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Tuesday 25 October 2011

'The Victorianist' on Tumblr: Or: Victorian Street Photography and a Place to Find it:



Many writers are blessed with such natural gifts of imagination that scenes and characters tumble from their minds and land upon their pages with ease.
Others can evoke a scene entirely from their own memories with great detail. When writing of a period in history, many writers are experts on the period in which their characters live, and as long as they can also imagine up a decent story, they have at their disposal the knowledge of their favourite period in their heads, meaning little research is required.

Then there is me.

Evoking a time or place is difficult when you have never been there, and that is where 'material' comes in handy. When writing of a Victorian character living in a slum, for example, it is quite possible that the living conditions of that character would have been far worse than I, or you – stuck in our materially wealthy world of benefits and health and safety – could ever imagine.

For the last couple of years I have been writing fiction set in the nineteenth century as a hobby, and the struggle at first was creating a realistic sense of place and setting. After a short time, I decided the best course of action was research; to see as many photographs as I could of Victorian streets, courts, alleys, roads, gardens and rookeries so I could familiarize myself with the world of my characters, whilst at the same time, learning about the Victorian town and city.

I trawled internet search engines and saved what I found, and was able to write with the confidence that my descriptions of streets were more accurate than they used to be.

Then, last month, I had an idea. Rather than keep all these photographs hidden on memory sticks, folders and emails, I should put them all in one place, with a brief description of where and when the picture was taken. Why not do this online? I thought. That way, others can look at, enjoy, maybe even learn from, the photographs, too.

So, I set up a Tumblr micro-blog.

No essays, no eminent Victorians, no nineteenth century events, no people, no Victorian organizations or movements, just photographs of Victorian cities, towns, villages, streets, courts, alleys, thoroughfares, parks and gardens.

If you like, you can have a look, please follow me, and by all means leave comments.
You can find my Tumblr site here or by clicking on the link just beneath my Twitter button.

10 comments:

  1. Delighted to know that you have created what promises to be a most interesting gallery!

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  2. This is so interesting!
    Thank so much you and...
    BRAVO!

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  3. Merci François!

    profiter de la photos mon ami!

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  4. Love your tumblr site. And you are too humble when it comes to your writing. All of us need inspiration and photos are great insights to times past.

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  5. Thank you Rosa, I'm glad that I've had some positive feedback from various people about the Tumblr site.

    If you have any photographs of Victorian America - or should that be 19th Century America, I'm unsure? - Please feel free to send them over, that would be very interesting.

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  6. Victorian America works. I will keep you in mind for future photos. Keep blogging!

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  7. I absolutely love your blog, i find everything that you write inspiring for my own stories and interesting and useful in general :) I have put up a link to your site at my blog http://pervane.blogg.no/?c=1320673624 as i think that your blog deserves to get as many readers as possible :) thank you

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  8. Thanks for the lovely comment Christina, glad you like the blog and that you find it useful and interesting.

    Thanks for posting a link to me on your own blog, too, much appreciated!

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  9. I visited your tumblr site. http://amateurcasualvictorianist.tumblr.com/ its pretty cool. keep it going


    =>buy uniforms, Andrew

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