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The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin's Teaching Collection at Oxford digitizes the drawings, engravings, and paintings that John Ruskin collected (and created) for use in teaching drawing. The objects can be viewed separately or in their teaching order and context, with Ruskin's own catalog annotations. The site also suggests how modern art students can put the collection to use, with instructional video and a variety of drawing exercises. Ruskin also assembled another fine art collection for working-class viewers in Sheffield; you can see that collection at the Museum of Sheffield, which also helps sponsor a digital reconstruction of the original museum building, the St. George's Museum.
posted by thomas j wise on Nov 14, 2011 - 5 comments

The multi-talented William Morris' most famous achievement was the Kelmscott Press, which played a leading role in establishing the private press movement. Although the fifty-three books issued by the Press ranged from Shakespeare's poems to Morris' own work, one book remains prized above all others: the Kelmscott Chaucer. Published in 1896, and featuring illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones, the Kelmscott Chaucer was the most exquisite work of a press known for exquisite work. (Previous Morris.)
posted by thomas j wise on Jun 5, 2010 - 9 comments

The Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-engraved Illustration (Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University) hosts well over eight hundred images from Victorian texts; you can browse the site by iconographic themes and features (tools, religion, etc.) or conduct more specific searches by author, publisher, and the like. For more overviews of Victorian book illustration, visit Bob Speel's nineteenth-century art website, which features a number of pages devoted to various topics in book illustration, and the Victorian Web. Illuminated Books features a small collection of digitized illustrated works, many of them Victorian; there's a larger collection at Children's Books Online. The Victorian novelist we most closely associate with book illustration is Charles Dickens, and David Perdue has brief biographical sketches of his various illustrators, with examples of their work. Famous illustrators with their own websites include Sir John Tenniel, Arthur Rackham, and Randolph Caldecott. (Main link via VICTORIA.)
posted by thomas j wise on Jun 29, 2007 - 14 comments

Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality in the US & UK, 1815-1914 , courtesy of Harvard University, features digitized trial narratives for over 400 cases--some famous, most not. (Harvard also has a more general collection of trial narratives here.) There are earlier trial narratives at Rictor Norton's Homosexuality in Eighteenth Century England: A Sourcebook and Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports; see also CrimeCulture's Rogue's Gallery and a Victorian anthology, Curiosities of Street Literature (originally published in 1871). Albert Borowitz has a brief history of true crime narratives here. For more historical criminality from the investigator's point of view, check out the Forensic Medicine Archives Project at the University of Glasgow. (Main link via VICTORIA.)
posted by thomas j wise on Mar 15, 2007 - 13 comments

The History of the Metropolitan Police offers a useful overview of both policework and assorted Shocking Crimes in nineteenth-century London. But there are so many more Victorian detectives--not to mention Victorian murderers--lurking about on the net. Sneak a peek at Charles Booth's notebooks, which record his walks with various London police officers, or read Charles Dickens' famous account of a night out with Inspector Charles Field (who later inspired Bleak House's Inspector Bucket). Put John Mapp on trial. Read some broadsides. Try to avoid Dr. Cream and Mary Ann Cotton. Executions, anyone? The Victorian Dictionary reprints a number of Victorian newspaper articles about criminal activity (click on "crime" to see a detailed listing). Of course, you can't forget this fellow.
posted by thomas j wise on Mar 31, 2006 - 7 comments

Literary Gothic offers up a splendid smorgasboard of literary ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and, of course, gothic. As a Victorianist, I have a particular predilection for their ghost stories. Many more Victorian tales of the terrifying--and just plain weird--can be found at this site, which also features an ongoing reading group. [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise on Oct 31, 2002 - 8 comments