Holiday Reading

Byatt, from the Guardian I’m embarrassed to say that I read about two non-Victorian novels a year, and that even those novels are often related to the Victorian novel stylistically or thematically.  A perennial favourite of mine is the contemporary realist novelist Margaret Drabble, especially The Peppered Moth (whose Darwinian themes are related to The [...]

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Dracula in Twilight and Goth Janes: Nineteenth-century Young Adult Fiction Today

Over the past few years, I have come to learn a lot about children’s literature and the reading preferences of young urban children and youth. I am involved with a wonderful organization that provides books free to children in low-income neighborhoods. Books are donated to the organization, which then displays them in a beautiful location [...]

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Victorian Pop

I’ve been living in the U.S. for a few years now, and one Canadian holiday I really miss is Queen Victoria day. Or, “fireworks day,” as we used to call it when I was little. I think we were missing the point, though I bet Queen Victoria liked fireworks. Maybe. In the U.S., we have [...]

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Neo-Victorian Experiments: A Humument

In April, I attended a seminar on Neo-Victorian Literature at King’s College London. The event allowed for a lively, informative discussion regarding the current state of neo-Victorian writing and scholarship. One of the main questions asked was, is there something distinct about neo-Victorian literature, as opposed to historical fiction more generally? I’m inclined to consider [...]

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Steampunk and Neo-Victorian Month

May is Steampunk and Neo-Victorian Month here at the Floating Academy. We’ve been a little behind in our posts, but we are all collectively interested in putting together some ideas about the phenomenon, which seems to be gathering steam – pun intended, of course! – in academic circles of late.

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On the Connexion of Lovelace and Somerville

As part of  Ada Lovelace Day, “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science,”  Rob MacDougall put up a great post about Lovelace’s mentor Mary Somerville, (much of which he borrows from Jay Clayton’s Charles Dickens in Cyberspace). My favorite line of MacDougall’s — “Ada Lovelace is cool, [...]

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Neo-Victorian Monsters Run Amuck

As Karen’s post on Alice in Wonderland demonstrates, there is no shortage of Victorians in film these days. I haven’t had a chance to see Burton’s new film yet, but I did see Sherlock Holmes, which was entertaining despite being more like a combination Holmes-tribute, action film and Dan Brown novel than an actual Conan [...]

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Alice in Wonderland

I’ve just seen the new Alice in Wonderland (And got caught in a thunderstorm on the way home.  I feel like the dormouse in the teapot! Or something like that.)  The new movie is sort of an Alice-meets-The Wizard of Oz action-fantasy, with the Red Queen pitted against the White Queen and Alice as Jabberwock-slayer.  [...]

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BAVS-NAVSA

I’ve just come back from BAVS-NAVSA in Cambridge.  I’ve been to several NAVSAs and it’s always a great conference, and this was no exception.  One of the most interesting aspects of this meeting was its  focus on our contemporary investment in the Victorians. 

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The Tensions of Neo-Victorianism

I recently taught Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things (1992) in an introductory-level English class. It is both a neo-Victorian novel and a postmodern rewriting of Frankenstein. There are many narrative strands, some of which refute one another, and it is a great example of what Linda Hutcheon calls “historiographic metafiction.” One of the narratives tells the [...]

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