Class 5's Blog

The Blog of Cathedral Primary School's Class 5

A Victorian Street Scene

We are learning about the Victorians this term and we are especially enjoying reading Oliver Twist and writing our very own pieces of Historical fiction.  We have been investigating how Charles Dickens helped create a picture of the world he lived in through the descriptions in his written words.  We have also identified how he created suspense and tension through imagery, detail and manipulating the speed in which the action develops. Here are some examples of our work.  We hope you like them!

An extract from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

“ It was nearly two hours before day-break; that time which in the autumn of the year , may be called the  dead of night; when the streets are silent & deserted; when even sounds appear to slumber, and profligacy & riot have staggered home to dream.”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Ferdinand

“The night was a cold iceberg, melting when the moon came out and the street started to shimmer. The buildings camouflaged next to the fresh night sky. The cobbled road twinkled in the night sky like stars. That was the only source of light there. The other dim, faint lights made no effort in giving light.  The horse-carts looked like faint shadows.

The night was cool, full of breeze; the wind was fierce, pushing the trees.

Suddenly a door burst open and feet clattered. The night grew darker as Bill Sikes approached the street. His teeth gritted as he thought of how Nancy betrayed his clamped soul. Bill Sikes hands coiled up into clenched fists, his vile face crumpled into scrunched paper. Sikes raged through the street with indignation, swiftly twisted his head; left and right, hunting for the honest girl. His breath grunted out like a raging bull. Bill’s patience was losing its strength. THEN!!…”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Rebecca

“Dimly flickering gas lamps glowed creepily, slightly lighting up the windows of the small shops. A lost top hat rolled around, sometimes half flying along the stone paving when a strong breeze picked up. You could just see the twinkling stars, millions and millions of them just hovering there as if hung up as a Christmas decoration. You could also see the moon, the source of the silvery white rays surrounded by shadows.

A rat scurried across the stone cobbles and darted under a fence. Another came padding out of an ally and sniffed at the horse manure dotted all over the road. A bang and the scratching of claws against stone showed there was a cat around and all the rats hid from view.

Suddenly a door burst open and Bill came tearing out wild with fury. He tore down the street franticly looking for Nancy. He stumbled and tripped on the cobblestone his body taut, sweating with rage. His heart was pounding against his chest, his fists clenched tight and his evil face as pale as a sheet. He smashed into a lamp post for he was blinded with tears of anger and then he swiftly turned the corner into an ally way and the terrified cat slinked out. He rushed to the crooked arms when a jagged streak of lightning crossed the sky. A torrential rain soaked Bill as he reached the crooked arms he pushed through the crowd of sleeping drunkards and there she was….”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Michael

“Suddenly a door burst open, Bill looked like a gruesome warrior as he made his way through the narrow, hollow street. He crashed into a gas lamp but he still continued stomping away in the blackened moonlight. His grotesque big toe slowly made its way through his spoilt, filthy shoe and when teeth grinded together hell let loose and thunder and lightning poured like the rain and hail did throughout the stormy night. He clenched his fist the way a polar bear would gnaw on his daily income of fish. He stamped his feet like a horse galloping on the lumpy stone road. His cheeks were as purple as the mixture of the waste pouring out of the ancient windows.

Bill gradually stormed towards the terrace house; his blood still throbbed through his head like oil in the River Thames. He was like a grumpy Killer Whale devouring everything in its way.

And then there she was, standing still in the moonlight…”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Renee

The lamp posts were dimly lit down the street, flickering. The roads were covered with manure and dusty dirt. The lights of the brick terraced houses went out and the town felt pitch black.

Shutters were shut, doors were locked, and the streets were empty. It was like the world was a vacant box full of air. The shouting and crying stopped just as the moon arrived. It twinkled in the sky like a shiny silver coin.

All the shops and markets closed no one would even dare to go out. The cold winter night, everywhere no one was around to neither talk nor play.

Suddenly a door burst open Bill came out as angry as ever. He stomped all the way down stairs and out into the cold, dark, cruel night off to find Nancy the betrayer. His face was red like blood; he clenched his fists as he stomped to find Nancy.

The sky was full of darting lightning bolts and grey storm clouds shooting down like needles poking you in the face. Bills breath was shown in the air; it looked like a tuft of fog. His hair was wet, his blood was boiling.”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Gabriel

“Silence came back and forth between the cobbled streets, twisting and weaving in and out of dingy lanes and streets, trying to keep people in the force of utter enthrallment and sleep, flying up into the darkness of the atmosphere and beyond the stars.

Suddenly a shadowy figure burst out of a ramshackle cobbled streets and rushed along the cobbles, muttering unspeakable words to himself about the one who betrayed him, Nancy. He dashed in and out in a fit of rage, with his teeth and fists clenched, up the high street during that ferocious thunderstorm down all those little alleys searching for Nancy, the culprit for aiding that boy he hated so much, the little tyke, Oliver Twist. And there Nancy was, hiding in the dark depths of the shadows … “

An extract from “London at night” by Jesse

“The Victoria Regina post boxes were in the shadowy corners of the cobble stone street; the rusty street sign was hanging off one corners dimly lit by the quaint gas lamps, which were as tall as 2 men!

The slimy horse manure covered the street, burying the iron wheels of the empty out of action horse omnibus; there was the smell of manure mixed with the stench of perpetually rising mire. You could hear the drip drip drip of the cholera infested water dripping from the pump.” 

An extract from “London at night” by Archie

“The lamp lighter was trying with no effort to stay as silent as possible in the ankle deep puddles of horse manure which were waiting to be moved to the cesspit. The whisk of the wind circled the now silent church towers threatening to blow them of its stand.

The occasional flicker of the gas lamps made the street dimmer than a chamber in the tower of London.

Suddenly a door burst open and Bill Sikes ran out of the door. Without warning a thunderstorm immediately broke out. Paying no attention, with clenched fists and gritted teeth he ran on through the night.

Raging on to find his betrayer, his face purple with loathing; brushing past lamp posts, jumping over pot holes, fists clenched teeth ground together while a tiny part of his mind wanted to stop ….”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Esther

“Suddenly a door burst open…He sprinted along the peaceful streets, his heart pounding like a tiger, rapidly, his fist were clenched!

He bashed through the hard lamp-posts, passing the oily blackness of the River Thames. His forehead had 3 lines the sign of anger. He looked with his hands above his forehead….”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Megan

“Through the dark, dangerous streets you could hardly see the flickering gas lamps; the street was as quiet as a deserted house.

The ground was thick with mire, the lamps flickered in the moon light; the street was still and silent, there was rubbish everywhere the cobbles were as rough as a tree bark.

The streets were jet black, dirt covered the ground like an old and tattered table cloth covers a filthy table, and the sky was an indigo blue.

Suddenly the door burst open Bill Sikes came bounding out, his heart pounding in his chest. All he heard was BANG, the rain dribbling down his face.

He was bounding as fast as a horse down a deserted street. He could hardly see where he was going; the fog was so thick; his feet bleeding in his tattered and worn shoes.

He was getting closer and closer and there Nancy was………”

An extract from “Bill searches for Nancy” by Mia

“Suddenly a door burst open as Bill rushed out into the empty high street. Bill’s eyes screwed up as he clenched his fist with anger. He searched everywhere for his darling.

The thunder suddenly struck and the rain came pouring down. Bill got drenched as he sprinted though the rain. He ran down the street beside the terraced houses.”

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an aerial view of Central London at night.

Guardian Live: How to write a London novel

Knowing your way around, reading your predecessors, and avoiding cliche were among the tips shared by Tony Parsons, Will Self and AL Kennedy

From Islington to Earl’s Court, Peckham Rye to Ladbroke Grove, just about every area of London has a rich, historic literature of its own. Countless writers down the ages have sought to make some sense of this labyrinthine metropolis: Dickens wittily unravelled the social fabric of the Victorian era, Virginia Woolf perfected the modernist city symphony and Muriel Spark elevated the quirks of postwar working-class life to literary greatness. But the concept of the London novel is a strange and fluid thing, hard to define beyond its obvious geographical premise. So how might aspiring novelists set about penning a London masterpiece?

For a recent Guardian Live event , Will Self, author of The Book of Dave; AL Kennedy, whose Serious Sweet is set for release this week, and Tony Parsons, bestselling author of Man and Boy, came together to share tips on how best to write about this city.

You must know London ...

