Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” remains unsettlingly relevant. Beneath its colonial setting lies a searching reflection on public humiliation, crowd cruelty, political violence, and the desire to belong. Robin’s laughter at his disgraced kinsman reminds us how easily people join the crowd when pity becomes dangerous.
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.
“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.”
“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.”
‘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!’
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
“The Chairman stated that the Committee were of the opinion that the vote of William Bazley was a bad vote and must be struck off the poll.” A post by Stephen Basdeo exploring electoral fraud in the Victorian era and the role of the Revising Barrister.
The story of how a boy from a poor family in Grimsby got lost in Brazil and became a gaucho.
My soul was covered in a veil of perpetual sadness in the moment in which I read my mother’s letter. Yet I will not, as Job did, date the hour of the commencement of my misfortunes since the time of my birth.
A man of frightful figure looked at us with a choleric eye. The priest looked directly at him for a moment without moving so much as a muscle, simulating the best feigned indifference I ever saw. He did not forbid me to look at that man—perhaps he thought we would be less suspicious.
The CONFLAGRATION, to which a new face of Nature will accordingly succeed, New Heavens and a New Earth, Paradise renew’d, and so it is called the restitution of things, or Regeneration of the World’
“The blind man ran. The lame man ran. The man with no legs ran. And then, as he penetrated further down the street, the legless, the blind and the halt came swarming around him, together with the one-armed, the one-eyed, and the lepers with their sores….”
Despite the best efforts of researchers such as Dick Collins, her true identity and background have never been established. All the available records give us is that she says she was born in London in around 1819. We know that she married Reynolds in 1835, but this was not her first marriage – she had married another man three years previously.
“…liberty, democracy, equality, and social justice, the brotherhood of man, they are eternal ideals, and other newspapers will yet be born to speak out for them.”
And yet my position was already different in the little society I knew. A new lease of life was given to me—a new freedom—more attention was shown to me—I was even placed in a new room! What was all this for? Why wouldn’t D. Antonia, whom I asked with childish idiocy, tell me wherefore? The priest didn’t tell me, but then I wouldn’t have the audacity to ask him.
“The reign of God was nigh. He will descend in majesty and might, confound His enemies, and destroy the impious republic; cast down the mighty from their seats; exalt the sufferers, the poor—His poor—and burn up those who had refused to come and listen to His Counsellor.”
“Brazil is founded on genius”–so wrote Dr Monteiro in 1853. One of the nation’s geniuses was a young poet named Alvares de Azevedo who wanted to revolutionize his country’s idea of romanticism.
“I have power by virtue of chance; I must be employed in doing good. Progress and Liberty!” Such were the words which came of the mouth of the Emperor of Brazil on meeting the 1800s’ most venerable author, Victor Hugo.
“It has always seemed impossible to me to write the mysteries of a land that has none, and, invented, nobody believes them. I was wrong. It is because I did not know Lisbon, or not able to calculate the power of a man’s imagination.”
“Talk of Robin Hood and Little John, and their dingy imitators in this metropolis described by Dickens and Ainsworth … The same man passes from one form into another – developing, according to the changes in society, from a forester to a mountaineer, thence to a highwayman, thence to an instructor of pickpockets and the receiver of their day’s work in St. Giles.”
“Many among us fancy that they have a good general idea of what is English literature. They think of Tennyson and Dickens as the most popular of our living authors. It is a fond delusion, from which they should be aroused. The works of Mr. Pierce Egan are sold by the half million.”
When the Emperor arrived ‘a number of Brazilian residents in London crowded forward to meet them’. Who were these Brazilians resident in Victorian London? Can we know a little bit more about their histories?
Who reported police brutality in the 1800s? Was there even a concept of police brutality in the early nineteenth century? I will show how the concept of police brutality was born in England in 1831.
Álvares de Azevedo, was Brazil’s most famous Romantic poet. This translation of Ai Jesus! is by Luiz Guerra and the first time it has been translated into English