School of Critical Studies

Queen Victoria’s Contemporaries: Born in 1819 

Friday 17^th May 2019, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre 

Keynotes: Dr Trev Broughton (University of York) on contemporaneity among Victoria’s Victorians, and Dr Gregory Tate (St Andrews) on Arthur Hugh Clough. 

 2019 marks the bicentenary of Queen Victoria’s birth, as well as those of her many notable contemporaries. Among the 1819 cohort are writers George Eliot, John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley and Arthur Hugh Clough; painters William Powell Frith, Gustave Courbet and Lowes Cato Dickinson; photographer Roger Fenton and civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette, to name a few. These eminent, mid-Victorian figures are rarely recognised as contemporaries, but this conference and workshop will explore how investigating their similarities, differences and relationships as part of their generational identity may recast our sense of periodization and allow us to quantify and define ‘Victorian’ in new ways.  

 Emerging from the ‘Born in 1819’ research project led by Helen Kingstone and Trev Broughton, this workshop collaborates with Glasgow Museums Resource Centre to investigate how generational identities – particularly that of the 1819 cohort – might look different when we view them through the lens of the material culture they generated and left behind. The workshop is organised by and particularly designed with PGR/PGT and ECR researchers in mind, allowing for networking within the environment of Scottish Victorian Studies. The afternoon will include keynote discussions from experts on notable 1819 figures, an object handling session and tour of the GMRC, and a selection of papers.

Supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS): www.bavsuk.org, and the Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo Victorian Studies (SCVS): https://scvs.ac.uk.

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Schedule

Queen Victoria’s Contemporaries: Born In 1819 

Friday, 17 May 2019 

12-1pm Lunch

 1-1:35   Keynote 1 
Trev Broughton (York), ‘Victoria’s Victorians, or how contemporariness strikes’

 1:40-2:40 Panel of three snapshot papers: ‘Literature emerging from 1819’: 
Rhiannon Lindsay-Andrews (QUB), ‘Wuthering Heights and Victorian Evolution’ 

 Ailsa Boyd (Glasgow), ‘George Eliot and Interior Design’ 

 Kirstie Blair (Strathclyde), ‘1819 and the Factory Generation: Bradford Workers and the Poetry of Industry’ 

 2:40-2:50 short break 

 2:50-3:25 Tour / Object Handling 

Tour by Helen Kingstone (Glasgow) / Object handling by GMRC staff 

 3:25-3:50 Tea break 

 3:50-4:30 Panel of two snapshot papers: ‘Individuals of the first Victorian generation’: 

Charlotte Lauder (Strathclyde), ‘James Scrymgeour (1821-1887)’ 

 Sarah Edwards (Strathclyde), ‘Sarah Frances Trevor (1818-1904)’ 

 4:40-5:15 Keynote 2 

Gregory Tate (St Andrews), ‘Arthur Hugh Clough’s Pedigree’ 

First published: 29 January 2019