Will Self

“You’ve got to know the city,” explained Self, who takes a rambling, psychogeographical approach to his work and clearly knows a thing or two about the capital. “The long view is essential for the city writer,” he said. “You must feel the shadow … feel your own evanescence.” Amid multiple tangents and digressions, he touched on the repeal of the Test Acts , the history of municipal socialism in the city and nigh on 40 years of “unrestrained neoliberal globalising bollocks”, demonstrating a little of his own broad knowledge. He’s an advocate of exploring the past and not getting overly bogged down in the the present day. “You can get a bit overexcited about the present, in my view,” he said.

... but use an outsider’s perspective

AL Kennedy.

Of course, knowing London doesn’t mean you have to have lived there all your life, nor does it necessarily require some kind of complete understanding. Kennedy seems in favour of an intimate, almost microcosmic line of action. “So much about London is about a very small view,” she said, explaining that it was the likes of Spark’s shabby and weird – but lovely – stories that initially attracted her to the city.

Like Spark, Kennedy is Scottish, and she appears to use her outsider’s vantage to observe and perceive things in a way that perhaps those who have long inhabited the city don’t. Whether coming at things from a “newly-arrived” or “here-forever” point of view, it stands to reason that a clear idea of what you want, or need, to say is integral. “What’s your focus?” Kennedy asked. “What kind of research are you doing? Is it present day? Is it past? What’s resonating? What isn’t resonating? It’s a research project like any other research project, but it will also reflect what you feel is important about the world.”

For Serious Sweet, she explained, she recorded instances of kindness between strangers. “London partly floats on those,” she said, “because it’s almost intolerable without [them]”.

Read your predecessors

Familiarising yourself with your fellow London writers, be they novelists, essayists, poets or historians, is a given. Referring again to the importance of taking the long view, Self implored us to “look at the great London writers of the past … De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater – very much about man coming in and out of the city, coping with it, not coping with it, fucking up. Defoe’s [A] Journal of the Plague Year, a very great early work of the psychogeography of the city – again, a similar sense of movement. Dickens, of course, Jack London’s The People of the Abyss.” These authors all make use of the perambulating approach adopted by Self, and they all drifted in and out of London.

Avoid cliche

“I don’t think there is a distinctly London novel,” said Self, when asked what cliches of the genre should be given a wide berth. “I think the city is so big and looms so large that you can treat it as a world entire, so it’s the same problems that you have with any novel of place. Cliche is the endless enemy; whatever the cliche is, it has to be avoided.”

Tony Parsons.

Parsons described how he cashed in his pension so he could take two years off to write his first crime novel, during which time he thought deeply about how to avoid London cliches – one of which, he said, is Scotland Yard. “You just have … to avoid anything that seems as though it’s been done to death. My novels are set in West End Central because one of the first pieces of journalism that I ever did … was writing about the vice squad [there] … So I knew it and it seemed like a good way to swerve the cliche.”

And don’t try to write a London novel

With all its regional, generational and other contextual variations, perhaps a definition of the London novel beyond that basic – and arguably tenuous – geographical premise is impossible. As such, is it a mistake to set out to write one?

“Ideally,” Kennedy said, “whatever you’re writing about, all of the parts of it will fit organically, and – hopefully – as a writer … if you were going to walk out of the building and get hit by a truck, you would have said the thing that burned within you that you had to say. And it’s not like it’s going to be a canonical novel, or it’s going to be a London novel, or it’s gong to be a woman-in-peril novel; it’s going to be the thing that you have to write.”

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How the Victorians Created the Modern English Novel

Katie lumsden on the enduring tropes of an era.

Over 120 years since the Victorian era ended, its literature continues to have huge staying power in the collective imagination of the English-speaking world. We all have a clear idea of what “Dickensian” London looks like. We know what it means to be a Scrooge, or to be a bit Jekyll and Hyde. Most of us know the twist in Jane Eyre and what happens in Tess of the D’Urbervilles before we ever pick up the novels. We study Victorian books at school and university, adapt them for screen, write retellings. Just look at all the twenty-first-century reimaginings of the Sherlock Holmes stories: the films with Robert Downy Jr., BBC’s Sherlock , Elementary , Enola Holmes , and so many more.

There are particular cultural and social reasons—often not good ones—why a book might become a “classic” in the first place, while other books by other authors or from other times and places get forgotten. It’s impossible to separate the legacy of the Victorian period and its literature from the huge political and social power Britain exercised through its Empire and its concerted attacks on other cultures, both during the Victorian period and before and after.

When it comes to Victorian books themselves, some are easier to separate from this than others; you can’t read any Rudyard Kipling or much Arthur Conan Doyle without encountering imperialist and racist views; but for other Victorian authors, the Empire was something that influenced their world but that they rarely wrote about. Regardless, Victorian literature would certainly not be so widely read today were English not so widely spoken as a language, and that too is a legacy of imperialism.

However, while this goes some of the way to explaining why many Victorian books have become “canon,” it doesn’t really explain why we still love these books. And the fact is that a lot of us do. On my YouTube channel, Books and Things , I run the readathon Victober with a few fellow BookTubers. We dedicate the month of October each year to reading Victorian literature. It’s been running for over six years, and we now have thousands of enthusiastic participants from all over the world.

I have loved Victorian literature since I read Jane Eyre aged thirteen. These days, I’ve run out of Victorian books to read that are still in print, so I read out-of-print, forgotten books—very old editions, or digital versions I’ve tracked down. I read and love a lot of contemporary literature, too, and I love reading books from throughout history, from around the world; but when writing my debut novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall , I found myself drawn again to the Victorians.

The book is set in 1852 and follows Margaret Lennox, a twenty-nine-year-old governess, returning to work after the death of her husband. She takes up a new position at Hartwood Hall, an isolated country house, where things are not quite what they seem. The novel is a love letter to my favorite books.

Of course, the Victorians didn’t just happen to write lots of amazing books. There is a specific context that led to the creation of their literature, and certain features that have given it its staying power.

At the start of the Victorian period, the novel was a relatively new form. The first novel in English is usually said to be Robinson Crusoe , published 118 years before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne; but in its first century, the novel was often not taken seriously. It was felt that serious people read non-fiction and poetry, while novels were frivolous: guilty pleasures that might even have detrimental effects on the moral character.

The peculiar technological and social circumstances of Victorian Britain gave writers the chance to redefine the novel. Improvements in printing technology meant that books, newspapers and periodicals were quicker and cheaper to produce, easier to buy. The publishing industry expanded—indeed, it became an industry— and grew more commercialized, making writing into a viable profession. Novels were serialized in journals, and everyone waited eagerly for the next installment.

Literacy rates increased dramatically in Victorian Britain, partly due to the growth of the middle classes, partly due to education acts making schooling more widely available. Parliamentary acts also cut down working hours in factories, and technological changes shortened the length of tasks both in and out of the home—which meant that, as the era went on, at least some Victorians had increasing amounts of leisure time.

All this gave novelists new audiences and new opportunities—and, with growing competition, more reason to experiment and try new things. This great hunger for literature is partly why Victorian authors were so prolific. Anthony Trollope wrote forty-seven novels; Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote over eighty; Margaret Oliphant, now somewhat forgotten but hugely successful in her day, wrote nearly 100.

The new prominence of the novel also transformed how it was viewed. While some fiction continued to be looked down upon—such as the cheap, sensational “Penny Dreadfuls”—many novels became respectable . Novels grew to be perhaps the first form of mass entertainment, popular throughout a variety of social groups. People from all classes and walks of life enjoyed Charles Dickens, for example. Dickens is often considered to be the first real celebrity; he toured the UK and the USA extensively, reading extracts of his work live to massive audiences. In The Warden , Anthony Trollope created a satirical version of Dickens called “Mr. Popular Sentiment,” and the implication is clear: that Dickens was felt to speak for—and, indeed, shape the opinion of—the majority.

Novels could even be important tools for social criticism. Frances Trollope’s Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy was written with the aim of exposing poor working conditions within textile mills, and its popularity played an important part in pressuring Parliament to pass the Factory Acts of the 1840s. Novels, and their authors, came to be taken seriously in a way they simply had not been before. One novelist, Benjamin Disraeli, even went on to become the Prime Minister.

The change in the novel’s status during the Victorian period, alongside the increasing variety and volume of novels, also gave birth to a lot of our modern genres and literary traditions. We all know that Sherlock Holmes gave us the modern detective, but Arthur Conan Doyle was also building on earlier Victorian detective figures like Sergeant Cuff from Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and Mr Bucket from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House .

