April Fashion Friday

 For this month's Fashion Friday we have an interesting discussion of mending and making do.
Unless you were fabulously wealthy you had to make sure your clothes lasted aloooong time.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

School Daze

 Today we have a fascinating video about schooling in Victorian times from historian Ruth Goodman.
During Queen Victoria's reign literacy in Britain went from  50% to nearly 100% an achievement that had large impacts on society as a whole.
Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

April Book Tuesday

This month's Book Tuesday also works for Fashion Friday!
This is a wonderful collection of  PHOTOS of Victorian and Edwardian Fashions

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta 

Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey
(Dover Fashion and Costumes) 

by Alison Gernsheim 

From Amazon:

Since the invention of photography there has not been a history of fashion completely illustrated by photographs — until this one. Photography historian Alison Gernsheim first studied Victorian and Edwardian fashion in order to be able to date photographs in her collection. Of course the photos soon proved to be the best of all fashion plates — authentic, detailed, as decorative and charming as top fashion illustration. When united with identifications and descriptions of the chief costume articles, and a commentary that includes childhood memories of the period, the resulting history is doubly indispensable — equally useful and delightful to serious and casual readers.

The invention of photography preceded that of the crinoline by about a decade. Pre-crinoline bonnets, stovepipe hats, and deep décolletage are featured in the first of these 235 illustrations — including a beautiful 1840 daguerreotype portrait of a lady that is the earliest study of its kind extant. From 1855 to the 1870s the crinoline gave shape (whether barrel, bell, teapot, or otherwise) to English women, and their shapes fill many of these full and half-page photos. English men went beardless in top hats and frock coats; as in other eras, the sporting wear of the previous generation became acceptable morning and evening town attire. Styles and accoutrements came and went — moustaches, straw hats, bustles and bodice line, petticoats, corsets, shawls and falsies, flounces, ruffles, lace, and materials — satin, silk, velvet, woolen underwear, full-length sable, and osprey feathers. Many of the models for these fashions were already fashionable enough — Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Lillie Langtry, Winston Churchill, many archdukes, duchesses, counts, princes, and Queen Victoria herself. Photographers are identified where possible, and include Nadar, Lewis Carroll, and the Downeys. Every photograph is captioned and annotated.

February Fashion Friday

 This video from Asta Darling answers the perennial question...

Were bright colours even a thing back then?

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

New Event for all your Re-Enactor Needs

 This will be a very interesting and useful event!

Update: Alas this event has been cancelled, hopefully it will run in 2026!

January Fashion Friday

For our first Fashion Friday of 2025 here is a fantastic video by historian Ruth Goodman from YouTube.
Lots of info on daily life for the different classes in Victorian England. 
While only a bit is about "Fashion" per se there is a tremendous amount of good info on daily living here. Always keep in mind that this is where many people in the West came from and they would have brought many of these patterns of life with them.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

Victorian Calendars for 2025

For our first post of 2025 we have a real treat from VSA member Marian Gibbard.

Enjoy and Happy New Year!
The Victorian Society of Alberta

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A Calendar for 2025

Are you looking for a calendar for 2025 that has some Victorian flair? 

Why not simply reuse and recycle an existing calendar - specifically an actual period calendar from a year which starts on the same day of the week and has the same number of days as 2025. 

A quick visit to timeanddate.com  generated a very long list of years that are equivalent to 2025.  Reducing the list to concentrate on the Victorian Era, left 8 results - 1845, 1851, 1862, 1873, 1870, 1890, 1902 and 1913. From there I headed over to the Internet Archive at archive.org  - one of my favourite places for searching for digitized historical documents.

A few hours of searching and browsing results, and here is a list of Victorian calendars for years that are equivalent to 2025. Some holidays (if they are listed) may not fall on the correct day, but the days of the week should fall on the correctly numbered day of the month.

1. The Illuminated Calendar and home diary for 1845

by Henry Noel Humphreys; Printed by Owen Jones

Diary style desk calendar with illustrations in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts and space for personal notes. Three pages per month - two for brief diary entries and one of important dates. Full colour illustrations.

https://archive.org/details/TheIlluminatedCalendar1845/mode/2up

2. Anglo-Chinese Calendar for 1851

Canton; Printed at the office of the Chinese Repository; No. 2 Mingqua's Hong.; 1851

Diary style format, with handwritten notes. Two page spread for each month - one page of historical dates, the facing page with dates and space for personal notes. Many pages of supplementary information that an English speaking foreigner in China would find useful. Not illustrated.

https://archive.org/details/1851anglochinesecalendar/mode/2up 

3. Brandreth’s Annual Calendar for 1879 

An advertising calendar for Brandreth patent medicines. One month per page, with small illustrated headers. One page per month, consisting mostly of moon phases and tables of sun/moon rise & set times across the United States. Facing pages are filled with snippets of information similar to newspaper column filler of the time, and testimonials and advertisements for various Brandreth patent medicines. 

https://archive.org/details/101177060.nlm.nih.gov/mode/2up

4. Authors’ Calendar. 1890
By Alice Flora McClary Stevens

Tall narrow desk calendar with quotations and short poems from various authors. One page per week. Green monochrome illustrations and text.

https://archive.org/details/authorscalendar100stev/mode/2up

5. Nineteen hundred and two : a calendar for the year 1902;
with drawings by the Toronto Art League illustrating some Canadian sports & pastimes

Published by George N. Morang & Company; Illustrations by A. H. Howard, F. H. Brigden, C. W. Jefferys, D. F. Thomson, F. H. Brigden, R. Holmes, C. M. Manly, W. W. Alexander, W. D. Blatchly

Landscape oriented desk calendar in the art nouveau style. One or two months per page, facing full page colour illustrations of various typically Canadian sports and outdoor activities. Some water damage to the pages.

https://archive.org/details/nineteenhundredt00toro/page/n19/mode/2up

6. Bryn Mawr College Calendar 1902

Designed by Jessie Wilcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green. Bryn Mawr College Students Association. Bryn Mawr, PA, 1901

Tall, narrow booklet in art nouveau style. Illustrations depict young women, presumably representing the students of Bryn Mawr College, engaging in various sporting and intellectual activities. One month per page, with space for brief daily notes.

https://archive.org/details/BrynMawrCollegeCalendar1902/mode/2up