The World of the Victorians

You may just have brain ache by 9pm on a Sunday night, but if you can catch it, Jeremy Paxman’s BBC 1 series on looking at Victorian society through the pictures they painted is a great way of providing contextual information on any of the 19thC texts you are studying.

• If you have a note book handy, you could jot down the names of any memorable pictures that relate to a theme in your novel / poetry and potentially reap some real benefits in terms of exam results.
• Another idea is to go to the World of Victorian writers section on Crossref-it.info for handy articles about the impact of industrialisation, transport, education etc. on society
• Paxman’s series shows how Victorian society was heavily shaped and motivated by commonly held beliefs which were widely promoted, be it conventional Christian morality, free will or whatever. Some of these ideas are explained in more detail here.

Remember that 25% of the new A Level English Lit course depends on relating texts to the world in which they were created, so information like this can have a huge impact on your chances of success!