Sensation novels—books like Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret , Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and Ellen Wood’s East Lynne— blended domestic drama with pacy plots, family mysteries, secrets, and betrayals, bringing crime and deceit into the domestic sphere; in other words, they are the precursors to modern thrillers.

The era also gave us the beginnings of children’s literature, science fiction, and horror. Victorian love stories, coming-of-age tales, and gothic works still appeal to us because they have the features we expect. One issue with reading Victorian books today is that they can sometimes appear clichéd—but this is often because they contain the seeds of what went on to become genre tropes.

It is not only Victorian genres that feel familiar to us: they also wrote about a lot of themes that still interest and concern us in the modern world. We think of the Victorians as patriarchal, hierarchical, imperialist, and narrow-minded, and it’s unquestionably true that these things can be found in their literature in abundance—again, there’s Rudyard Kipling—but we can also find passionate arguments against the social status quo.

Elizabeth Gaskell and George Gissing fought against prejudice and class boundaries in their books North and South and The Nether World . Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens’s criticisms of money, excess and corruption in books like The Way We Live Now and Our Mutual Friend still feel pertinent. The Moonstone feels problematic in places, but Wilkie Collins was trying to write an anti-imperialist novel, within the limitations of his time. Victorian literature can be surprisingly proto-feminist, too: books like Margaret Oliphant’s Hester , George Gissing’s The Odd Women , and Amy Dillwyn’s Jill all challenged gender roles and social rules. Jude the Obscure was so radical in its condemnation of class and marriage as oppressive institutions that the response to it effectively ended Thomas Hardy’s career as a novel-writer.

The Victorians were also, like us, concerned about technology and its impacts. We often talk about the Victorian period as a homogenous era, but it was, in fact, sixty-four years of huge change. Like us, they lived in a time when technology was rapidly altering the world around them; they, like us, didn’t always know what to make of this. They worried about technological development taking away people’s jobs; they worried about pollution; they worried about whether technology would change society for the better or for the worse. In his novel Hard Times , Dickens explored technological and industrial change, and how these things were affecting social interaction and the way people thought. Dickens’s concern that technology was taking away people’s imagination and sense of joy does not feel far away from modern conversations about how the internet and social media affect how we think and interact.

The reason why the Victorian period still interests so many modern readers is because it is long ago but not too long ago. We find their world fascinating but recognizable enough to understand. We keep returning to the works of the Victorians because they wrote great novels, because they wrote so many of them, because they explored themes that still interest us today, because many of our foundational texts come from them. In short, the Victorian era is when modern English literature as we know it began.

________________________________

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Katie Lumsden’s The Secrets of Hartwood Hall is available now from Dutton.

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Katie Lumsden

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All questions on English literature

Describing the Atmosphere in Victorian London

Does anyone know how to write A Descriptive Paragraph about Victorian London ?

Current ye@r *

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Emily Dikinson

Could someone be able to give any examples of liminality in any of her work. Cheers.

How does Joyce create symbolic meaning out of natural imagery in Dubliners 'The Dead'?

Liminality in 'Dracula' and 'The Goblin Market'

Could someone explain what liminality is and what are some examples of it in these texts. Thanks.

The role of a coach

This isn't specific to English lit. but does anyone know any real life examples of the voice coach in the film, 'The King's Speech'?

What is juxtaposition, and in what way is it important in the text(s) that you are studying?

GCSE or A level. Remember to quote from the text you are studying, and give detailed explanation. No more than 500-1000 words

which type of narration is used in the short story the secret life of waltermitty by James Thurber

Explain each peragraph with paraphrase

What can I write instead of "this makes the reader..."?

How to avoid always writing " this makes the reader" all the time.

This is a phrase that all too often slips out without much thought and it is one that teachers are sick of seeing in essays. The reason for that is writing "this makes the reader..." makes it look like you haven't put much thought into your writing and shows a lack of analysis of the text. Here are some better phrases to use instead of "makes the reader":

  • This invokes feelings of X in the reader.
  • This brings about the emotion of…. in the reader.
  • This further elucidates (disconsolate, sad, melancholic) emotions to the reader
  • This connotes a sense of (melancholy, sorrowful) feelings for the reader
  • This results in the reader experiencing…
  • This creates a sad, joyful, frightening... atmosphere
  • This moves the reader
  • This provokes the reader to believe/think/feel…
  • The reader is compelled
  • The reader is therefore made to feel sad, happy, stressed, anxious...
  • This entices the reader
  • This causes a sense of sadness, joy, bewilderment... in the reader etc…
  • The writer is trying to infer that…
  • The reader deduces from this that…
  • The use of the (metaphor/repetition/syntax etc.) demonstrates/ establishes/ highlights/ reinforces that…

It is also a good idea to consider the various interpretations of different readers, as they will differ depending on their social and historical context. As such, you could say: A female reader in the 19th Century may respond to this by feeling…

Academic Phrases to Use in Your Essays

What is academic writing.

essay_types

  In modern terms, the academic writing style is better known as an essay. While you may think that the essay dates back to the early stages of human writing, the essay is actually a relatively modern writing technique. The work below is widely considered to be the first essay.  

essay_categories

How can I make my essay sound better?

categories_tones

  If you make sure to at least have the basics listed above, your essay will already sound a lot better. So, what are some common academic writing phrases or words?  

What are introductory phrases examples?

introductions_literature

  If you’re wondering what introductory phrases you should use, you should think about what type of introduction you’re doing. Let’s take a look at some examples of either of the two types of introducing.  

What are some good linking words?

linking_words

What words are not used in academic writing?

There are many different words you should avoid when writing academic papers. When it comes to phrases and words to avoid, you will get many differing opinions from teachers and academic writing services alike. However, here are some general words and phrases to avoid.

  • Contractions
  • Place-holders
  • Passive verbs

avoid_in_essays

How can you describe a fairground?

What would you describe a fun fair.

reasons_for_writings

  You will most likely be writing a description of a fair ground for creative writing purposes, so let’s start with some descriptive writing examples for creative writing. Take a look at some of the qualities you should describe.  

  If your carnival description will be geared towards promotional material, your description will be a lot different than that of a story. You won’t need any characters or plot - you will need informational descriptions.  

  Finally, if you’re interested in professional descriptions of a fair, you will need different types of descriptions as well. Take a look at some examples below.  

What can you smell at a fairground?

five_senses

  As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can start to describe a carnival just by thinking of these five senses. Let’s start with the first one: what can you usually smell at a fairground?  

What can you hear at a fair?

Let’s move on to another sense. What does one usually hear at a carnival? Let’s take a look at some of the things you might hear at a fair.  

  What can make your story or promotional material more unique is to think of a word that describes an object, then think of another object that can have the same description using another sense. This is actually a literary device called synaesthesia.  

synesthesia_example

What are some descriptive words?

three_principles_story

Creative Writing Club - members' area

Creative Writing Club – members' area

² navigation, write your own story – victorians.

Queen Victoria’s reign was an age of inventions and inequality, railways and rat pits, soldiers and suffragettes, Christmas trees and criminals… you get the picture. Let’s write a Victorian epic.

Victorian gent

⊕ Go through the steps below to create your story...

1. Choose two Victorian locations:

  • gentleman’s club
  • Whitechapel High Street
  • Fleet Street
  • match factory
  • the workhouse
  • the baby farm

The workhouse was a place where people too sick or poor to support themselves went to work (in return for food and a place to sleep). A 'baby farm' was a place where unmarried mothers send their babies - so they could go out and work.

2. Choose two characters to be in the story:

  • Jack the Ripper
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • Sweeny Todd (the demon barber)
  • Florence Nightingale
  • Amelia Dyer (the baby farmer)
  • the ‘peelers’ (policemen)
  • a rat catcher
  • a match girl (factory worker)

The first three names - Sherlock, Jack and Sweeny - are fictional characters..

3. Choose two objects for your story...

  • secret letter
  • poison (arsenic)
  • bottle of medicine
  • gold sovereigns
  • Choose your own idea

4. Write the story from the most exciting part.

If you are working with a partner - write one line each.

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English literature and creative writing.

Our Creative Writing and English Literature programmes cover contemporary and historical literature from Romantic poetry and Victorian novels to children’s literature, performance poetry, science fiction, and page-to-screen adaptations. Our students learn about literature and other art-forms, national and international culture and politics, and the relationship between literature, publishing and technology, philosophy and religion, and environment and place.

