#reading like a victorian

[mxcottonsocks]

Reading Like A Victorian

A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.

Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...

Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':

RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 

When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]

More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:

[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately

I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.

The timeline:

Here's what the timeline looks like:

It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.

In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:

ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;

works which began serialisation during 1852;

works published in three-volume format during 1852;

other works published during 1852

Details about each work:

You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.

Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:

On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.

On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.

[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]

The links

You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:

When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:

a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);

the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);

audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).

So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.

To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)

[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]

[hattersarts]

have i ever fully watched or read an acd era story? no. will that stop me from being menaced by them? also no.

[teaboot]

I have never been an athletic gymbro track student whatever a day of my goddamn life and yet I have always been strong as fuck.

Not fast, or coordinated, or fit, or with good endurance, just super dense muscle for no reason.

Like. My WHOLE life.

People used to try and pick me up as a toddler only to drop me cause I was unexpectedly heavy. At summer camp I could pick up ten-foot logs and carry them around on my shoulder while other kids needed a partner to help them. I can lift my 195lb brother off the ground. I can lift my 200lb father off the ground. I don't have a car so when I buy new furniture I often carry it home myself.

And I am NOT IN SHAPE. I can sprint, but im a terrible runner. I can't do push ups. Or burpees. It takes me like 50 minutes to run a 5k. I'm very lazy and spend most of my free time reading, painting, or thrift shopping.

But in anticipation of surgery I have begun lifting weights and yall. YALL. MY BICEPS CAME BACK IN A WEEK

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I WENT FULL BEAST MODE

[writingpoorly]

me: *aroace* how do I write a date?

[fictionadventurer]

We laugh at sci-fi for how it over-explains technology, but we also need to make fun of how Victorians describe any time period that takes place more than ten years before the book's publishing date.

It's like if we wrote like this about the '80s or '90s.

According to the curious fashions of the day, she wore a shirt of tie-dye print. It may seem quaint to our modern sensibilities, but such colorful styles were a common sight in any public street of those times.

At the time this story occurred, it was not uncommon for young men to wear their hair cropped closely around the face, but allow the hair behind the head to grow until it brushed the level of the shoulders.

In those days, the information superhighway was little more than a crude unpaved path, full of hazards and beset by brigands, so it is not strange that our heroine, instead of entering her query into the search bar on her browser, went to the public library and scoured the books on the shelves for the information she sought.

She and her friends went to the theater to see E.T. How strange to think that film was once at the heights of popularity and acclaim, as well-known in its day as films like The Hunger Games or The Avengers have become in the intervening time.

I get that the lack of video and audio recording made it harder for future generations to experience the details of the past, and that technology was changing their world at a faster rate than ever before, but also, dude, it was only, like, forty years ago, so maybe chill out a bit.

[sygneth]

game of deduction

[pearlsoceanworld]

If your requests are still open can I pls request nsfw aalto hcs with a female reader?🙏🙏 I love the way you wrote him in those hcs you posted!!

I am not good at writing nsfw butt I will write for aalto cuz he is my silly little princess<333

I didn't know if u wanted a sub reader or a Dom reader, so I did for both. I hope you like it, Anon

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥Warnings: sub and Dom dynamics for both aalto and reader, vibrator(for aalto), spanking(for both), oral(for both), light bandage? I think(for aalto), begging(for both), peging/dildo(for aalto), I think that's all sorry if I missed something 😅

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥Nicknames: princess, sir/daddy, slut, good boy

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅ Minors don't interact ⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

Firstly, this guy will tease you. it doesn't matter if you're in public, be it in some fancy restaurant or at the comfort of your home. This man will not stop teasing you. it's like his life mission to rile you up and make you beg for his cock or my personal favorite (peg him) fuck the daylights out of him but we will get to that later.

It's definitely a switch. I don't think he has a preference as long as it feels good, but if you are shy, he doesn't mind taking the lead. Will treat you like the best pillow princess. You don't even have to lift a finger he will take care of you, but in only one condition (what? you thought this guy would be a soft Dom without anything for him? Smh) you would have to beg him for it call him Sir (or daddy I personally prefer sir) tell him his cock is the best and no fucks you better than him and he will go down on you like no other. But if you're being a brat and not giving him what he wants, he is going to edge you until you cry and give in.

Will eat you out like it's the last meal on earth, definitely the type to rub your clit while eating you out. Has you screaming his name with how deep his toung is going inside you. By the time he is done with you, you're trembling from your 4th or 5th orgasm you don't even remember at this point.

