The Life and Work of Victorian Illustrator Henry Anelay (1816–83) | Robert J. Kirkpatrick
Henry Anelay (1816–1883) was a prolific yet now-forgotten Victorian illustrator and painter. Closely linked with G.W.M. Reynolds, he supplied artwork for major serials and contributed to The Illustrated London News and numerous children’s, religious, and popular publications. A versatile draughtsman and later landscape painter, he also exhibited at the Royal Academy. Despite his wide output and public presence, Anelay has slipped almost entirely from modern scholarship.
Satan, Morality, and Temptation in Álvares de Azevedo’s “Macário” (1850) | Stephen Basdeo
Álvares de Azevedo’s Macário (1850) transforms the traditional tempter of Christian drama into a philosophical moral arbiter who performs God’s work in sifting the irredeemable from the earth. In Macário, then, the Devil emerges not as corrupter or tempter but as the play’s moral centre: urbane, eloquent, and disgusted by human hypocrisy and irreligiosity. His irony exposes the spiritual decay of a society already more corrupt than Hell itself.
Robin Hood and Clorinda, Queen of Portugal | Stephen Basdeo
“Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” was published in 1662 and celebrated England’s new queen from Portugal, Catherine of Braganza.
Bare-knuckle Boxing in Joseph Ritson’s “Robin Hood” (1795) | Stephen Basdeo
While editing Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795), I stumbled upon an unexpected reference to “the sweet science” of boxing. This small detail opens a window into Georgian England, where Ritson’s antiquarian scholarship met the vibrant popular culture of his age. His nod to “the boasted worthies of the knuckle” reminds us that Robin Hood was never just a medieval study—it was also a reflection of eighteenth-century London life, where learning, liberty, and pugilism could coexist.
Wynken de Worde: Printer of “A lytell geste of Robyn Hode” (c.1506 edn.) | Stephen Basdeo
Today, little survives of Wynken de Worde beyond his books and, in the case of Robin Hood, the words that still echo through the text that he helped to preserve. Yet his presses in Fleet Street and his generosity to fellow printers (Goes and Copland) shaped the version of Robin Hood that eighteenth-century antiquaries like Ritson rediscovered—and that we still recognise today. Every time the lytell geste is quoted or staged, we are hearing not just the voice of a now unnamed medieval poet but also the imprint of the enterprising immigrant printer who turned a forest legend into a bestseller in both his own and our time.
Francis Beaumont’s “Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn” (1613) | Stephen Basdeo
“JUPITER and JUNO, willing to do honour to the marriage of the two famous rivers, Thamesis and Rhine, employ their messengers severally, Mercury and Iris, for that purpose.”
“A 16th-Century Tale of Robin Hood” (Harleian MS 367 f. 150) | Stephen Basdeo (ed.)
In Harleian MS 367, which dates from the time of Henry VIII’s Reformation, in which the name of Robin Hood is used to satirise the Catholic Church and the Reformers.
Joseph Frank (1770–1842): Editor of Joseph Ritson’s “Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads” (1795) | Stephen Basdeo
Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), a conveyancer and passionate literary critic, significantly impacted the study of the Robin Hood legend with his 1795 work, “Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems.” His nephew, Joseph Frank, later edited Ritson’s works, updating and adapting them for contemporary audiences while preserving their scholarly essence.
The Passage of the Representation of the People Act, 2 & 3 Will. 4. c.45 (1832) | Stephen Basdeo
The 1832 Reform Act was a turning point in British history and set Britain on the path to democracy; read all about it in this post.
The Gender Pay Gap and Gender Inequality in Modern Britain | Maria Neagu
It wasn’t until the 1960s that significant progress was made towards equal pay for British women. In 1968, female workers at the Ford Factory in Dagenham, a suburb of London, discovered that they were being paid 15% less than their male colleagues despite doing the same work.
Sport, Masculinity, and the British Empire | Stephen Basdeo
“He is a scout and a pioneer, attacking force and army of occupation, all in one … they go out on long tours through the country, sleeping on the floors of native houses, enduring the most severe physical fatigue, exposed now to great frosts, now to terrible summer heat.”