Over the course of their degree students take modules including Poetic Form and Genre, Theatre and Performance, Publishing and the Book, Writing and Editing Fiction and Nonfiction, Genre Fiction, Victorians to Moderns, Why Literature Matters and The Writer's Craft. Students also specialise in a final year dissertation.

In a dedicated year-long module on the publishing industry we invite celebrated writers and guest speakers from major publishing institutions to help students understand the process of taking a manuscript from author to printed book and beyond into prize structures, rights fairs and literary festivals. Our aim is for students to graduate with a confident sense of how the publishing industry works and a clear idea of where in the industry they might want to work.

Central to everything we do is a love of literature and a thorough and wide-ranging critical and practical discussion of what it means to be a reader and writer today, in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Seminars and workshops are tutor-led opportunities where students learn to present their creative and critical work, to offer and receive feedback, and develop creative, intellectual and technical skills. Workshops and seminar discussions form an essential part of developing creative practice. Degree study in our areas typically consists of lectures and discussion seminars, mixed with student presentations and opportunities to work on critical or creative assignments and projects.

Our modules focus not only on individual creative practice and critical skills but on a lively intellectual engagement with literary history, theory and contemporary production. Students learn to place their creative output in context and actively engage with wider debates about publishing and the place of literature in today’s world.

We also help students develop the technical aspects of writing - editing, grammar, punctuation - in a shame-free environment, enabling them to write fluently and confidently in a variety of genres, including creative nonfiction, and to deepen their understanding of different cultural and literary forms.

Over the course of the year students visit London’s many thriving cultural venues, such as Tate Britain and Tate Modern, The Globe Theatre, the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood, and Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe.

The Anthology project

Creative Writing and English Literature moved into the School of Art, Architecture and Design in 2016/17, and we began collaborating with the tutors and students on the Design, Illustration and Publishing degrees. It was an inspiring process to see the critical and creative work of our students emerge in a shared project like the Anthology book. The design students’ brilliant creative responses gave our students’ writing a beautiful new form. We collaborate on producing a book of design and writing students’ work for the School's annual summer show.

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Creative Writing and English Literature (including foundation year) - BA (Hons) Creative Writing and English Literature - BA (Hons)

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Creative Writing and English Literature (including foundation year) - BA (Hons)

London Met's Creative Writing and English Literature degree course with foundation year is the perfect starting point for a career in the creative industries. Apply now.

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Creative Writing and English Literature - BA (Hons)

This BA degree course in Creative Writing and English Literature enhances your writing skills through the study of literary genres. Apply to London Met now.

English Literature and Creative Writing - Postgraduate courses

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Learn from leading writing professionals and gain valuable industry experience on our Creative, Digital and Professional Writing MA.

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27 November 6pm

Public panel event as part of Making a Living Week explores what – and how – we create for children.

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Square Eyes

Graphic novel co-authored by The Cass foundation lecturer Luke Jones and architecture tutor Anna Mill will be published by Jonathan Cape.

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Oriana White, a mature student at London Metropolitan University, has been Highly Commended in the Festival of Learning, the biggest celebration of lifelong learning in England.

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Creative Writing in Literary London

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Jun 16 - Jul 6, 2024

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Jul 7 - 27, 2024

Spark your literary inspiration in London, home to countless authors and stories that have shaped the world. 

Take a captivating trip through London, turning it into a central character in your writing. Through expert-led workshops, develop the tools and techniques needed to write in different genres. Take cues from renowned works of prose, poetry, and drama and analyze how these forms are reimagined in contemporary mediums—films, web-based media, and graphic fiction. As you refine your literary taste, you'll craft your own creative writing portfolio! 

Connect with writers and storytellers. Roam the real sites that served as backdrops for the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Woolf, and more. Examine the contrasting facets of London, exploring both its Gothic shadows and its aspirational allure that has enticed migrants from across the globe to call it home.

Discover the places and people that make London buzz with creativity. Meet local teens and indulge in local flavors, like fish and chips. Experience life outside of London, too, on an excursion to Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. In the end, you’ll realize your literary ideas and add your unique contributions to London’s literature.

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Real-world experience.

Experience London through the eyes and pen of a writer. Try out literary techniques and structures to develop your own writing process in different genres. Come home with the skills to create original works.

Credentials for Your Future

Topics for your college essays, experience to inform your future career, and a Creative Writing Portfolio to showcase your own writing.

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Return with greater self-confidence, independence, and improved communication skills. Enjoy a broader worldview and diverse friendships from across the U.S. 

Hours of Expert Instruction

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Welcome to london, the backdrop for innumerable works of fiction. .

Walking through the streets, squares, and alleys of London, you’ll transport yourself to the literary works they’ve inspired! From Oliver Twist to Sherlock Holmes, the city’s iconic characters have resonated with audiences all over the world. Represented in fiction as both charming and menacing, London is the most multicultural city in Europe and a cradle of creativity. With a population of over 9 million, hundreds of ethnic groups mingle at every turn. It’s hard to not feel a bolt of inspiration when out for a stroll. 

Famous landmarks—like the London Eye, Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace—stand royally across the city. Cruising along the River Thames, take in the lovely views of Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Its thriving markets, like the medieval Leadenhall Market, one of your excursions, and pleasant green areas like Kew Gardens lead you into the day-to-day life of Londoners. From its vast number of bookshops, theatres, museums, and art galleries to its innovative street artists and performers, you’ll be amazed by all there is to do! 

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CIEE wants all our students to feel welcomed, supported, and empowered to succeed while studying abroad. Local CIEE staff have provided details about conditions and cultural attitudes that students with specific identities might encounter in London.

Monday–Friday

Each day offers a balance between interactive instruction and cultural activities with time on your own, too. Morning classes and afternoon activities may swap places.  

  • Breakfast at the hostel/hotel
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  • Out and about for a cultural activity or workshop
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Weekends   

  • Overnight or day excursions to top sites  
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Settle into your new community and begin understanding how London has inspired the works of literary masters. Start your creative writing portfolio.

Explore how classic works have been adapted for the contemporary reader. Continue working on your stories, inspired by a trip to Shakespeare's hometown.

Attend presentations on culture, society and identity and engage with British authors disrupting the London literary scene. Finalize your portfolio drawing from the literary and social themes learned and experiences lived on program.

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Twist Museum - 25 July 2023

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”--Albert Einstein Today, the Creative Writing students made their way to the Twist Museum, London’s “playground of perceptions”... keep reading

The Cursed Child

The Cursed Child

A trip to London isn’t complete without a visit to the West End! The Creative Writing Program had the amazing opportunity to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a... keep reading

Bath

Weekend Getaway - 22 July 2023

Though rainy, Bath was beautiful. Upon our arrival, we were able to drop our overnight bags off at the YMCA Bath Hostel where we stayed before getting a few hours... keep reading

Sample Activities

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Just imagine all the fun you’ll have!

  • Explore London and Victorian Gothic tracing the footsteps of Charles Dickens on a walking tour. 
  • Hunt for location settings for your own stories visiting the British Museum, Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, the Museum of London Dockland’s Windrush stories, and the Twist Museum.
  • Meet for street food at the Borough Market and walk along the South Bank to the Globe Theatre.
  • Explore London’s maritime history with a visit to Greenwich, arriving by river boat. Find the Prime Meridian that divides the western and eastern hemispheres at longitude 0° and visit its atmospheric market.  
  • Enjoy afternoon tea in Oxford. Take overnight trips to Bath, a World Heritage site known for its Roman spa, and to Lacock, an unspoiled medieval village and film site. 

Please note activities are based on past programs and subject to change at CIEE's discretion to adapt to local circumstances and participant feedback. Our goal when arranging activities is always to enhance your experience. 

What Students Are Saying

“I met so many friends and extraordinary people that I can’t imagine life without them now. I’ve discovered new things about London and myself. It’s an experience everyone deserves.” 

Lizzie R., Global Navigator Alum

“It’s allowed me to see how big our world is. There is so much culture, so many people, and things to try. It’s a time to explore the world as it is.” 

Kayla J., Global Navigator Alum

“You make a lot of close friends, go through the thick, the thin, and the fun. Very memorable experiences are made!”  

Matthew M., Global Navigator Alum

“It was fun and I learned a lot. I’ll never forget our Oxford trip!”