His favorite position would be either be doggy style because he loves to spank your ass or missionary because he wants to see your face as you orgasm for nth time(bud definitely gets of your face, almost cums when you're eyes cross and drool slips out your face)

I think he likes cum either on your stomach or your back there is just something about him seed painting that makes him want to fuck you more (rip that pussy ig). Would call his princess or his slut there is no in-between with this man.

Will run you a bath for you with rubber ducks and bubbles for you to relax. He would give you the best massage and kisses, and after the bath, he would cuddle with you. He is clingy and would not let you go the entire night.

Now, as for readers who are more on the dominant side (dw I didn't forget about you guys), this guy (read slut) will rile you up to the point that you have to punish him. Will act like a brat no matter what!! Bend him over the counter and spank him hard and put some vibrator on his cock and he will cum in minutes but if your feeling extra cruel tie him up and put the vib at low settings and don't touch him or speed it up no matter how many times he whines and when he is about to cum after who knows how long turn it off and watch him cry and call you cruel for ruining his orgasm but one glare is enough for him stop whining and cry out sorrys that he would not tease you again(we all know its a lie) and to please let him cum.

If you feel nice enough, give him a hand job or blow job, and he will start moaning and whining like a pornstar you almost wanted to record him(maybe I should write about aalto & reader being a cam couple🤔?) But right now, you were focusing on making him cum oh and don't stop after one keep going milk him dry after cumming for the third time his 'please stops' would turn to 'more please... more' and who are you to deny him.

And if he is being extra braty, peg him use the biggest dildo and fuck his ass till he forgets his own name and is smiling and blabbering nonsense. Ride him till he is milked dry, and there are absolutely no thoughts behind his barley open eyes.

Make sure to untie and give him a glass of water and run a warm bath for him, and don't forget the rubber duckies cuddle him and pepper him with kisses and tell him that he was a good boy for you.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥Pearl's notes: I hope you guys liked this it was my writing smut for aalto. If it was ooc feel free to tell me

In aalto we thurst:33

[blorb-el]

fellas is it gay to orient the universe around your best friend. is it gay to take his suffering into yourself because you can’t bear to lose him. is it gay to save him even though you know he wouldn’t want that because for once in your god damn life you’re choosing to be selfish. is it gay to need him that much. is it gay to see how the stars reshape themselves into his form. is it gay to point out how he’s infinitely more than his worst enemy... is it gay for your love and respect for him to be what saves the fucking universe.................

[sxnbleachedfliez]

THIS IS A ROMANCE PRETTY MUCH FROM THE BEGINNING

[can-of-w0rmz]

The funniest thing about being so into gothic/classic literature and general historical stuff (specifically 19th century stuff) is that I’ll constantly get people taking the piss about how I have the interests of an old man, and while yeah that is funny, I wish that WAS true because every time I TRY to bring up any of my interests with old people they just stare at me blankly or just go “oh. Alright?”

I had my grandad ask me if Bram Stoker wrote Frankenstein once and I was flabbergasted

[amadeuszdraws]

I know I don't post much on here anymore, I really want to go back to making art, but I don't have the motivation or time to do so.

Anyways, until I make something I'm actually proud of, have this Claudia sketch I don't entirely hate

[xinyuehui]

Quality Time New Feature ⛄ Love and Deepspace

[kenobihater]

[a-most-beloved-fool]

the trouble with posting ficlets on tumblr, it seems, is that, on a not infrequent occasion, people will leave very nice comments in the tags - and i, being quite pleased and flattered, wish to reply to them in order to express my appreciation. the nature of tags, however, is such that i cannot do that without 'at'-ing these individuals in a separate space, which feels (quite illogically) unforgivably rude, so instead i am sat here, attempting to think loudly enough so as to project little pictographic hearts into their minds. thus far, my endeavors have been, i fear, quite unsuccessful.

[ruvviks]

we would sell anything just to buy who we're not // we kill our way to heaven

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[fictionadventurer]

In Which I Write a Sensible Victorian Novel

Once upon a time, a woman made some mistakes in a regrettable romantic entanglement. She married a rich, respectable man and didn't want her past shame to destroy the love they shared. She immediately told her husband about her past, and her husband, being a reasonable man, understood and forgave her. No one blackmailed her, she never needed to construct an elaborate web of deception and intrigue, and she never had to worry about her husband finding out her secret from other sources. And they all lived happily ever after.