John Fletcher’s “Tragedy of Bonduca” (c.1609) | Stephen Basdeo
“If Rome be earthly, why should any knee with bending adoration worship her? She’s vicious … Therefore ‘tis fitter I should reverence the thatched houses where the Britons dwell.”
Robert Greene’s “George-a-Greene: The Pinner of Wakefield” (1599) | Stephen Basdeo
The name of the Pinder to Wakefield locals is, as Shakespeare might say, ‘familiar in [their] mouths as household words’. The Pinders Fields, however, reveal an exciting history of rebellion, outlawry, and patriotism; so expressed in Robert Greene’s play in 1599 titled “The Pinner of Wakefield.”
The Catacombs of Paris (1840) | George W. M. Reynolds
“Vengeance! Vengeance! I will yet be avenged! In the meantime, let me seek an hour’s repose!”
Danahay and Howey’s “Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism” (2024) | Stephen Basdeo
One of the book’s central premises is therefore incorrect … Upon weak foundations and generalisations does Danahay and Howey’s Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism: Re-Appropriating the Victorian and Medieval Pasts (2024) begin.
Mario Quintana’s “Functional Architecture” | Stephen Basdeo (Translator)
Quintana, as one biographer states, was a native of Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul—a place where I have spent a lot of time—and was born in 1906. The son of a pharmacist, as he grew up he found that his intellectual interests lay in the reading of European literature, and he learned to speak Spanish, and developed a good reading knowledge of French and some Russian.
José Murilo de Carvalho, Lúcia Bastos, and Marcello Basile’s “Às armas, Cidadãos!” / “To arms, Citizens!” (2012) | Stephen Basdeo
“To arms, Citizens! To Arms!” was the cry of many of the now forgotten common people who fought for Brazilian independence, and whose writings are revealed by José Carvalho, Lucia Bastos, and Marcello Basile.
Carolyne Larrington’s “Winter is Coming” (2016) | Stephen Basdeo
“Now I would hesitate to give this such a glowing and positive review. The reason for this is hinted at in the review above but never expanded upon; there is no discussion or G.R.R. Martin’s place in the long line of medievalism and fantasy authors which preceded him.”
Steven Leonard Jacobs’s “Short History of Judaism and the Jewish People” (2024) | Stephen Basdeo
Despite their history of suffering and oppression, Jewish people have always been resilient; always able to survive the worst that humanity has thrown at them and even come out of many of these experiences victorious.
“Elas” Exhibition at the Universidade de Fortaleza (UNIFOR) | Stephen Basdeo
In the university’s Espaço Cultural, there was a special exhibition on titled ‘Elas’ (the feminine plural form of ‘they’) which showcased the works of primarily (though not exclusively) Brazilian women artists from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
Notes from the Library: W.L. Hanchant’s “England is Here: A Selection from the Speeches and Writings of the Prime Ministers of England” (1943) | Stephen Basdeo
“We know great exertions are wanted and we are, at all events, determined to stand or fall by the laws, liberties, and religion of our country.”
Marco Neves’s “History of Portuguese since the Big Bang” (2021) [História do português desde o Big Bang] | Stephen Basdeo
There is no moment which we can pinpoint and say: This was the birth of the Portuguese language. To fully know its history, we must start at the very beginning, the moment of the inception of all languages. In such a case, one could justifiably start at the Big Bang.
The Democratic Apocalypse and the Republican Millennium: Radicals’ appropriations of apocalyptic imagery in Victorian Britain | Stephen Basdeo
‘The streets of the towns [will be] bathed in light; green branches on the thresholds; all nations sisters; men just old men blessing children; the past loving the present; perfect liberty of thought; believers enjoying perfect equality … no more bloodshed, no more wars; happy mothers!’
Notes from the Library: “The Life of Thomas Cooper written by Himself” (1872) | Stephen Basdeo
How amazing it would be, Cooper mused, if we could trace our every single thought over our whole lifetimes. Yet he knew that such a thing wasn’t possible and that autobiographies shouldn’t necessarily be relied on to tell the whole truth, and this was one such question which bothered him as an autobiographer