Isabella R., Global Navigator Alum

Dates & Fees

Eligibility

  • Participants must be 14 years old and above.
  • Program open to all current high school students: Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors.   
  • For scholarship eligibility requirements, please check our  scholarship page .

For more information, refer to the detailed  Program Essential Eligibility Criteria .

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Program scholarships and tuition include iNext Travel Insurance, but do not cover the cost of flights. Find additional details about  what’s included  with your tuition.    

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Interactive classes, 3 meals/day.

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Mark Simmons has an M.A. in History from the University of Aberdeen and a postgraduate degree in Administrative and Information Management from Napier University Edinburgh. 

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Vibrant Victorians

A collection of creative writing tasks inspired by ten early silent films.

This series of starter activities uses a range of silent films from the Victorian era as prompts for creative writing tasks. An illustrated presentation, featuring information about the films, discussion points and writing prompts, is provided for each film. 

Lesson resources

Royal proclamation of death of queen victoria, blackburn (1901).

Crowds gather outside the Town Hall to hear the town crier’s royal announcement.

Snowballs (1901)

Young scamps launch a snowball attack on a hapless bobby.

The Funeral of Queen Victoria (1901)

The crowds stand silent as the nation says goodbye to Queen Victoria in February 1901.

Manchester Spiritualists Procession (1901)

Exponents of Britain's newest religion don their Sunday best for a parade through Edwardian Manchester.

Arrest of Goudie (1901)

Crimewatch Mitchell and Kenyon style, in the first ever film to recreate a true crime.

Return of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1901)

Soldiers returning from the Boer War get a warm welcome home from crowds in Edwardian Birmingham.

York Road Board School, Leeds (1901)

A small battalion of Yorkshire schoolchildren lines up for a playground photograph.

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Lancashire mill-workers have fun in front of the camera.

Santa Claus (1898)

G.A. Smith’s film uses pioneering visual effects in its depiction of a visit from St. Nicholas.

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50 Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels | a woman in a Victorian gown clutching a large book

Hey, everyone! Some of my most popular posts of all time are about story plot ideas, and there are really good plot ideas in old novels.

Of course, if you’re learning how to write historical fiction in the Regency or Victorian periods, any of these books would probably be great inspiration. But you can take any of the plot ideas in a new direction, in any setting or time period you like. In some cases I’ve taken liberties with the description to make them more general, and they’re often just a part of the plot of the novel.

It’s okay to use this post as a story generator, since all of these novels are in the public domain. In fact, a lot of great writers have done it! The award-winning novel On Beauty by Zadie Smith was loosely based on E.M. Forster’s Edwardian-era novel Howard’s End . The delightful 1990s movie Clueless  was a contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma .  Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was a huge inspiration for Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary , a book which I think is underrated in terms of literary quality, probably because it’s such a fun read.

It took a while to put this list of novel plot ideas together, but it was really fun, because some of these are my very favorite books. Here’s the list, and you might want to bookmark it or pin it to Pinterest for future inspiration!

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Good Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels | woman holding book, dressed in Victorian period clothing

  • A man who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit escapes prison, makes a fortune in another country, and returns in disguise to get vengeance on his enemies. ( Count of Monte Cristo , Alexander Dumas.)
  • An orphan boy falls in love with his foster sister. As an adult, he’s still obsessed with her even though she’s married to somebody else. ( Wuthering Heights , Emily Brontë.)
  • Members of a club decide to each travel to a different place and then report what they learn back to the group. ( The Pickwick Papers , Charles Dickens.)
  • A rich man proposes to a young employee of his only to learn that she’s already secretly married to his son. ( Vanity Fair , William Thackeray. This is a pretty juicy story plot idea, no?)
  • A man searching for a sea monster meets a guy with a fantastic submarine and they explore the ocean depths together. ( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , Jules Verne.)
  • A guy falls in love with a woman who spurns him. Later, he gets a job and then realizes she owns the business. ( Far From the Madding Crowd , Thomas Hardy.)
  • In the future, humankind has evolved into two separate species. ( The Time Machine , H.G. Wells.)
  • A woman who’s new in town believes the owner of a local business is unfair to his employees, but later she falls in love with him. ( North and South , Elizabeth Gaskell.) (There is  a fantastic miniseries of this one!)
  • A young man steals money from her father in order to leave the country and elope with her boyfriend against her father’s wishes, but then her fiancé gambles the money away. ( The Way We Live Now , Anthony Trollope.)
  • A man is found dead in a room with a word written in blood on the wall, but there are no wounds on the corpse. ( A Study in Scarlet , Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the first of the Sherlock Holmes stories, when he and John Watson are just becoming friends.)
  • A man believes a woman he loves is having an affair, but she’s actually meeting with her brother. ( The Tenant of Wildfell Hall , Anne Brontë.)
  • A man arranges for the abduction of his recently orphaned teenage nephew because the kid is the rightful heir to a family estate. ( Kidnapped , Robert Louis Stevenson.)
  • A poor child falls asleep in a stream and becomes a magical water creature. ( The Water Babies , Charles Kingsley. When I was a kid, this book blew my mind.)
  • A woman refuses two marriage proposals from good guys and marries a foreigner who winds up being mean to her. Much later, one of her former suitors takes an interest in her daughter, while the other one tells her he’s still interested in her. ( Portrait of a Lady , Henry James.)
  • A boy fakes his own death, runs away from home, and teams up with another runaway for adventure. ( Huckleberry Finn , Mark Twain.)
  • A mistreated animal comes into a better situation. ( Black Beauty , Anna Sewell.)
  • On his deathbed, a father leaves his son a mysterious artifact with an equally mysterious message inside. ( Little Dorrit ,   Charles Dickens.)
  • A young man falls in love with the girl next door, but she rejects him because she sees him as a brother. Later, when he’s on vacation, he crosses paths with the girl’s sister, and those two fall in love. ( Little Women , Louisa May Alcott.)

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels #master plots #idea starters #NaNoWriMo #novels

  • A cynical slacker redeems himself by trading places with a great guy who’s been imprisoned and dying in his place. ( A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens. Sydney Carton is one of my literary crushes.)
  • A rich man runs over and kills a poor child in the street, but he shows no remorse. Later, he is murdered in his bed. (Also A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens.)
  • A woman is caught in a love triangle between her fiancé and her fiancé’s father. ( The Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoyevsky.)
  • A man desperately seeks money to pay what he owes to his fiancée so that he can leave her and run off with the woman he really loves. He then finds out that the woman he really loves has taken up with a former boyfriend again. (Also T he Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoyevsky. There are a lot of good plot ideas in this book!)
  • A person never ages due to a sinister spell. ( The Picture of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde.)
  • A girl follows an animal guide to a strange new world. ( Alice in Wonderland , Lewis Carroll.)
  • Facing the facts of his mortality, his unpopularity, and his worthless existence, a man makes a drastic change for the better. ( A Christmas Carol , Charles Dickens.)
  • A man forgives his wife and his wife’s lover for having an affair. His wife’s lover is so embarrassed he attempts suicide, but fails. The adulterers then run away together. ( Anna Karenina , Leo Tolstoy.)
  • A young woman teaching at a school abroad develops relationships with both the schoolmaster and a rich doctor. ( Villette , Charlotte Brontë.)

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels #master plots #idea starters #NaNoWriMo #novels

  • A respectable man has a secret and horrible past: he sold his wife and baby daughter. ( The Mayor of Casterbridge , Thomas Hardy.)
  • A bitter old man gets robbed and becomes the foster father for a little girl. ( Silas Marner , George Eliot.)
  • A woman marries an old man who has no interest in her, but becomes friends with an interesting guy her own age. When the woman’s elderly husband dies, he leaves a note in his will that she can’t inherit anything if she marries the younger guy she’s friends with. ( Middlemarch , George Eliot.)
  • A woman only realizes she’s in love with her good friend after another woman falls in love with him. ( Emma , Jane Austen. I really recommend Austen’s novels for anyone who’s learning how to write historical fiction in the Regency period. Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel.)
  • Nobody knows that this beautiful young bride faked her own death, abandoned her child, and assumed a new identity in order to find a wealthy husband. ( Lady Audley’s Secret , Mary Elizabeth Braddon.)
  • Aliens attack a country on planet Earth and crush its human army, but then they all die of some alien disease. ( The War of the Worlds , H.G. Wells.)
  • An orphan becomes a criminal’s apprentice. ( Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens.)
  • A woman gets news that the man she was once in love with has gotten married to girlfriend. Later, she learns she was mistaken – the man’s girlfriend dumped him to marry his brother instead. ( Sense and Sensibility , Jane Austen.)
  • A young woman is heartbroken when the dashing and charming man she loves ignores her and then breaks up with her. After she recovers from a dangerous illness, she receives attentions from a man who’s loved her all along. (Also Sense and Sensibility , Jane Austen.)
  • After discovering that his grandmother was a fairy, a young man’s room turns into an enchanted wood in Fairy Land. ( Phantasies, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women , by George McDonald.)
  • The statue of a woman comes alive. She runs away, and man searches for her. (Also Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women , by George McDonald.)

