History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | nineteenth century

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Using Personal Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters

By on March 16, 2018 in Learning in Focus

Eleanor Doyle, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on one of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Eleanor discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about an author’s personal relationships as well as wider contemporary experiences. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Jane Austen’s reputation as a celebrated English novelist is well established. However, her letters to her sister, Cassandra Austen, provide a rewarding insight into her as an individual. This blog will focus on a letter Jane sent to her […]

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Exterior of Whitechapel Workhouse. Image courtesy of Gale Primary Sources

James Greenwood – Social Reformer or Opportunist?

By on March 8, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Rory Herbert, final year History student and President of the History Society at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog on the 19th century social investigator James Greenwood. Rory is Gale Ambassador at the university and contributes to The Gale Review Blog. The role of the Gale Ambassador is to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to students at their university. The University of Portsmouth Library hosts a large collection of Gale primary sources which History students can use when undertaking archival research for their dissertations and other research projects. James Greenwood was an author of relative obscurity who came to fame abruptly following the publication […]

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Where the shadows lie: The Gothic in early-mid and late nineteenth-century London.

By on June 16, 2017 in Research in Focus

“Nilay’s dissertation demonstrated an excellent breadth of reading and a confident grasp of the historical and social issues. It made great use of the Gothic as a cultural lens, using it to explore the changing nature of urban anxieties in Victorian London. Based upon an impressive range of primary evidence, Nilay developed a compelling argument for the ways in which Gothic ideas and images crossed over from sensationalist fiction to inform Victorian social investigation. His analysis of the anxieties surrounding Victorian prostitution was particularly rich and sophisticated.” – Dr Karl Bell, Nilay’s dissertation supervisor. I became interested in researching the Gothic and its links to Victorian Britain from a natural […]

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