Is this group still active?

I was wandering around looking at groups and found this one. As I have always enjoyed this period in history I was very pleased to find it. However, there haven't been any posts for a while. Just wondering if anyone in this group is still out there.

Hi and Welcome KathiJ!

FWIW, I'm still out here :-)

I still keep an eye on this group, but yes, it's been silent for a long time.

Does anyone else on this group go to the Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco?

I've just joined this group and have been reading all the old posts.

Yes, staffordcastle, I've been to the Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco - a long time ago but it was absolutely memorable.

Welcome Vivienne! I'm afraid people don't post much in this group, although judging by libraries, they do seem to read a lot. Which are your favourite Victorian reads? Do you read non fiction dealing with the period?

I read a lot of non-fiction relating to the period, and occasionally dip into fiction. I like the Barsetshire novels of Anthony Trollope quite a lot.

Just going to say hi. I read 'The Beetle' by Richard Marsh. Written in 1897. A decent horror novel, has anyone else read this novel?
Nice to see activity in this group.

OK, count me in. Have just finished that once famous, now neglected anti-Victorian work from the late-high Victorian period, The Story of an African farm, by Olive Schreiner. Also her little book of dreams. I'll be reviewing them both as soon as I can. -- Goddard

My favourite Victorian non-fiction, read recently and written in recent times, was Travels with Queen Victoria by Sarah Mountbatten-Windsor York. It was really interesting and I learned lots. Victoria enjoyed travel but usually took her holidays in the off-season when there were not many tourists around - the Riviera in March doesn't sound very appealing. Another by Sarah, Duchess of York, Victoria and Albert : life at Osborne House was also excellent. Sarah has had many faults laid bare in the press but her admiration for Victoria is unmistakable.

Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians is due to surface soon, it's been on the tbr shelf for too long.

ETA: I enjoy history and exploration, especially books written in the golden age of exploration, i.e., the Victorian era.

>8 HarryMacDonald: I have The story of an African farm around somewhere, although I don't see it in my library. I'll look forward to your review.

I will get back to posting when my work pressure subsides, and I can work away my back log of reviews.

I have been reading Eminent Victorians and have just the fourth section left to read.

I'm sorry to go so far off-topic but I've a question and this thread seemed the least specific. Is anyone in this group fairly knowledgeable about Victorian appliances, attire, and the like? I've just finished The Lady's Dressing Room and in the back is an advertisement of the period for The Ladies' Sanitary Toilet Appliance that's utterly stumped me; it sounds much like something used during menstrual periods but on the other hand 'No washing required'. If anyone knows what the appliance might be, I'd love to know; if anyone would like to see the advert text, let me know & I'll copy it. Cheers.

>12 bluepiano: Happy to see a post here. If you scan the photo, someone might have an idea. There is also a book by Judith Flanders, The Victorian House, which is very good on detail. I have started it but it is now in a box somewhere and I can't check.

Your George Gissing collection is excellent.

Why, thank you. Finally decided to divest library of Henry Ryecroft though & feel not a bit of the regret I feared I might. I don't think that Gissing was at his best when he obliged himself to be introspective. (Nor when he was expected to be personal: the collection of his letters I read was so detached as to be rather mundane.)

No illustration, and online copies haven't the adverts so can't reproduce the interesting assortment of typefaces, but in hope that someone w/grasp of the trivia & exchange rates of the time might happen upon this:

LADIES' SANITARY TOILET APPLIANCE
For occasional wear. Patented at Home and Abroad.

A wonderful invention and invaluable boon to ladies, possessing advantages hitherto unknown. Extremely comfortable, cleanly, and economical. It far surpasses all other systems. Indispensable when travelling. No washing required. One appliance will last for years.

Price 4/9.

To be obtained from all Chemists and Ladies' Outfitting Establishments.

