This week we travel back to Victorian England with the Importance of Being Earnest! Join us for a discussion of female archers, foundlings, boutonnieres, the film's many great zingers, tattoos, and more!

Sources:

Archery: John Stanley, "Archery History: The Sport that Pioneered Equality for Women's Participation," World Archery, available at https://worldarchery.sport/news/178437/archery-history-sport-pioneered-equality-womens-participation Archery Dresses, Autumn 1831, Claremont Colleges Fashion Plate Collection. Available at https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/fpc/id/174/ William Powell Frith, "The Fair Toxophilites." Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Victorian_era#/media/File:RAMM_Frith_-_The_Fair_Toxophilites.jpg

Film Background: The Importance of Being Earnest, 2002, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest_(2002_film) Roger Ebert Review of The Importance of Being Earnest, available at https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-importance-of-being-earnest-2002 "The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)" IMDB https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278500/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Lady Bracknell quotes: https://www.importanceofbeingearnest.co.uk/lady-bracknell-quotes/

Foundlings:

Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Ellen Boucher, Empire's children: child emigration, welfare, and the decline of the British world, 1869-1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen, Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital (Bloomsbury, 2012). Lynda Nead, "Fallen Women and Foundlings: Rethinking Victorian Sexuality," History Workshop Journal 82 (August 2016). Jane Humphries (reviewer) "Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London's Foundlings. By Helen Berry (New York, Oxford University Press, 2019) 384 pp. $27.95," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 51:1 (Summer 2020). Elizabeth Foyster, "The "New World of Children" Reconsidered: Child Abduction in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century England," Journal of British Studies, 52:3 (July 2013): 669-92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41999356 Shurlee Swain, "Beyond chlid migration, inquiries, apologies and the implications for the writing of a transnational child welfare history," History Australia 13:1 (May 2016): 139-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2016.1156212 "The Lost Child Found." The Cardiff and Methyr Guardian Glamorgan Monmouth and Brecon Gazette (16 April 1870). https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3096837/3096841/23/abandoned%20lost%20child%20London "Law and Police." The Illustrated London News (3 April 1869). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/HN3100078408/ILN?u=mlin_w_willcoll&sid=ILN&xid=a37b77d5 "Story of a Lost Child." Monmouthshire Merlin (1 August 1868). https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3442593/3442595/14/abandoned%20lost%20child%20London "Home Children, 1869-1932," Library and Archives Canada https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/home-children-1869-1930/Pages/home-children.aspx Bernd Weisbrod, "How to Become a Good Foundling in Early Victorian London," Social History 10:2 (May 1985): 193-209. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4285430 "Our History" Barnardo's https://www.barnardos.org.uk/who-we-are/our-history

Boutonnieres:

"History of Fashion 1840-1900" Victoria & Albert Museum http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/history-of-fashion-1840-1900/ https://www.vanderbilt.edu/olli/class-materials/History_of_Fashion_Oct30.pdf Harper Franklin, "1890-1899" Fashion History Timeline https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1890-1899/ https://bellatory.com/fashion-industry/Mens-Clothing-of-the-Late-Victorian-Era https://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/09/25/19th-century-fashion-plate-magazines

Tattoos:

Database of Convict Tattoos, Digital Panopticon, available at https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/search?targ=hitlist&e0.type.t.t=root&e1.date.d.hy=1839&e1.date.d.ly=1830&e0.gender.tg.x=&e1.date.d.hm=&e0.tattoo_subjects.mts.mts=&e1.date.d.lm=&e1.date.d.hd=&e1.type.t.t=tattoo&e1.date.d.ld= Robert Shoemaker and Zoe Alker, "How Tattoos Became Fashionable in Victorian England," The Conversation, available at https://theconversation.com/how-tattoos-became-fashionable-in-victorian-england-122487 "Tattoo Machines," Tattooarchive.com, available at https://www.tattooarchive.com/history/tattoo_machine.php