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  • Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

    Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty


This issue of 19 celebrates the work of Professor Hilary Fraser who was Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck, University of London from 2002 to 2020. The issue contains contributions from twenty scholars working across disciplines all of whom take the notion of Victorian beauty as a unifying theme through which to explore and respond to Hilary’s wide-ranging body of work. From the Victorian fascination with the luminous effects of fireflies to the reworking of notions of Victorian beauty in post-war British cinema, the issue traces the idea of Victorian beauty through a variety of different contexts that include the mass production of art objects and the impact of new technologies, women’s roles within the Victorian art world, shifting museum acquisition practices, the development of aesthetic thought and ecological critique, and non-Western  concepts of beauty and the Beautiful.

The cover image, chosen by Hilary, is Marie Spartali Stillman, Fiammetta Singing (detail), 1879, pencil, watercolour, and gouache, 75 × 100 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.


Editors: Victoria Mills (Guest Editor), Heather Tilley (Guest Editor)

Introduction


Victorian Beauty

Victorian Beauty

  • Victoria Mills
  • Heather Tilley

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Articles


Poetics of the Steel Plate Engraving: Letitia Landon and Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book

Poetics of the Steel Plate Engraving: Letitia Landon and Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book

  • Isobel Armstrong

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Looking Back: Legacies of Women Art Writers

Looking Back: Legacies of Women Art Writers

  • Meaghan Clarke

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Swinburne, Pater, and the Cult of Strange Beauty

Swinburne, Pater, and the Cult of Strange Beauty

  • Catherine Maxwell

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Functions of Criticism and the Politics of Appreciation

The Functions of Criticism and the Politics of Appreciation

  • Laurel Brake

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Point of Vanishing: Pater’s Loss of Perspective

The Point of Vanishing: Pater’s Loss of Perspective

  • Jonah Siegel

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Beauty of Fireflies: Transience, Myth, Bioluminescence, and Wonder

The Beauty of Fireflies: Transience, Myth, Bioluminescence, and Wonder

  • Kate Flint

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Forum


Victorian Beauty: Ruskin’s Changing Ideals

Victorian Beauty: Ruskin’s Changing Ideals

  • Dinah Birch

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Geopolitics of Beauty

The Geopolitics of Beauty

  • Regenia Gagnier

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Translating the Beauty of Japan: Lafcadio Hearn’s Art Writing

Translating the Beauty of Japan: Lafcadio Hearn’s Art Writing

  • Stefano Evangelista

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Michael Field, Pre-Raphaelite: One Play and Two Fair Beginnings

Michael Field, Pre-Raphaelite: One Play and Two Fair Beginnings

  • Ana Parejo Vadillo

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Looking Like a Woman, Dancing Like a Painting, Footing the Renaissance: Isadora Duncan and Botticelli’s Primavera

Looking Like a Woman, Dancing Like a Painting, Footing the Renaissance: Isadora Duncan and Botticelli’s Primavera

  • Lene Østermark-Johansen

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Victorian Beauty…1945–1955

Victorian Beauty…1945–1955

  • Lynda Nead

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Art of Feeling: Subjective Criticism and Emotional Resonance

The Art of Feeling: Subjective Criticism and Emotional Resonance

  • Patricia Pulham

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

  • Roger Luckhurst

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Gallery


The Pinwill Sisters

The Pinwill Sisters

  • Marina Warner

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

The Material and the Divine: Entwined Aesthetics in Alice Meynell’s ‘The Two Poets’

The Material and the Divine: Entwined Aesthetics in Alice Meynell’s ‘The Two Poets’

  • Lesa Scholl

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Beauty Both Ubiquitous and Exclusive: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley and the Great Exhibition

Beauty Both Ubiquitous and Exclusive: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley and the Great Exhibition

  • Daniel Brown

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Margarito d’Arezzo’s Virgin and Child Enthroned: Victorian Beauty Under Attack?

Margarito d’Arezzo’s Virgin and Child Enthroned: Victorian Beauty Under Attack?

  • Susanna Avery-Quash

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Vernon Lee

John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Vernon Lee

  • Maria Alambritis

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Moving

Moving

  • Carolyn Burdett

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty

Correction


Correction: ‘Such a pleasant little sketch [...] of this irritable artist’: Julia Cartwright and the Reception of Andrea Mantegna in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain.

Correction: ‘Such a pleasant little sketch [...] of this irritable artist’: Julia Cartwright and the Reception of Andrea Mantegna in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain.

  • Maria Alambritis

Issue 34 • 2023 • Victorian Beauty