Greenaway Vogue

Kate Greenaway was the author and artist of Victorian childhood by the 1890s. She drew the idyllic images of Victorian children that we think of today and she drew many of the images children were looking at. Biographers compare her work and her life to that of Beatrix Potter. During the 1890s, the aesthetic she created was called Greenaway vogue.

Born in 1846, London has since absorbed Hoxton, the romantic community Greenaway grew up in. Her father was a draughtsman and an engraver and her mother ran a dress shop.

"I had such a very happy time when I was a child, " Greenaway is reported as saying in M. H. Spielmann and G. S. Lanyard's 1905 biography Kate Greenaway, "and, curiously, was so very much happier then than my brother and sister, with exactly the same surroundings. I suppose my imaginary life made me one long continuous joy-filled everything with a strange wonder and beauty. Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling-I can so well remember it. There was always something more-behind and beyond everything-to me. The golden spectacles were very very big." Source.

Greenaway's parents both encouraged her to draw. As a child, her drawings were often inspired by current events, like the Great Indian War of 1857, which affected her imagination deeply and haunted her dreams. Only eleven years old, her drawings from this time depict women and children fleeing. By age seventeen, she worked skillfully with watercolours and ink, and had won many awards for her artwork.

Greenaway attended the Royal Academy of Art in 1858 and continued to establish herself as an artist, inspired by the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood. She sold her art on greeting cards and was commissioned by numerous publications continuously, especially to illustrate children's books. Fashion and art circles began recognizing her name and she developed a life-long friendship with John Ruskin, but her big break came when she published her own book.

From Under the Window (1879).

Greenaway's first book, Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children (1879) was her first in the sense that she both wrote and illustrated it. Selling over 100,000 copies, Under the Window was a big success (sold more than 100,000 copies) and gave Greenaway's the break she had been waiting for as a children's book illustrator and author. Under the Window so popular that the term "Greenaway vogue" was coined in its aftermath.

Greenaway paid careful attention to the clothes that children wore in her books. The fashions harkened back to earlier days, before Industrialization in the 1830s. To get the right looks for the children's clothes, Greenaway designed the dresses herself and used dolls, or had children model them for her drawings. Rather than seeing the styles at old fashioned, Greenaway's readers and their parents idealized them, treasuring their simple innocence. This view was reflected in the fashion industry; Liberties of London developed a clothing line directly inspired by Greenaway's art. Clothing and shoe manufacturers approached Greenaway seeking permission to put her name on their products.

Marigold Garden (1885)

During her career, Greenaway illustrated more than 150 books, but Under the Window and Marigold Garden (1885) are the only two for which she provided both the pictures and the text. Under the Window was groundbreaking as one of the earliest designer picture books, and its popularity caused it to be imitated. Other publishers began copying its style within weeks of its release.

Afternoon Tea (1880), by one of
Greenaway's imitators.

From my own childhood, I remember Kate Greenaway's Doll Book (1987). The book provides tips and patterns for making doll clothes inspired by Greenaway's books. I had little sisters and wanted to make clothes for their dolls, even though I was outgrowing dolls by that time. They say that she was one of the three most popular creators of children's books in the late nineteenth century, but I think she was the most influential of her day.

A copy of the book I had as a child.

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What is so Victorian about an octopus?

Was it the shape of a Victorian dress, a hairdo, or something else entirely? From the octopus tattoo to the etsy iPhone case, consumers of contemporary Victorian culture love octopi. What is so Victorian about an octopus?

One of Punch's occasional sallies into the surreal (1873).

Many contemporary fanciers of Victorian culture say they just like the way that the octopus looks; its tentacles form fancy curls that lend themselves to pretty designs. Yet, whether they know it, or not, there's something very Victorian about the octopus. Tentacle porn and the cartographic land octopus both emerged during the nineteenth century, but the best explanation is in literature (of course).

"Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" (1814)
Woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai.

"Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is an often cited example of Japanese erotic art that had been around for hundreds of years and was still in its peak during the early nineteenth century. Japanese erotic art was called "shunga" and this style in particular was called "ukiyo-ye," a term that accurately described the floating world that appeared in these woodblock prints (granted most of these prints didn't feature tentacle porn).

As sensational as nineteenth-century tentacle porn is, the go-to answer for steampunk's fascination with octopi is Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870), in which the octopus-like kraken symbolizes the industrial revolution. I don't deny that Verne's work was influential, but he wasn't the first writer to use the octopus as a symbol of the industrial revolution. Indeed, Verne's monster references the earlier monster in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea" (1866).

Ink wash painting by Victor Hugo (1866).

