Reading

Novels

• Jane Austen (1813), Pride and Prejudice (recommended editions: Penguin, Oxford, or Broadview)

• Charles Dickens (1837–39), Oliver Twist (recommended edition: Oxford Classic)

Short Stories

• Charles Dickens (1843), “A Christmas Carol” (or buy here)

• Arthur Conan Doyle (1892), “The Red Headed League,” “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”

• Arthur Conan Doyle (1894), “His First Operation” (Read this in preparation for our visit to the Old Operating Theatre Museum!)

• G.M.W. Reynolds, Mysteries of London: 

  • First, read about Reynolds’s “Penny Dreadful” series, which was one of the most popular texts of the Victorian era! Think of it as the popular precursor to a serial TV show. They were inexpensive to purchase (only 1 penny per issue) and were marketed towards working class readers.

  • Then, read the Prologue and the first three or four short chapters (each one would have been issued separately), by either looking at this nineteenth-century collection of the stories or reading the plain-text here if that’s easier on your eyes! This was an on-going series of stories rather than a novel, so I just want you to get a sense of the sensational subject matter!

Poetry

• William Blake (1794), “London”

• Wordsworth (1802/1807), “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”

• Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 7, just lines 1-260, from the section on his “Residence in London.” For context, you should know that Wordsworth wrote his long autobiographical poem beginning at 28 and for the rest of his life. He addressed it to his fellow poet, Coleridge.

• Arthurian Legend excerpts: Sir Thomas Malory’s “Fair Maid of Astolat” and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”

Non-Fiction

• Charles Dickens, Night Walks: “Night Walks,” “Gone Astray,” “On an Amateur Beat” and either “Wapping Workhouse” OR “A Small Star in the East.” (Note: I recommend getting a copy of this lovely little book. But I have provided links to these essays online)

• Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London and its Environs (this is a Victorian travel guide from 1862. Imagine you are a nineteenth-century visitor; this is your introduction to the city!) (you can buy a copy here if you wish). Read “London as it was” and “London as it is” (pages 9-23), available for free here

• Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor (1851): Read “Watercress Girl” and “Statement of a Photographic Man”(note that each of these appear twice on the web pages, so just read each once!)

• Elizabeth Banks Campaigns of Curiosity (1894) Read at least the first 4 pages of the preface, to get a sense of who Banks was and what she was doing, and then read up to page 32 of the text itself.

  • Here’s the blurb for Banks’s book, to give you a sense of who she was and why she’s interesting! “In the 1890s American journalist Elizabeth L. Banks became an international phenomenon through a series of newspaper articles. Disguising herself in various costumes, Banks investigated and made public the working conditions of women in London. Writing from the perspective of an American girl, she explored and exposed a variety of employment, ranging from parlor maid to flower girl to American heiress. Banks demonstrated the capability of women for positions in journalism long held only by men.”

• “Flaneur” Wikipedia Entry

• Les Miserables Study Guide (read this in preparation for our theatre night!

Images

• London Illustrations by Gustave Doré

• Street Life in London published in 1876-7 (photographer John Thomson)

Videos

• Watch this video from the Victoria & Albert Museum website about The Great Exhibition of 1851.

Criticism and Biography

• Encyclopedia Britannica Biography of Jane Austen
• Encyclopedia Britannica Biography of Charles Dickens

• Do some online research to learn about “Jack the Ripper”! Recommended additional reading: Jack the Ripper chapter, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London by Judith R. Walkowitz

• Introduction from Dickens’s Victorian London – Alex Werner and Tony Williams

Some Recommended Reading (not required)

• A modern London travel guide of your choice.

• Do a little online research about the history of Winchester in Hampshire, where we’ll be spending our last two nights

• Read more about Dickens’s nighttime walks in London in Beaumont’s Nightwalking
• Read this collection of Victorian articles about London, many of which we’ll take a look at while we’re in London (as handouts).
• Read this short chapter from Claire Tomalin’s biography of Jane Austen (Penguin, 1997) about her time in Chawton

• Read “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” by Virginia Woolf. This was written in the 1920s, so after the time period we are studying. But it’s a great read!

• Read “The Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allan Poe (1850)