(1893)

Ah, I've just noticed a note down in the corner that it's 'wholesale from the Inventor and Patentee' as well being in depots in London & Paris, so perhaps it was a recent invention whose sales were sparse and availability short-lived, rather like a self-published kindle book. But I glanced at other adverts of the time & they're straightforward about selling 'sanitary towels' and 'diapers' for menstruation and besides, that 'no washing required' makes me wonder if the purpose of the LSTA was an altogether different one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_urination_device maybe? Although the article only knows things as early as 1918. I would think that you would want to rinse it out, though.

>14 bluepiano:
Do you have the name of the patentee in the advertisement? It might be possible to find the patent.
"Toilet" in 19th century use doesn't necessarily mean what we think it does: it could be just about anything to do with washing, dressing, hair, cosmetics, etc.

4/9 in 1893 would be in the region of £25 today (according to http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use=CPI&use=NOMINA... ), so it was obviously not a throwaway item for single use.

MarthaJeanne, some sort of receptacle for urine had occurred to me, but it's for 'occasional wear' and the only kind of wearable device that I could imagine would be utterly impractical. Thorold, yes indeed 'toilet' had a broader meaning but anything one uses periodically, next to the body or not, surely must be washed now and again, & the fact that the advertiser doesn't put a straightforward name on the object makes me think that it was designed for what advertisers these days call 'intimate use'. Thanks for the price, and good idea about the patentee. Haven't googled intensely but so far there's nothing on him (M. Crosby/Dorchester Road/Weymouth).

I had a quick look through British patents from the early 90s: no sign of a likely Crosby so far, but there was certainly quite a bit of activity in the field of sanitary towels at the time. I also found one
British patent specification from 1894 for a female urinal, but the patentee there is a German called Lütje (http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=189411076A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=4&date=18940707&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP ). Looks more like something for a hospital bed than "for occasional use", though.

(I noticed a Matilda and a Mary in the M's under Crosby, but rather oddly they both turn out to have invented improved lamps in the early 1900s. I wonder if there was a Martha as well..?)

Thorold, how good of you to go to the trouble. Your reward is a bit of trivia I learned today, one germane to both recent posts & to your homeland: In France the onset of a menstrual period can be er announced with the phrase 'les Anglais ont debarque'.

I've decided to believe that M. Crosby invented a device, perhaps something like a menstrual cup before its time, that sadly failed to catch on with the public, perhaps because the inventor scorned hygenic measures like advising users to clean the damned thing whatever it was.--There's a late Victorian or, better, Edwardian novel in that: The nondescript but ambitious chap who grudgingly beavers away in an office transcribing documents by day & who by night invents stuff--countless foolscap pages covered with sketches, annotated, crumpled & discarded--the brainstorm leading to and the painstaking working-out of plans for what will be called The Ladies' Sanitary Toilet Appliance--the elation of getting a *patent* & subsequent solitary celebration--the inevitable aching disappointment & disillusionment when no one buys it.

The Literary Centennials group http://www.librarything.com/groups/literarycentennials is marking the bicentennial of Charlotte Bronte's birth this year, with a number of threads devoted to her.

Many Thanks for this tip SassyLassy. I had overlooked this LT group and shall enjoy browsing it.

Hellooo? Did I just hear my own voice echo back?

Some of the things that I really appreciate about Victorian lit is that it is easy to find quality there and just about everything can be found for free on Project Gutenberg.

Soo, again, is this group still active?

We stagger into life from time to time when someone prompts us, so many thanks for doing so. My own recent Victorian read has been Dickens 'Great Expectations', in my view his most mature book. He is clearly writing at his considerable best here.

I have also picked up Asa Briggs 'Victorian Things' and am dipping into that. I am lucky enough to have the Folio society edition of his Victorian Trilogy, the other volumes being' Victorian People' and 'Victorian Cities.' he was a writer steeped in the period and it's well worth browsing through these books.

Here's hoping that our joint efforts help the group to flicker back into life!

My reading is currently not Victorian, but I expect to get back to it in October. My last one was Villette and I didn't like it enough to comment.