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is a touchstone in the Steampunk literary canon and the image from both stories of seamen/workers fighting a many armed (tentacled) beast/industrial complex made a strong impression in nineteenth century. If you look at Hugo's illustration long enough, you start to see a human head above the eyes. The many curling arms represent the many ways in which a powerful enemy can control the world around it. This image likely inspired further works, like Frank Norris's "The Octopus: A Story of California" (1901).

G. Frederick Keller's "The Curse of California."
The Wasp on August 19, 1882.
A likely origin of the depiction of
the Southern Pacific Railroad monopoly
as an octopus in Frank Norris's novel.

Do I give all the credit for this to Victor Hugo? Not exactly. Remember the cartographic land octopus?

"This Cartographic Land Octopus can be a representation of fear and revolution. Once a reader sees this sea creature image, it gives a feel of horror and fear. Black propaganda maps used this Cartographic Land Octopus to portray how a country takes power over other nation by its tentacles spread over the other areas. Its tentacles can be the reason why this creature is Cartography’s favourite land monster. It represents evil spread over the lands and its head, the center of wicked intelligence" source.

Cartographic propaganda dates back to the Middle Ages and kraken appear on maps for much of that history. The difference between the kraken and the land octopus is location and function. Cartographers used kraken to fill up empty or unknown areas of water. The first land octopus didn't appear until Fred Rose's "Serio-comic war map for the year 1877." Rose's land octopus portrayed the Russian Empire as stretching out its tentacles to take control of Europe. Russia continued to appear as an octopus on propaganda maps through the Second World War.

Fred Rose's "Serio-comic war map for the year 1877."

Rose, however, was a cartoonist - not a proper cartographer by any stretch of the imagination. Appearing eleven years after Hugo's industrial-capitalist octopus and seven years after Verne's, Rose's land octopus was most certainly influenced by the literature, but had its own impact as a late-Victorian propaganda icon. Literature inspired the creation of the land octopi and land octopi prevailed.

Imperial Hendecapus (1888).

Versions of Rose's cartoon map were translated and adapted to different languages. Subsequent cartoonists portrayed Russia as an octopus in the World Wars. Even Vladimir Putin hasn't been able to escape the land octopus characterization of Russia.

Considering its history in representing imperialism and the industrial revolution, the octopus lends itself very well to contemporary Victorian and Steampunk culture. Contemporary Victorian-style interpretations of the octopus visually celebrate the industrial revolution as a weird and fancy part of our past, which is very Victorian.

See more images of land octopi in Popular Science's "A Brief History of Octopi Taking Over the World."

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Wilde's Last Real Friend

The Picture of Dorian Gray recently ranked 27th in the Guardian's list of the 100 best novels. Robert McCrum goes on to explain that Dorian Gray wasn't met with the warmest reception in 1891.

Of all the books in this series, Oscar Wilde's only novel enjoyed by far the worst reception on its publication. The reviews were dreadful, the sales poor, and it was not until many years after Wilde's death that this remarkable work of imagination was recognised as a classic.

While this is all true, I'm writing today to give credit where credit is due. Readers around the world didn't suddenly start rereading Dorian Gray on their own. Wilde's name was tainted by his infamous trials; his descendants still go by the name their mother assumed when she fled the country. His work became tainted by Victorian ideas of homoerotic pornography. Black market pornographers unlawfully used Wilde's name on their books in an effort to sell more copies - even after Wilde's death. Lucky for all of us, Wilde had one good friend who worked tirelessly to preserve Wilde's name as an artist, while maintaining the integrity of his Work.

That friend was Robbie Ross (May 25, 1869 – October 5, 1918), a French-born Canadian.

Ross worked as a journalist and art critic and dealer in London, but is remembered for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a literary executor. Ross was important in his own right as part of the London literary and arts scene in the 1890's and for the remainder of his years. He even mentored Siegfried Sassoon.

Ross grew up in Toronto and Ottawa, but moved to England to study at Cambridge. Ross began his studies in 1888 and even at that young age - in the Victorian Era too - Ross was open about his sexuality. Other students abused him for it, even with the support of one of their professors, Arthur Augustus Tiley.

After catching pneumonia from being dunked in a fountain, Ross demanded an apology. His fellow students complied, but Tiley refused. Rightfully enraged, Ross fought to have Tiley dismissed from the university to no avail. Defeated, Ross left school and came out to his family.

Robert Ross (Age 24)

Ross is widely believed to have been Wilde's first male lover. What is certain is that he became Wilde's last real friend. Ross was no stranger to homophobia, which didn't disappear when he left school. Years before Wilde went to court, the parents of a young man, who had intimate encounters with Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas, hired solicitors to take legal action, but were persuaded not to go to court.

When Wilde was released from prison, Ross was there with emotional and financial support.

Upon Wilde's death, Ross became Wilde's literary executor. Before Wilde went to prison, most of his possessions were sold off in bankruptcy, including the rights to all of Wilde's texts. Ross tracked these down and purchased them. He enlisted others, like Christopher Sclater Millard, to assist in the fight against the black-market trade in pornographic texts fraudulently published under Wilde's name.

