A Pretty Sweet Blog on Victorian Life

I forget how exactly I stumbled upon this blog, but it’s pretty sweet! “Victorian History: An idiosyncratic selection of short bits about elements of Victorian history,” is written by Bruce Rosen, a retired professor who has taught at a number of universities and colleges. His blog covers a wide range of topics, the railway, London fog, men’s clubs, the West End Club, the aristocracy, the middle class, etc…

Many of these posts are extremely interesting and offer little snippets of information about various aspects of Victorian life and culture. The two posts that brought me to this blog are from 2007; “Music Halls” and “Penny Gaffs.” I love stumbling across things that back up what we have already learned in class, it makes me feel like we’re all on the same page

. In regard to the Penny Gaffs, Rosen includes some scholarly sources including a quote by Mayhew. He describes who its target audience was, the types of entertainment, but what I found particularly interesting was his description of the inside of the Gaffs. They appeared dirty, smelled and were just kind of all around gross, and it doesn’t sound like that is only by today’s standards.

I also really enjoyed his post on the Music Halls. He mentions how they emerged from the Penny Gaffs, the target audience, and lists many of the performers of the day. He even includes a link to a You-tube video of a performer called Little Tich and his “famous shoe dance.” I had never heard about this performer before so I watched the clip which is from around 1900, and it was really pretty interesting. I can totally see the influence of this type of entertainment in a lot of the old Hollywood movies that portray Vaudeville or Broadway acts from around the turn of the century through the 1920’s and 30’s.

This blog is awesome because it offers such a wide array of topics; it’s a little random, but still interesting. I’m not exactly sure how reputable this blog is only because anyone can make a blog and say they’re a professor of something, but he does seem to include a number of scholarly sources in his blog so although I may not use this in any papers, it’s still cool to look through.