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels #master plots #idea starters #NaNoWriMo #novels

  • A woman is punished and ostracized for adultery while her husband, in disguise, seeks revenge on her lover. ( The Scarlet Letter , Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
  • In a remote location, a scientist creates grotesque human hybrids. ( The Island of Dr. Moreau , H.G. Wells.)
  • A young man manages to pick fights with three different guys in one afternoon, but they all wind up being friends. ( The Three Musketeers , Alexander Dumas.)
  • A young man impersonating someone else has a romantic rendezvous with a rich woman. In doing so, he learns a secret about her that leads her to try to get him killed. (Also The Three Musketeers , Alexander Dumas.)
  • A man makes a large bet with his friends that he can travel a large distance in a short time frame. ( Around the World in Eighty Days , Jules Verne.)
  • A mild-mannered teacher at a school snaps and beats up an abusive headmaster. ( The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby , Charles Dickens.)
  • A man is in love with a woman who’s marrying some rich and selfish old man who’s offered to pay off her father’s debt in return. (Also The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby , Charles Dickens.)
  • A young woman falls in love with her employer only to learn that he’s married to a woman he keeps locked up. ( Jane Eyre , Charlotte Brontë.)
  • A man falls in love with a woman, but she’s pretty mad at him because she found out he talked another guy into breaking up with her sister. ( Pr ide and Prejudice , Jane Austen.)

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels #master plots #idea starters #NaNoWriMo #novels

  • A mischievous boy develops a huge crush on a girl at school, but he keeps messing things up with her. ( The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Mark Twain.)
  • A boy secretly witnesses a murder and is scared to tell anyone, even when the wrong man is blamed for it. (Also The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Mark Twain.)
  • A relentlessly cheerful man’s good nature is tested when he moves to a dangerous and difficult new place. ( Martin Chuzzlewit , Charles Dickens.)

STEAL THIS PLOT: 50 Good Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels | a stack of old books with leather bindings

I hope this was helpful for you, and if you want more plot ideas and inspiration, check out my book 5,000 Writing Prompts , which includes hundreds of plot ideas ready for the taking.

5,000 WRITING PROMPTS: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More | BRYN DONOVAN |

Whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or you’re just writing at a pace more suited to a sensible human being, I wish you the best. Thanks for visiting the blog, and happy writing!

Related Posts

15 Great Plots from Mythology and Ancient Literature #master plots #fairy tales #Norse #Greek #Bible #plot ideas #NaNoWriMo

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19 thoughts on “ 50 story plot ideas from victorian and regency novels ”.

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I love this list not only for the ideas but for the whole art behind taking the plot of some true classics and boiling it down to one line. Great job!

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Thanks so much, Anne! Some of these were pretty hard to distill 🙂 Thanks for reading!

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Great post. It really got me thinking. You’re right, these plots could work with any era and genre. I already have my idea for NANO but plan to keep this list for future reference. Thanks!

So glad you liked it, Lori 🙂 Have a great NaNoWriMo!

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You know what is so wonderful? A classic is a classic is a classic. That is what makes these stories so great, they are timeless! Thank you, Byrn Donavan, for posting these.

Hi Becky! That’s so true… some themes stay relevant no matter what! Thanks so much for the kind words.

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I hadn’t thought of recycling some of these, but I am now, thanks! Are you tackling NaNo this year, Bryn?

Thanks, Carolyn! Ahh, that’s a good question. I really shouldn’t. I have so many things going right now. But dang, I am so tempted to use NaNo to finish my knight story… We shall see! Are you doing it?

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Hi Bryn! I do NaNo every year even though I’m a ghostwriter. I was told that as long as I was writing, it counted toward the 50k goal. However, if I’d already begun the story, only the words written in November could be used for NaNo. For the last several years, I’ve been doing it this way and I’ve always reached or exceeded 50k. 🙂

Hey there Robin! Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking about: just using the work done in November toward the NaNo count. 🙂 I’ve only done NaNo once before — congratulations on so many wins 🙂

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Hey on a few occasions you say “a man” but mean a woman. I was wondering how the Victorians were so open about gay relationships…

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This is my second visit to your site today and both from google searches! 😀 But for this one, I spent the entire post seeing if I could remember the plot. I’ve read all but a couple but there were some I didn’t remember the plot. Like, in Anna Karenina I thought she committed suicide at the end. But that is besides the point. Now I have to get back to my Regency novella where I am stuck.

Ha ha! I’m glad my SEO is working, Jennie. 🙂 In Anna K., she does commit suicide in the end (sorry for the spoilers, readers.) Good luck on the Regency novella!

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Love North and South. The book was a little difficult to read, given the older language, but the story is awesome. The series….I’ve watched numerous times.

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Author Interviews

'dirty old london': a history of the victorians' infamous filth.

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Horses drive traffic on London's Oxford Street in 1890. According to author Lee Jackson, by the 1890s, the city's horses produced approximately 1,000 tons of dung a day. London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images hide caption

Horses drive traffic on London's Oxford Street in 1890. According to author Lee Jackson, by the 1890s, the city's horses produced approximately 1,000 tons of dung a day.

In the 19th century, London was the capital of the largest empire the world had ever known — and it was infamously filthy. It had choking, sooty fogs; the Thames River was thick with human sewage; and the streets were covered with mud.

But according to Lee Jackson, author of Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, mud was actually a euphemism . "It was essentially composed of horse dung," he tells Fresh Air 's Sam Briger. "There were tens of thousands of working horses in London [with] inevitable consequences for the streets. And the Victorians never really found an effective way of removing that, unfortunately."

In fact, by the 1890s, there were approximately 300,000 horses and 1,000 tons of dung a day in London. What the Victorians did, Lee says, was employ boys ages 12 to 14 to dodge between the traffic and try to scoop up the excrement as soon as it hit the streets.

Dirty Old London

Dirty Old London

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"It was an immense and impossible challenge," Lee says.

To the public health-minded Victorian, London presented an overwhelming reform challenge. But there wasn't change until the city took over.

"It takes decades for people to accept that the state perhaps has a role in how they manage their household, how they manage their rubbish, their toilet facilities even," Lee says. "The state basically does intervene and it is that idea of a central authority that is actively concerned — what the Victorians would've called 'municipal socialism.' ... That mission to improve people's lives on a very day-to-day basis was carried on throughout the 20th century."

Interview Highlights

On what it was like to walk around Victorian London

The first thing you'd notice if you stepped out onto the streets would be the mud that lined the carriageways, but of course it wasn't really mud.

The air itself was generally filled with soot and smoke. It was famously said of the sheep in Regent's Park — there were still grazing sheep in Regent's Park in the mid-Victorian period — that you could tell how long they'd been in the capital by how dirty their coats were. They [went] increasingly from white to black over a period of days.

If you were a respectable person, you had to wash your face and hands several times during the day to make sure that you looked half decent. ... You had the stench from blocked drains and cesspools below houses. It wasn't really a pleasant experience.

On the horse dung and urine on the streets

creative writing victorian london

Lee Jackson's other books include A Metropolitan Murder and London Dust . Courtesy of Yale University Press hide caption

Lee Jackson's other books include A Metropolitan Murder and London Dust .

Urine, of course ... soaked the streets. There was an experiment in Piccadilly with wood paving in the midcentury and it was abandoned after a few weeks because the sheer smell of ammonia that was coming from the pavement was just impossible. Also the shopkeepers nearby said that this ammonia was actually discoloring their shop fronts as well.

On cesspools and the first water closets

This is the thing that's often forgotten: that London at the start of the 19th century, it was basically filled with these cesspools. There'd be brick chambers ... they'd be maybe 6 feet deep, about 4 [feet] wide and every house would have them. They'd be ideally in the back garden away from the house, but equally in central London and more crowded areas it was more common to have a cesspool in the basement. ... And above the cesspool would be where your household privy would be. And that was basically your sanitary facilities, for want of a better term.