With the definitive bibliography intact, Ross gave Wilde's sons the rights to all their father's works along with the money earned from their printing/performance while he was executor.

In 1908, he produced the definitive edition of Wilde's work. Ross hired Jacob Epstein to design Wilde's final resting place, requesting that Epstein add a small compartment to the tomb for Ross’s own ashes.

If it sounds like Ross was a little obsessed with Wilde, then I have misled you. While Ross was doing all of this he led a full and vibrant career in the arts, including management of the Carfax Gallery, a small commercial gallery in London, from 1901-1908. There, he showed artists, like Aubrey Beardsley, William Blake and John Singer Sargent. Ross went on to become the art critic for the Morning Post. During the First World War, Ross mentored a group of primarily homosexual poets and artists, which included Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

Ross suffered for helping Wilde even in death, and was wickedly harassed by Lord Alfred Douglas (Wilde's Bosie and Ross's former friend), who tried to have him arrested for homosexual conduct.

During the German Spring Offensive (1918), Noel Pemberton Billing, a right-wing Member of Parliament, published an article called: "The Cult of the Clitoris," in which he painted Ross and his circle as the centre of a conspiracy by 47,000 homosexual traitors, who were betraying the nation to the Germans. Maud Allan, an actress who had played Wilde's Salome in a performance authorised by Ross, was identified as a member of the "cult". She unsuccessfully sued Billing for libel, causing a national sensation in Britain.

The incident brought a lot of negative publicity to Ross and his associates.

Later that year, Ross died suddenly, while preparing to travel to Australia, to open an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1950, on the 50th anniversary of Wilde's death, Ross's ashes were added to Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Now, if you want to get all teared-up like I just did, go watch this video on YouTube that pays tribute to their friendship.

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The Wonderland Postage Stamp Case

Lewis Carroll a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was also known for this little-known invention: the Wonderland Postage Stamp Case. Now that we use postage stamps so sparingly, it's hard to imagine the need for such a thing or what it would possibly be like.

The Wonderland Postage Stamp Case was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for other denominations to one shilling. The folder fit into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on one side and the Cheshire Cat on the other. The whole thing fit in your pocket or purse. When you bought it new it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.

Carroll begins this lecture:

Some American writer has said “the snakes in this district may be divided into one species—the venomous.” The same principle applies here. Postage-Stamp-Cases may be divided into one species, the “Wonderland.” Imitations of it will soon appear, no doubt: but they cannot include the two Pictorial Surprises, which are copyright.

You don’t see why I call them ‘Surprises’? Well, take the Case in your left-hand, and regard it attentively. You see Alice nursing the Duchess’s Baby? (An entirely new combination, by the way: it doesn’t occur in the book.) Now, with your right thumb and forefinger, lay hold of the little book, and suddenly pull it out. The Baby has turned into a Pig! If that doesn’t surprise you, why, I suppose you wouldn’t be surprised if your own Mother-in-law suddenly turned into a Gyroscope!

On the flip side, the Cheshire Cat fades away.

First editions of the Wonderland Postage Stamp Case have sold for over $8,000, although they continued to sell throughout the 1890s at least for the remainder of Carroll's life.

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The Importance of Being Oscar Wilde's Mother

Lady Jane Francesca Agnes Wilde (1821-1896), better known as "Speranza," was the youngest child of four in Wexford Ireland. She was an Irish nationalist some Italian roots, though she put stereotypes about that heritage to rest by being over six feet tall and devoting herself to the love of Ireland. She was a poet and her contemporaries considered her a national treasure because wrote about freedom for the people of Ireland, but as time went on tastes and politics would change, so that the younger Irish revolutionaries weren't as able to relate to her work.

She fell in love with and married William Wilde, a scrawny and often disheveled-looking man, who must have looked even smaller standing next to his larger-than-life wife; it was said that she was extremely tall and overweight, “walked like a ship at sea, the sails filled with wind.” For this, she was subject to abuse throughout her life, but developed a strong talent for putting people in their place and would defend the people she loved as well as she defended Ireland.

Sometimes, I think intelligent outcasts are the most important people the development of creativity and culture within any particular group. Henry VIII made big sleeves fashionable for men because preexisting fashions didn't suit his growing figure. Speranza dressed like gypsy, even when she could afford the fashions of her day, and wore cheap costume jewelry, sometimes made of pieces of older broken costume jewelry. The odd biographer suggests that she favoured darkness because it concealed certain physical features that made her insecure; but, according to her, she liked dark rooms lit by candles because it encouraged "bawdy talk."

These dark spaces in her house, which notable always had all of its shutters shut, were decorated with books and artifacts collected during William Wilde's archeological journeys to Egypt and by Speranza herself, who enjoyed busts and paintings from ancient Greece and Rome.

