To call the nineteenth century ‘old’ is to go against the grain of literary-historical narratives that focus on the burgeoning modernity of the era: the bustle of urban spaces, liberal investment in progress, and expansion of empire. This issue of 19 reflects on the way age transgresses and reconfigures commonplaces about the nineteenth century. How might linking age to other social contexts — as the authors of this issue do with gender, social class, sexuality, the family, and the environment — disrupt critical narratives about the nineteenth century, requiring new methods and objects of inquiry? Collectively, the articles and discussions published here demonstrate that additional attention to age is required to account for the experience of those living at the temporal margins of the Victorian era. Beginning as a panel for the 2020 Modern Language Association conference, this issue of 19 pushes against the marginalization of non-normative ageing by developing new perspectives on the old nineteenth century. Cover image: Detail of Frederick Sandys, Autumn, 1860, oil on canvas, 79.6 × 108.7 cm, Birmingham Museums Trust. Wikimedia Commons.
Editors: David McAllister (Guest Editor), Jacob Jewusiak (Guest Editor)
Introduction
Introduction: The Time Elapsed
Helen Small
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Podcast
Bending the Clock: New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Ageing: A Roundtable Conversation
Andrea Charise, Devoney Looser, David McAllister, Ruth M. McAdams, Jacob Jewusiak and Travis Chi Wing Lau
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Articles
Odd Age, Old Age, and Doubled Lives: Asynchronicity and Ageing Queerly in Israel Zangwill’s Short Stories
Alice Crossley
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Tennyson’s Wrinkled Feet: Ageing and the Poetics of Decay
Jacob Jewusiak
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
‘How differently it came upon her’: The Ageing Young Stepmother in Charlotte Yonge’s The Young Step-Mother and Dinah Craik’s Christian’s Mistake
Hannah Rosefield
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Ancient Trees and Aged Peasants
Christiana Payne
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Of Cosmetic Value Only: Make-Up and Terrible Old Ladies in Victorian Literature
Sara Zadrozny
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
19 Live
Introduction to 19 Live
Victoria Mills
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Also a part of:
‘A Budding Morrow in Midnight’: Facing Challenges and Embracing Opportunities during Lockdown at the Keats-Shelley House Museum in Rome
Giuseppe Albano
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Also a part of:
‘Look Back, and Smile on Perils Past’: Abbotsford in Lockdown
Kirsty Archer-Thompson FSA Scot
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Also a part of:
Curating Historic Interiors at the Charles Dickens Museum during Covid
Emma Treleaven
2021-06-14 Issue 32 • 2021 • The Old Nineteenth Century: Ageing against the Grain
Also a part of: