This certainly isn't the only place on the web to find Victorian magazines. The best, by far, is Archive.org - but there, as on most other sites, all you can do is download entire volumes. If you're looking for something specific, you need to know where to look before you start - and paging through a 500- to 1000-page annual is not the easiest way to find information!

Our topical approach makes research simple. If your passion is Victorian royalty, simply click on the "royalty" section and you'll discover a host of articles on Queen Victoria, her family, her household, her palaces, her doll collection - even her favorite pets! If you want recipes, we have them by the hundreds. If you'd like to know what the proper etiquette was for social calling or card-leaving, how to host an "at-home" social event, or what to serve for high tea, you'll find it here. You'll even be able to find out how to hire (and how much to pay) your servants!

Another part of our goal is to provide access to Victorian magazines that aren't readily available elsewhere. Most of the online collections available today are drawn from American libraries. It's much harder (if not impossible) to find digital copies of British Victorian periodicals, such as The Girl's Own Paper, Cassell's Family Magazine, and many others. Even classic American magazines like Century are difficult to locate.

Our overarching goal, however, is to provide a collection that is both informative and entertaining. Victorian voices are not necessarily dull, stodgy, or repressive. Many of the articles on this site are just as enjoyable today as when they were first written. This site offers the researcher a vital tool in understanding the Victorian era - but it also offers the everyday reader a chance to experience some wonderful material that doesn't deserve to be lost.

Getting Around

There are four ways to navigate the site:

1. The navigation menu in the left column, which will take you to each of our major categories, from which you can explore that category's many subtopics;
2. Our Site Index, which gives you direct access to all the categories and subtopics in one place;
3. The search box at the top of the left column; and
4. The Magazine Index, from which you can search for articles by magazine and date rather than by topic.

The search box is particularly useful if you are looking for a particular term, or a specific author. If, for example, you'd like to find all the articles on the site by, say, M.G. Van Rensselaer, just type the last name into the search box and you'll get the full list.

Most topical menus on the site are arranged chronologically, so if you are looking for articles on, say, etiquette, you'll find articles ranging from our earliest publications (1834) to the latest (1913).

A Word of Warning

Let me add a brief disclaimer: Victorian writers were not "politically correct." In the Victorian world (or the world that editors supposed their readers belonged to), "the right sort" of people were white, upper class, educated, and (in the case of British magazines) English. To British writers, even Americans were a bit suspect - amusing, but generally unmannered. Victorian articles from either side of the pond are often rife with bigotry, bias, and racial slurs.

I neither apologize for nor endorse the Victorian viewpoint. To attempt to edit out the biases of the Victorian era would be to present a false image of that world. It would do the reader no service by attempting to paint a rosy and romantic view of a period that was, for many, not rosy at all. Every period of history has its positives and its negatives, including our own. The purpose of this site is not to whitewash the Victorian era, or romanticize it, but to enable the reader to explore it as it was, warts and all.

And now, as a Victorian writer might say, "Dear Reader, pray feel free to explore -- and enjoy!"