Men and boys, many dressed as women, attacking a turnpike gate in protest at charges at tollgates on public roads in west Wales. The Illustrated London News, 1843.
World History Archive/Alamy
People have invested emotionally in animals for thousands of years, but their financial situation directly impacts their ability to properly care for for their pets.
Zadie Smith has dipped her toe into the world of historical fiction with The Fraud.
DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy/Penguine
Police matrons in the 1800s opened the door for women to join the police force, yet most of us have never heard of them.
Illustration of explorer Isabella Bird’s first walk through Perak (Malaysia), from her book ‘The Golden Chersonese and the way thither’.
Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons
In the 19th century, several English women wrote accounts of their world travels. While considered by some as second-rate travellers, they were just as restless as their male contemporaries.
January is named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, and the Victorians understood this has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons.
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The 1859 book ‘Self-Help’ by Scottish journalist and physician Samuel Smiles was written in bite-sized pieces reminiscent of today’s wellness and lifestyle New Year tips.
‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ didn’t begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.
starryvoyage/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Today viewers may be preoccupied by the methods used by spirit photographers, but spirit photographs had a notable impact on the bereaved who commissioned the portraits.
Hugh Jackman in The Prestige.
TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy Stock Photo
In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold fancy dress parties, the proceeds from which were given to charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.
Electrophone listening salon in the London headquarters, Pelicon House on Gerrard Street (approximately 1903).
George R. Sims (1847-1922)
How 19th-century audiences could experience the sound of live theatre in their living rooms.
Dotheboys Hall, from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Illustration by ‘Phiz’ (Hablot K. Browne).
Image scan and text Jacqueline Banerjee, Associate Editor, Victorian Web
Dickens’s novels highlighted the poverty of education for the working classes. The all-important Education Act was finally passed in the year of his death.
A legend, even in his own lifetime: stamps to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth.
Royal Mail/PA Archive/PA Images