The London Inquisitor @londoninquisitor - Tumblr Blog

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Tulla Larsen and Edvard Munch ,1899.

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Ring, 1880s, England.

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Dress worn by Queen Marie of Romania to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, 1896

From the Maryhill Museum of Art on Pinterest

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Orphans of Time Rebecca Bathory

A fashion photographer turned urban explorer has swapped modelling shoots for the allure of abandoned buildings. Rebecca Lillith Bathory, from London, travels around the world documenting haunting spaces such as derelict hospitals, schools and villas. The fine art photographer has been capturing abandoned locations since 2012 and her work has been a big hit on social media, attracting nearly 100,000 dedicated followers across her accounts. But despite the beauty of her images, she refuses to disclose the exact locations of her photographs in order to protect the space for other explorers and avoid tipping off security.

Images and text via

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Evening dress, 1850

From the Wadsworth Atheneum via the Hartford Courant

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This personal letter from Ann Fisher of Richmond, England, to her niece Esther Powell in Long Island (1808) is an excellent example of cross-writing (or cross hatching), a practice 19th-century letter writers used to save money on postage and paper. The letter is turned sideways and written over. Though cross-writing looks difficult to read, it actually isn’t once you take a closer look–try it!

Ann Fisher letter to Esther Powell, 1808 February 1. New-York Historical Society, MS 2958.3421

Cataloging of the American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC), a group of 12,000 small and unique manuscript collections, is made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Peck Stacpoole Foundation, and the Pine Tree Foundation of New York.

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Fabergé, Chick, 1899-1908 (source).

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I NEVER KNEW ANY OF THEM HATCHED

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LITERATURE MEME | 2 movements - (2) dark romanticism

Dark Romanticism, also called American Romanticism, is a subgenre of literature that arose in reaction to Transcendentalism. Dark Romanticism involves sin, self-destruction, and often supernatural forces.

G.R. Thompson describes the movement as follows:

“Fallen man’s inability fully to comprehend haunting reminders of another, supernatural realm that yet seemed not to exist, the constant perplexity of inexplicable and vastly metaphysical phenomena, a propensity for seemingly perverse or evil moral choices that had no firm or fixed measure or rule, and a sense of nameless guilt combined with a suspicion the external world was a delusive projection of the mind–these were major elements in the vision of man the Dark Romantics opposed to the mainstream of Romantic thought.”

Notable writers include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.

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World’s fair ferris wheel. The Century World’s fair book for boys and girls. 1893.

“Intended to rival the 1889 Paris Exposition’s 324-metre (1,063 ft) Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel was the Columbian Exposition’s largest attraction, with a height of 80.4 metres (264 ft).” Wikipedia.

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Britain’s Biggest Secret - The Black Victorians

Pictured above is the Higdon family. This photograph was taken in the year 1898 in Britain. That is all we know about them.

Who were the Black Victorians? Mainstream history has virtually erased them from our minds and history books. We have been filled with images of slavery in America and across the world, but why is it that this chapter in black history was skipped? Why isn’t it equally common knowledge that in the midst of all of that darkness there was light, also.

Never before seen photos were uncovered, giving us over 200 images of glances into our past. Many of the photos did not include names or any details whatsoever, cloaking these people in mystery for all of time.

At one point in history, people of color were included in high society and walked the cobbled streets of Britain. The women wore intricate, voluminous gowns and wore their hair in curls and chignons. The men in suits and fair business. This may not have been the case for all black people in Britain, but for some it was.

The Victorian Era was ruled under Queen Victoria, an era that is described as an opulent culture, although there were underlying bouts of poverty and child labor. History would like you to believe that black people didn’t arrive in Britain until 1948 during “The Empire Windrush”, when many Jamaican descendants entered the country, but that is not so. There has been proof to suggest otherwise. There is documentation that proves that it wasn’t uncommon to see black faces at a Shakespeare show. We’ve been there all along, humming softly in the background.

These images prove that you can’t take mainstream history at face value. Take the time to look behind the curtain and uncover OUR history. It’s as if our ancestors are just waiting for us to seek them out.

Who were the Black Victorians?

To see more of these images check out this video reel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mwrYUzPqI

Happy Black History Month.