The Past inside the Present: The Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive

Michael John Goodman completed his PhD in English Literature at Cardiff University in December 2016. His thesis, ‘Illustrating Shakespeare: Practice, Theory and the Digital Humanities’ explored how digital technology can be used to make sense of historical (specifically Victorian) illustrations of Shakespeare’s plays. The project saw the launch of the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive, an online open access resource…

Wood-engraved Pictorial Initials in Victorian Periodicals: Some Assembly Required, by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is Professor of English and the Co-director of the Centre for Digital Humanities at Ryerson University, Toronto. She is co-investigator on the Children’s Literature Archive (CLA) project and the founder and principal investigator of the Yellow Nineties Online, a digital research environment for the study of aesthetic periodicals of 1890s Great Britain.…

‘A Personal Journey of Discovery’, by Douglas Downing

Douglas Downing is a descendant of the Dalziel family. He has a passion for all things digital, including photography, film and television production.  His early experiences working for ITV Anglia and the Natural History Museum, gave him the opportunity to indulge in his fascination of researching and rediscovering forgotten stories and exploring unknown places. Here, he…

‘Magic into Print’ – some thoughts on the history of wood engraving, by Brian Maidment

Brian Maidment is Professor of the History of Print at Liverpool John Moores University. His research interests are focused on the nineteenth century, especially mass circulation, popular and illustrated literature, and he has published widely on a broad range of topics, although more recently he has concentrated his interests on Victorian periodicals and early nineteenth-century…

Knight and Beggar, by Huddie Hamper

We collaborated with UCA Rochester on a project for 16 to 18-year-old art students. Huddie Hamper created a woodcut inspired by ‘Prince Bahman and the Dervish’ in Dalziel’s Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (i.e. The Thousand and One Nights), 1865. Here, Hamper reflects on the creative process behind his woodcut ‘Knight and Beggar’: This work was heavily influenced by the…

"Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!", Maisy Plummer

“Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” By Maisy Plummer

We collaborated with UCA Rochester to pilot a project for 16 to 18-year-old art students. Here we publish Maisy Plummer’s reimagining of the Dalziel Brothers: a coruscating satire that brings Victorian illustrations into dialogue with our contemporary moment. The illustrations Plummer used are from Carroll’s Alice books, Valentine’s Warne’s Home Annual, Rowley’s Gamosagammon, and the magazine London Society. Scroll down…

Dalziel engraving (Ice Bound, by Helen Bailey)

Ice bound, by Helen Bailey

Helen Bailey’s poem ‘Ice bound’ was inspired by fragments of texts on wood engraving, natural history and Arctic exploration. It developed out of an exercise in cut-up poetry, at our creative writing workshop on seascapes and the Arctic, held in the Prints and Drawings department of the British Museum on 3rd December 2016. The texts that were used are listed below…

Ink and Light, by Lindsay Smith

Lindsay Smith is Professor of English and co-director of the Centre for Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Sussex. She has written extensively on Victorian painting, poetry and photography, and her work continues to engage the difficult and hesitant spaces between established disciplines. Lindsay’s most recent project is on Lewis Carroll as a creator…

Narwhal wood engraving (Song for Gouging Wood and Water)

‘Song for gouging wood and water’, a collaborative sonnet

This collaborative sonnet was improvised during our creative writing workshop on seascapes and the Arctic, in the Prints and Drawings department of the British Museum on 3rd December. The sonnet responds to wood engravings by Dalziel and Nancy Campbell’s poetry collection, Disko Bay. By Sarah Alexander, Helen Bailey, Camilla Bostock, Nancy Campbell, Nancy Gaffield, Cage Williams, Katerina Klaric, Jane McCarthy…

The Hatter and the King's Messenger, Dalziel after John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Alice

The Hatter and the King’s Messenger, by Nicholas Royle

In celebration of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in November 1865, we have a special blog post by Nicholas Royle, Professor of English at the University of Sussex. In this piece he responds to the two images below, two different renderings of same illustration, known as ‘Living Backward’, or the ‘Hatter in Prison’. On the…

Life is all marked out in lines, by George Clutterbuck

Life is all marked out in lines, by George Clutterbuck

George Clutterbuck’s poem was developed out of a workshop held at the  University of Sussex on 16th September. In the workshop, called ‘Lost Letters’, writers produced new creative works using selected prints from the British Museum’s Dalziel Archive, especially pictorial initials that, within the archive, had become separated from their original texts. Life is all marked out in lines © George…

'To make dancing dolls’ from Laura Valentine’s The Home Book of Pleasure and Instruction

Heads, Shoulders and Whole Lengths, by Hannah Field

Heads, Shoulders and Whole Lengths, by Hannah Field, responds to the Dalziel image pictured below, an illustration for ‘To make dancing dolls’ from Laura Valentine’s The Home Book of Pleasure and Instruction, published in 1867 (see image 11 of Design in our exhibition). This piece was developed out of panel talks on the Dalziel Archive at the…