Each of us carries our own image of Victorian England: the stern Queen Victoria — the “Grandmother of Europe” — and Big Ben looming in a fog “yellow as pea soup”; the Industrial Revolution and its underage victims who began working in mines and factories at the age of five; the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Dickens’ miser Scrooge from A Christmas Carol.

The Victorian era intrigues and fascinates. It had everything: the courage of great discoveries and the strictness of social decorum, exemplary rationality and rampant superstition, cheerful optimism and profound despair.

What was it like to live in that time? Let’s try to imagine it. Professional research, literary works, English photographs, paintings, engravings, and 19th-century postcards will guide us.

Let’s spend an entire day in Victorian England — from morning until night.
And of course, we won’t forget about Christmas. Many of the Christmas traditions we enjoy today took shape in the 19th century. How did this happen — and what does Charles Dickens have to do with it? We’ll discuss this during the lecture.

We’ll also dispel a few myths about Victorian customs and find out whether the people in “Victorian post-mortem photographs” are truly as hopelessly dead as they appear.

Speaker: Elena Panisheva — cultural scholar, historian of literature, curator of exhibition projects at the Moscow State Literature Museum.

Date: December 16 at 19:30
Venue: Art-Podval (Limassol)
Price: €25