Time Travelers

Published by University of Chicago Press 2020

Time Travelers

Victorian Encounters with Time and History

Edited by: Adelene Buckland and Sadiah Qureshi
Preface by: Mary Beard

https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226676821

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Victorians, perhaps more than any Britons before them, were diggers and sifters of the past. Though they were not the first to be fascinated by history, the intensity and range of their preoccupations with the past were unprecedented and of lasting importance. The Victorians paved the way for our modern disciplines, discovered the primeval monsters we now call the dinosaurs, and built many of Britain’s most important national museums and galleries. To a large degree, they created the perceptual frameworks through which we continue to understand the past.

Out of their discoveries, new histories emerged, giving rise to fresh debates, while seemingly well-known histories were thrown into confusion by novel tools and methods of scrutiny. If in the eighteenth century the study of the past had been the province of a handful of elites, new technologies and economic development in the nineteenth century meant that the past, in all its brilliant detail, was for the first time the property of the many, not the few. Time Travelers is a book about the myriad ways in which Victorians approached the past, offering a vivid picture of the Victorian world and its historical obsessions.

Author information

Adelene Buckland is a senior lecturer in English literature at King’s College London. She is author of Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850–1900. Sadiah Qureshi is a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"This is an excellently conceived collection that manages a tough balancing act very well indeed. It manages to cover a huge range of topics and approaches to the Victorians’ engagement with their past, and at the same time is to be commended for its unity. Time Travelers serves as a model of what can result not just from critical and reflective engagement on a theme, but from sustained conversations around research and writing. I look forward to seeing the impact this terrific volume will assuredly make on Victorian scholarship."

— Kate Flint, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

“A feast of historical insights into Victorian life and culture, Time Travelers is an original volume certain to become a classic in its multifaceted field. This invaluable work from an impressive array of scholarly contributors combines depth with wide appeal.”

— Crosbie Smith, University of Kent

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Mary Beard Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Adelene Buckland Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Part One: Narratives
1 Looking to Our Ancestors Sadiah Qureshi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2 Looking Around the World Peter Mandler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3 The World Beneath Our Feet Adelene Buckland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
Part Two: Origins
4 Ad Fontes Simon Goldhill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
5 In the Beginning Helen Brookman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
6 Under False Pretenses Astrid Swenson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
7 Through the Proscenium Arch Rachel Bryant Davies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
Part Three: Time in Transit
8 On Pilgrimage Michael Ledger-Lomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
9 Across the Divide David Gange Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
10 At Sea Clare Pettitt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
Part Four: Unfinished Business
11 Looking Forward Jocelyn Paul Betts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
12 How We Got Here Daniel C. S. Wilson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267

Language: English
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 312
Illustrations
- Other: 24 halftones
Keywords: British history; Irish history; history of ideas; history of technology; history of science; Victorian

eBook

Published: August 24, 2020
ISBN: 9780226676821