From the archive
Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog
I've been enjoying The Guardian's "From the Archive" blog series, which is tracing the history of the paper's reportage from its beginning in 1821 as the Manchester Guardian, progressing through the years by selecting a highlight from each year every day. They've now got to the end of the nineteenth century, and some of my top picks so far have been:
The opening of the Stockton-Darlington railway in 1825, describing in great detail how the "locomotive engine, or steam-horse, as it was more generally termed, gave 'note of preparation'; the cry of 'all ready,' was heard, and the enging with its appendages moved forward", with "no less than 548 persons" on board.
The return of HMS Beagle from its voyage of discovery from 1825-36, surveying, amongst other things, "the whole coast of Chile and Peru [...] no port or road-stead has been omitted," and completing "a very valuable chain of chronometric measurements".
A review of Gaskell's Mary Barton which is decided to be "as a whole, beautifully written" but the "authoress" has worked "gravely against truth, in matters of fact either above her comprehension, or beyond her sphere of knowledge".
The Great Exhibition in 1851:"interest and excitement" prevailed throughout the "multitudes" of visitors from all sections of society; "the English showed most curiosity about the foreign half of the exhibition, while foreigners eagerly inspected the British department".
An 1861 report on Crinoline: A Real Social Evil, in response to "recent deaths resulting from the prevailing fashion among ladies of wearing extended crinolines", crinoline is here denounced as "responsible for more deaths than any other fashion ever caused". Deaths by fire, crushing under carriage wheels and in machinery, are nothing compared to the "cases of actual disembowelling from the gashes inflicted by broken steel springs and hoops".
And another review, this time of George Eliot's Middlemarch , highly praised as "not a mere intellectual toy, to be smiled over in the drawing-room or coupled with a cigar at the club" but rather a "work of art" to be read and re-read.
Charlotte Mathieson
20 May 2011 11:18
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Tags: News Victorians
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Peter Kirwan
It’s a great series, isn’t it? I haven’t been following it very closely, but fascinating stuff, and glad they’re picking stuff useful to you. !! on the Gaskell comment though – any indication of what the “matters of fact… above her comprehension” were?!
20 May 2011, 18:46
Charlotte Mathieson
i.e. the subject matter of the novel – she was criticised by some for her portrayal of the factory workers as being rather exaggerated, although here the focus is more on what’s perceived as a harsh representation of the millowners.
22 May 2011, 12:21
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