare" in which, by Iago's account, Desdemona and Othello were not "making the beast with two backs" but "making friends," and all instances of the d-word (...) were replaced with "cursed," et cetera. I actually found it kind of funny, which probably makes me a sick person. It reminded me of the "PG-rated" spoof version of 300 ("Tonight we dine in ... heck! This is CAKE TOWN!")

Lynlyn wrote:There's also an amaaaazing book that my creative writing teacher has called What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England... whew, mouthful. It has a bunch of stuff about daily life, the kind of stuff history books don't cover. See if you can get your paws on a copy, it's really useful.

I love this book.

If it's Victorians in the 1860s, then you could read the book about the Elephant Man - it goes into detail about the setting and all.

Zulu is a good film to watch, and that's in 1879. Also in that time are the Simon Fonthill books by John Wilcox. Those are in Africa and Pakistan, but it mentions "normal life" in there as well.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes... how not to mention him? Those are set in the 1890s.

If it's England, then watching films of Dickens adaptions is good. That way you really get a picture of what the era was like, the squalor and the rich, the clothing and the customs. It helps when you're writing descriptions as well.

Try the Horrible History "Vile Victorians" for odd snippets of trivia.

Oh, and HATS seemed to pretty important. In all the pictures I've seen, EVERYONE, even the street arabs wear a hat.

... Check out about Queen Victoria.



If you haven't already, look at the Wiki article on Victorian morality above. ^

india at that time was a really complicated place. there were multiple castes involved and everybody generalised and discriminated horribly. of course that's all changed now and only scars remain but i would say the best book to read on victorian india would be Kim by Rudyard Kipling. it'll be taxing for a non indian and maybe very uninteresting as well but it is very very accurate

Dunno if you're still working on this or not...

But I came across this lovely little site today: http://www.victorianweb.org/ (woot for StumbleUpon) and thought it might be helpful ^_^

G'luck!