That actually worked quite well for a little while, but then people got very interested in this new invention — the water closet. And it's often ignored that the water closets were initially connected to these cesspools, not the sewer system that existed in the start of the century — that was just for rainwater. So you get water closets coming in and they're connected to cesspools and they don't really fit because of the extra large volume of flushing water. You get these surges of waste and dump and smell, and people start getting very concerned about what's in their cesspools because of the stink that's rising from them. ...

The idea that this sort of stench is coming into the house, seeping through the house and possibly bringing in diseases like cholera or typhoid ... is actually one of the great driving forces of sanitary reform in the 19th century.

On how cesspools were built and emptied

Cesspools were built to be porous so the liquid part of the waste was meant to seep away into the ground. There was no knowledge of bacteriological contamination, although there was plenty of it happening. Nevertheless, you had this residue of solid matter left and it was removed by so-called "night soil men." This wasn't a full-time job for people; there were often dustmen or laborers or bricklayers who made a little extra money on the side and they would come in the middle of the night to your home. And it was by law in the night because the stench of venting a cesspool was considered too disturbing during the day. And they would unfortunately have to [climb] down into the pit, shovel out the muck and get it into a wicker basket, get it into a cart. And at the start of the century, that was actually reasonably productive labor because the cart could then be taken out to the countryside and the manure could be sold to farmers.

On the first public toilets

It's often said that the first public toilets were at the Great Exhibition, which was the first world expo held in Hyde Park [in 1851]. It had 6 million visitors in a matter of months and there were indeed public toilets set up in the exhibition. But there was a great debate after that closed as to whether London needed such facilities actually on the street.

London Through The Eyes Of Dickens In 'The Victorian City'

Book Reviews

London through the eyes of dickens in 'the victorian city'.

It was tied up with notions of shame and respectability and it was particularly said that women would be just too embarrassed to enter a public toilet on the public street.

On personal hygiene for the lower class

There were a few parish pumps that you could freely use if you could get to them, but you have people cramped in tenement accommodations ... in London. And ... how many buckets of water, even if you had the buckets, could you carry up to, say, a fourth-floor tenement? ... If you were poor, your basic water supply — which would do for washing, for cooking, for cleaning, for laundry — often it was from a standpipe provided by your landlord. And that water supply would be turned on for something like two to three hours per week. There were literally crowds of people queuing and fighting at these standpipes in the slums of London. And if you wanted to wash, then you had virtually no options. So the poor working men would actually go anywhere where there was a river, a canal or a lake and strip off and try and bathe.

On how things improved

The Victorians did achieve something: They built the famous great sewer network of the mid-19th century. [It was] built by Joseph Bazalgette, a renowned civil engineer, and that did achieve a lot. It basically took away the possibility of wholesale cholera epidemics in the city, typhus and typhoid — they all were reduced. But basically it's only until the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century that you get a sort of an effective central authority for London that you actually start to see change.

Creative Writing Victorian London

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Description

A lesson on creative writing using an image of Victorian London as a stimulus. A success criteria is included, as are opportunities for planning and reflection. Originally intended as a two lesson activity (one for planning, one for a final write up) to supplement an English Language scheme, this would suit a high ability year 7 class or a mixed ability year 8 group. Prior knowledge of basic language devices and sensory language would be useful.

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Marcelo

Marcelo Member

Victorian london.

Discussion in ' Research ' started by Marcelo , Jun 25, 2010 .

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); Well, I'm kind of tangled up with two questions, which are the following: 1) In what district of Victorian-era London could I locate my character's manor? 2) Same as the above, but regarding an orphanage. I tried googling this, but the little information I find is vague or less than helpful.  

Northern Phil

Northern Phil Active Member

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); In victorian London the docks were the most successful part of the city. Anybody who was rich or successful would live in or around these parts, I don't think they would live in manors but they would live in large houses. I did find something about a manor house in Hackney, but that was only after a quick search.  

Lemex

Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

creative writing victorian london

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); An orphanage would likely have been around the east end, I'd try reading the text of The Begger's Opera, it might help you set the tone and mood, and might give you some discription of life in the poorer areas of London too.  

madhoca

madhoca Contributor Contributor

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); Northern Phil said: ↑ In victorian London the docks were the most successful part of the city. Anybody who was rich or successful would live in or around these parts, I don't think they would live in manors but they would live in large houses. I did find something about a manor house in Hackney, but that was only after a quick search. Click to expand...
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); Good info Madhoca! And I must say, it was a pleasure to read.  
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('funpub_f92e33714dac3462557c52f5ff3b34cf'); }); Yes, indeed! Thanks a lot!!  

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Men on the Town: Writing Late-Victorian London

Amy milne-smith , assistant professor, department of history, wilfrid laurier university.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Gender Matters —> Social History —> Leisure in Victorian England ]

Converted to html by Jacqueline Banerjee , who has added links to relevant material on the Victorian Web , and some illustrations from it.

Click on the illustrations for bigger pictures and information about them. Clicking on superscript numbers brings you to notes, which will appear at the top of the left column; hitting the back button on your browser returns you to your place in the body of the main text.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Darryl Dee and Allison Abra for commenting on early versions of this article.

1. Van Dyke was an American clergyman and professor who taught literature at the University of Paris the year he wrote this poem. Henry Van Dyke, "An American in Europe," in The White Bees and Other Poems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), p. 32.

2. For example: R. Giulianotti, "Supporters, followers, fans, and flââneurs," Journal of Sport and Social Issues , 26:1 (2002), pp. 25-46; Peter McLaren, "The Ethnographer as Postmodern Flâneur: Critical Reflexivity and Posthybridity as Narrative Engagement," in Representation and the Text: Re-Framing the Narrative Voice , ed. by William G. Tierney and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 143-178; Kalle Toiskallio, "The Impersonal Flâneur: Navigation Styles of Social Agents in Urban Traffic," Space and Culture , 5:2 (2002), pp. 169-184; Elizabeth Wilson, "The Invisible Flâneur," New Left Review , 191 (1992), pp. 90-110.

3. Janet Wolff, "The Invisible Flâneuse; Women and the Literature of Modernity," Theory, culture and Society , 2:3 (1985), pp. 37-46.

4. The idea of the flâneur began in Paris as the city emerged from the chaos of the early nineteenth century as a modern capital. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, "The Flâneur On and Off the Streets of Paris," in The Flâneur , ed. by Keith Tester (London: Routledge, 1994), 22-42, (p. 22). Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism , trans. by Harry Zohn (London: Verso, 1973).

5. Even in Paris, by the late nineteenth century the city seemed to be a site of estrangement that intimidated the urban traveller, rather than empowering him. Ferguson, "The Flâneur On and Off the Streets of Paris," p. 33.

6. R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, "Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept," Gender & Society , 19:6 (2005), 829-859, (p. 846).

7. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Tavistock, 1977), p. 31.

8. Ferguson, "The Flâneur on and Off the Streets of Paris," p. 31. Wilson, "The Invisible Flâneur," p. 93.

9. Keith Tester, 'Introduction,' in The Flâneur, ed. by Keith Tester, 1-21, (pp. 1-4).

10. Chris Jenks, "Watching your step: the history and Practice of the flâneur," in Visual Culture , ed. by Chris Jenks (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 148.

11. Peter Ferry, "Reading Manhattan, Reading American Masculinity: Reintroducing the Flâneur with E. B. White's Here is New York and Joshua Ferris' "The Unnamed," Culture, Society and Masculinities , 3:1 (2011), p. 50.

12. Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 5-6; Catherine Nesci, "Flora Tristan's Urban Odyssey: Notes on the Missing Flâneuse and Her City," Journal of Urban History 27:6 (2001), 709-722, (p. 711); Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 16.

13. Helen Josephy and Mary Margaret McBride, London Is a Man's Town (but Women Go There) (New York: Coward-McCann, 1930).

14. Lynda Nead, "Mapping the Self: Gender, Space and Modernity in Mid-Victorian London,' in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. by Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 167.

15. Tester, "Introduction," p. 15.

16. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 312.

