Fashion plates are a classic, even stereotypical angle image from the Victorian era, featuring duos and trios of women modeling the latest looks circa 1877. But how did consumers of the time actually use these images? What did you actually do with a fashion plate, anyway?
Today in droll coincidences: nearly 150 years ago, an anonymous author published The Odd Trump, a novel whose description leaves no doubt as to the reasons for its obscurity. It’s fanciful and trivial — and it happens to feature a protagonist named Trump with a pal and occasional rival named Clinton.
Perhaps one of America’s most evocatively named places, the Great Dismal Swamp—which straddles the Virginia/North Carolina border—is mean as hell. But the snakes, bears, and the near-inaccessibility made it a refuge for escaped slaves and their descendants.
John Harvey Kellogg was arguably the most famous physician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He introduced the concept of eating clean foods, exercise, and other healthful innovations. He was also the guy who invented cornflakes. And, in my opinion, he was a very bad man. The worst kind of bad, in fact: the…
The people of the Victorian era had a very specific fear: poison murder.
While sculpture and the study of anatomy have always worked in tandem, models of the human—specifically female—form took a specific turn during the 1800s, when anatomical wax sculptures of women’s bodies became a source of public curiosity and entertainment. A model of this kind was called an “anatomical Venus.”
If the dogged pace of the modern age has left you weary, anxious, and afflicted by aches and malaise, you may require a more historical diagnosis. We tend to refer to these symptoms collectively as burnout, but the Victorians called it “neurasthenia.”
I’m covered in flop sweat, my hands are shaking, and an itchy flush in my cheeks hints that tears are just moments away. While the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast is a mere 20 miles from the Providence Amtrak station, I’ve been lost for 30 minutes and it feels like a bad sign.
With the harnessing of electricity and the advent of the telegraph, the 19th century was a great time for advancements in communication. Not just between the living, but also between the living and the dead.
Philadelphia-born Ida C. Craddock was a 19th century writer and free thinker who claimed to be married to a man from "the world beyond the grave," spoke to him by Ouija board (the first Gchat) and promoted "ecstatic bliss." Mavericky!
If a hoop skirt strikes you as an unlikely agent of feminist change, you'd be in good company. But an exhibit at Paris's Palais Galliera seeks to make just this argument. Despite its obvious restrictions, a crinoline provided a measure of comfort: one was not required to wear heavy undergarments and could move with…
