New Victorian Now Online

For much of this century the term Victorian conveyed connotations of "prudish," "repressed," and "old fashioned." Although such associations have some basis in fact, they do not adequately indicate the nature of this complex, paradoxical age that was a second English Renaissance. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture. (What Victorian literary form do you think parallels Elizabethan drama in terms of both popularity and literary achievement?) - more

The Victorian era of the United Kingdom marked the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Although commonly used to refer to the period of Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901, scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians—actually begins with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period. - more

In science and technology, the Victorians invented the modern idea of invention -- the notion that one can create solutions to problems, that man can create new means of bettering himself and his environment.

In religion, the Victorians experienced a great age of doubt, the first that called into question institutional Christianity on such a large scale. In literature and the other arts, the Victorians attempted to combine Romantic emphases upon self, emotion, and imagination with Neoclassical ones upon the public role of art and a corollary responsibility of the artist.

Today the influence if the Victorians cannot be overstated and celebrations forthrightly hail back to the time....

Romeo's Historical Society is busy finishing preparations for the city's second Victorian Festival, planned this year to run from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. May 19.

Why a Victorian festival? "We didn't have a spring event," said Anna Reiz, vice president of the Romeo Historical Society. Besides, "Romeo was a Victorian-era town." Some of the village's current residential and commercial buildings date back to the reign of Britain's Queen Victoria, 1837-1901.

We'll publish more - soon.