If being "the Irish Poetess" of her day weren't fame enough, she became a famous entertainer, hosting popular salons at her home in Dublin and later in London. She got know many of the most famous creatives and revolutionaries, especially feminists and the political types, that set foot in whatever city she happened to be in, which makes it hard to believe that she was all that shy about being out in the open and walking in the light. When asked how she managed to attract such interesting people, Speranza replied, "By interesting them, of course!"

In addition to the two daughters William Wilde had outside of his marriage, Speranza had two sons and a daughter. Her daughter died in childhood; her firstborn was named for her husband and would always be her favourite, even when he grew up to be a lecherous alcoholic; and her other son was Oscar Wilde. Because of her, the boys were well-educated before they even started school, though some acquaintances, like Lord Alfred Douglas, suggested she might not have provided the most wholesome environment for the boys, due to the types of people she kept around and the types of things they would discuss.

Ostensibly, "respectable people" were forbidden from her home because they were usually so uninteresting. Many of their friends attributed Oscar Wilde's wit to his mother.

Things took a turn for the unfortunate, when William Wilde Sr. was knighted. Speranza believed this misfortune came because fortune and fame attract the maliciousness of jealousy. A Dublin man, whose daughter was a patient of Sir William Wilde, the oculist, claimed Sir Wilde was sexually inappropriate in his conduct toward the young lady and would seek legal action. Speranza must have flown into a rage and wrote a nasty letter to the man, for which they were eventually sued and lost most of their wealth. It was about this time that both of Sir Wilde's daughters burned to death in a fire due to the restrictive nature of their fashionable clothes.

Sir Wilde died not long after and Speranza moved to London with both of her sons. In her reduced circumstances, she relied on the financial assistance of both her boys and earned a modest living as a journalist. She finished the work that she began years ago with her husband and published Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (1888). Oscar began making a name for himself and Speranza continued to hope that both her boys would find their place in parliament. Her favorite son wasn't doing as well as Oscar though.

In London, Speranza became active in the fight for women's legal rights; specifically, the right for a woman to retain her wealth in marriage. She was part of a successful act to support these rights, but, as luck would have it, she needed to find a wealthy wife for her favorite son. The marriage lasted less than a year and Willie came home penniless. Even after he took a second wife, Willie would live with his mother to the end of her days. Many famous people still came to her salons, but she was heard at one such event saying that her life had been reduced to "the importance of being Oscar's mother."

I believe that Speranza died of a broken heart, when Oscar Wilde went to prison. When the trials started, she didn't believe they would imprison her son and wouldn't hear of him fleeing the country. He was, after all, "an Irish-born gentleman." The official cause of death was bronchitis, but her health deteriorated rapidly after Oscar's conviction. Even her requests to visit with him were denied.

Oscar's wife, came back to London from Europe, to break the news of his mother's death to Oscar personally, so that he wouldn't take it too hard.

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War of the Worlds Book Cover Collection

Ever go for a walk with someone, maybe your brother, and start talking about something crazy, like what if aliens or zombies descended on the scene. What would you do? Where would people hide? How would you survive? H.G. Wells had just that sort of walk, actually with his brother, and it resulted in The War of the Worlds (1898).

It's so fun to think that idle talk about martians landing in Surrey resulted in a book that has never been out of print and is one of the most inspirational novels of all time. The book cover collection is a testament to that fact, which is sincerely worth a look (click here). Here are just a few of my favorites:

Folio Society, London, 2004, English

Gong Ye Chu Ban She, Hong Kong, 2004, Chinese

Editora Sextante, Brazil, 2000, Portuguese

Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, Moscow, 1983, Russian

Marvel Comics, Editora de Periódicos S.C.L. (La Prensa), 1981, Spanish

1976 Marvel Classics edition 

Contact, 1971, Dutch

Lancer Books, Inc., 1967.

1960 cover by Edward Gorey.
Some of Gorey's illustrations are here.

Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow, 1956, Russian

Editora Latino Americana, Mexico, 1951, Spanish

State Publishing House of the RSFSR People's 

Commissariat of Children's Literature, 1945, Russian

1927 reprint in Amazing Stories.

Again, for the complete collection, visit: http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/

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Vampires or Bust

With more writers opting to self-publish every year, I thought it might be encouraging to know that one of the greatest published his best work at great personal risk.

When publishing Dracula, in 1897, Bram Stoker borrowed a "substantial amount" of money from his good friend, Hall Caine. The novel wasn't much of a success, during the author's lifetime, but it helped his widow to live comfortably. It also left a lasting impression on literature and film.

To me, this serves as a reminder that, if you feel compelled to create art, you should create art and don't waste any time worrying about whether it was worth it.

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