I sympathise. I found this a difficult book to like. Is it fair to say that Lucy Snowe is well named? I could see that it was very well written, particularly in describing Lucy's isolation in a deserted Brussels summer, but I have never been able to return to it.

>26 bluepiano: More than 5 years since I read it but I rather liked it too. In fact I liked it a good deal mostly because a great deal of it was quite atmospheric. What you say of the ending is interesting; I wasn't bothered by the way it was handled & now that I think of it I suppose abruptness would have been in keeping--shipwrecks & reports of them are sudden shocks.

I read Vanity Fair for 3rd time this summer, was altogether taken with the voice & observations of the narrator and less so by the story, and then took it to the charity shop because I won't read it again--Victorian novels are so straightforward that there's not much beyond the obvious to be found in them and these days I'm much more attracted to the subtle/ambiguous. But I'm still keeping Gissing, some Arthur Machen, a couple of Benett's and provisionally Arthur Morrison on the shelf for the moment. And now I'm reading and enjoying a manual on letter-writing full of sample letters published in UK in the 1890s.

>27 AnnieMod:
I read both of them when I crave different things. Dickens is wordy and has more action in his stories. Trollope is a better painter of the era. I had been dabbing in some lesser known (or better to say less remembered) contemporary - Charles Lever.

>28 Maura49: Bluepiano-I would have to disagree on the issue of Victorian novels. Are you saying that they lack complexity? some do of course. I don't find all of Dickens bears re-reading, but I do feel that he came to a new level of maturity in his later novels, particularly in 'Great Expectations, 'Bleak House' and 'Little Dorrit.'
I also think that George Eliot is a novelist to be reckoned with, notablyin 'Middlemarch.'
I have my doubts about Trollope although I love reading his books. However he too has his deeper side and I think it can be seen in the 'Last Chronicle of Barset' and 'The way we live now.'
Of course as a life-time lover of 19th C novels I would think this, wouldn't I?

>28 Maura49: Ah, Gissing. How could anyone throw him out?

It is odd how this group waxes and wanes, but I notice a drop off in many groups this year.

For anyone who is interested, the Viragos Group will be featuring Agnes Grey as their next book in their chronological read, most likely in September. The last two were Marriage and Deerbrook, both new to me. My last Victorian read was earlier this summer, a reread of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It certainly showed the value of rereading, as there was so much I missed when I last read it as a young teenager. I really appreciated it on a different level this time.

Ah, I haven't read either Agnes Grey or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall before, but sometime perhaps I might try them. :)

But why doesn't this group organise group reads like some of the other groups? It is kinda difficult/dull to keep up with a group with so little activity and which never actively tries to engage its members with the theme of the group. I mean, everybody here enjoys Victorian lit but looking at the type and the timing of the posts, there hasn't been much of an outlet to express one's interest other than vaguely through the occasional topic on books and other related Victorian subjects.

>30 Majel-Susan: What an interesting question. No, not lacking complexity. Well, at least not lacking plots of many strands. I was going to reply that they lack subtlety but now that I think about it I might say 'lacking subtlety and depth', though absence of the latter not really bothersome to me. Overall and from a distance they therefore sometimes feel plodding, occasionally even thunderingly so.

Now I'm thinking of other novels written during same period. Crime & Punishment--take *that*, Middlemarch. Or one with a Victorian emphasis on plot: Therese Raquin, which is ridiculously OTT and which like many Victorian novels I remember could be adapted into a hit TV show. Zola though overcomes the story with his genius for description, his ability to create atmosphere.

A site well worth a look--http://www.victorianweb.org/index.html--with apologies if it's been mentioned elsewhere on the threads.

And with apologies for URL not becoming a link, for some reason.

>34 bluepiano:
Just make sure you have a space before and after the address - your -- are immediatelly attached to it so the server does not know how to parse. :)

On the topic - it is a trove of information, I agree :)

>35 mnleona: Cheers. Shall try to bear that in mind.

>32 bluepiano: I checked this site and very informative.