Victorian Self-Invention: Conceptualizing an Era, 1839-1901

FAIN: FB-57239-13

John Rice
University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV 89154-9900)

Drawing on 3,000 articles, images, and works of fiction published in nineteenth-century periodicals and a range of other sources, my book explores when and how Britons began to envision their age and certain people and things as "Victorian," what they meant by that word, and what functions it served. In particular, my book explores the key role played by the periodical press; by the Jubilees and self-styled "Victorian Era" exhibitions; by the tendency to look backward to an "Elizabethan" past and forward to our "Neo-Victorian" present; and by both material culture--especially architecture, furnishings, and fashion--and the links between objects and styles, on the one hand, and historical periods, on the other forged over the long nineteenth century through new modes of marketing, collection, and display.