17. Roy Porter, London: A Social History (London: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 249.

18. Dana Arnold, "Panoptic Visions of London: Possessing the Metropolis," Art History , 32:2 (2009), 332-350, (p. 334).

19. Arnold, "Panoptic Visions of London," p. 333.

20. Stana Nenadic, "English Towns in the Creative Imagination," in The English Urban Landscape , ed. by Philip Waller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 335.

21. While not a central concern of her work, Deborah Parsons understands that men's experiences of the city were often marked by "bewilderment." Deborah L. Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 40.

22. Nancy W. Ellenberger, "Constructing George Wyndham: Narratives of Aristocratic Masculinity in Fin-De-Siècle England,']" Journal of British Studies 39 (2000), 487-517, (p. 491).

23. Jeff Hearn, Men in the Public Eye: Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 85.

24. John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Longman, 2004), p. 51.

25. Martin Francis, "The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity" The Historical Journal 45:3 (2002), 637-652 (p. 638).

26. Wilson, "The Invisible Flâneur."

27. H. F. Lester, "The Tourist of the Guide-Book," Belgravia, a London Magazine , January 1884, p. 303.

28. David Gilbert and Fiona Henderson, "London and the Tourist Imagination," in Imagined Londons , ed. by Pamela K. Gilbert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 121-136 (p. 283).

29. Dennis Porter, Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 20.

30. W.J. Loftie, The Colour of London: Historic, Personal and Local (Toronto: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1910), p. 3.

31. Yoshio Markino, A Japanese Artist in London (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910; repr. Brighton, UK: Print Publishing Ltd., 1991), p. 190.

32. Dorothy Rowe expands on this gendered ideal of understanding and possessing the city in her work. Dorothy Rowe, Representing Berlin: Sexuality and the City in Imperial and Weimar Germany (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 2.

33. E.V. Lucas, A Wanderer in London , 10th edn (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1911), p. 16.

34. David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 1, 11.

35. Henry James, "English Hours," in Henry James Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America , ed. by Richard Howard (London: Heinemann, 1905; repr. New York: The Library of America, 1993), p. 15.

36. James, "English Hours," p. 18.

37. Richard Grant White, "London Streets," Atlantic Monthly , February 1879, p. 231.

38. White, "Living in London," Atlantic Monthly , April 1879, p. 516.

39. White, "Living in London," p. 517.

40. Michael Kimmell, "Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity," in Theorizing Masculinities , ed. by H. Brod and M. Kaufman (London: Sage Publications, 1994), pp. 119-141 (p. 135).

41. E.S. Nadal, Impressions of London Social Life with Other Papers Suggested by an English Residence (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1875), p. 60.

42. Hans Magnus Enzenberger, "A Theory of Tourism," New German Critique 68 (1996), 117-135 (p. 120).

43. Lucas, A Wanderer in London , 18.

44. Nadal, Impressions of London Social Life , 102.

45. Antoinette Burton, "Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siècle London," History Workshop Journal 42 (1996), 127-146 (p. 141).

46. Ellen Ross, "Introduction: Adventures among the Poor," in Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860-1920 ed. by Ellen Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 1-39 (p. 8).

47. Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, "Inventing the New Woman: Print Culture and Identity Politics during the Fin-de-Siecle" Victorian Periodicals Review 31:2 (1998), 169-182 (p. 169).

48. Angela Dowdell Thompsell, "Real Men/Savage Nature: British Big Game Hunting in Africa, 1880-1914" (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Michigan, 2009), pp. 203-204.

49. William Dean Howells, London Films (Teddington, Middlesex, 1905), p. 9.

50. Howells, London Films , p. 10.

51. Lucas, A Wanderer in London , p. 1.

52. Augustus Hare, Walks in London , 2 vols (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1901), pp. 1-2.

53. Hare, Walks in London , 2.

54. J. Ashby Sterry, "London Street Studies," English Illustrated Magazine , September 1888, p. 804.

55. J. Ewing Ritchie, About London (London: William Tinsley, 1860).

56. George Laurence Gomme, London (London: J. B. Lippincott, 1914), pp. vi-vii.

57. Gomme, London, p. 338.

58. G.K. Chesterton, London (London: Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1914), p. 13.

59. Donald Shaw, London in the Sixties (London: Everett & Co, 1908), p. 1.

60. James Bone, The London Perambulator (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), pp. 101-102.

61. Lucas, A Wanderer in London , 15.

62. John Davis, 'Modern London,' in The English Urban Landscape , ed. by Philip Waller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 125-150 (p. 126).

63. Fred. T. Lane, "The Romance of Modern London I — London Railway Stations," The English Illustrated Magazine , June 1893, p. 659.

64. Lane, "The Romance of Modern London II — In the Small Hours," The English Illustrated Magazine , July 1893, p. 705.

65. H.D. Lowry, "Unknown London: I — The Mysteries of Walworth Road," Windsor Magazine , January 1895, p. 30.

66. Lowry, "Unknown London: II — In the Docks," Windsor Magazine , February 1895, p. 197.

67. Lowry, "Unknown London: III — The Italian Colony in Saffron Hill," Windsor Magazine , March 1895, pp. 305-312; Lowry, "Unknown London: IV — A Friendly Lead — What It is, and What It does," Windsor Magazine , April, 1895, pp. 399-405; Lowry, "Unknown London: V — An Inn of Court," Windsor Magazine , May, 1895, pp. 579-585.

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; 
 And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; 
 And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living there is no place like home. 1

While there might have been some men who could confidently embrace the persona of a bold flâneur with an imperious gaze, many among even the most privileged groups could not. There were many wealthy English men who found themselves lost, confused, and alienated from city life. While the urban male was theoretically confident and self-assured, London's urban explorers were often overwhelmed by the cityscape in practice. Instead of possessing the metropolis, men found themselves possessed by it. Instead of security, the urban man found alienation in London. 2 As such, it is incumbent upon scholars to look beyond an unsophisticated model of the flâneur to examine other ways that men interacted with and interpreted the city. While some men felt the need to live up to the ideal of an all-powerful urban spectator, others felt no such pressures. As such, scholars need to recognize that men's relationship to the city was far from monolithic. Even scholars eager to defend the idea of hegemonic masculinity have had to acknowledge the social relations between men are too complicated to reduce to a single "pattern of power." 6

Looking beyond the flâneur, this essay examines the various ways that literary men took up the challenge of experiencing and writing about London. Lured to the challenge of such an enormous and expanding metropolis, some writers confined themselves to small spaces or hidden gems, others surrendered themselves to its chaos and confusion, while others remained constantly trying, and failing, to chart, navigate and control the city. How men responded to such challenges outlines a far more robust and complicated picture of men's relationship to the urban environment than has been previously acknowledged, and posits that any uniform picture of the confident, powerful urban man is misleading. Not only did some men not experience the city as a space of unparalleled power and access, they did not even represent it that way in their writings.

As Michel Foucault famously noted, the linkage between power and knowledge is essential, and complex; how men navigated that relationship is also key to deciphering their sense of masculinity. 7 Ultimately, London's crucial charm was in its powers of seduction, to tempt men with a power and knowledge that was ultimately denied. Male writers met this challenge with a variety of responses that defy any caricature of the flâneur.

I. The Flâneur and Beyond

creative writing victorian london

Forever associated with the poetry of Baudelaire, the flâneur could famously blend into a crowd and yet remain slightly aloof — he is the unobserved observer who finds meaning and poetry in city life. The chaos and change inherent in the urban scene provided entertainment for the flâneur, and his experience of the city was contained and domesticated in his writing, as he controlled a potentially disruptive urban environment. He was a "living guidebook," defined by his knowledge of the city streets, its haunts, and its amenities. 8 Modern metropolitan spaces provided meaning for the flâneur in opposition to the dull and oppressive atmosphere of private domesticity. 9 The privileged gaze of the flâneur translated into a sense of being truly at home in the city. And yet, while grounded in a particular space and time, the flâneur is not a historical reality per say. The flâneur is essentially "an analytic form, a narrative device, an attitude towards knowledge and its social context." 10 The flâneur is most useful as a "metaphoric and methodological tool" to tease out representations and creations of masculinity, as Peter Ferry suggests. 11 At first glance, it is easy to see why it has been such a popular model for historians to turn to.

Historians, literary critics, and visual theorists agree that the ability to stroll across all areas of any city established men's right to the city largely denied to women, colonial subjects, and the working classes. Wealthy English men were expected to easily step into the role of urban explorer, taking on the city as if it were their own. One guidebook from as late as 1930 even chose the title London is a Man's Town (But Women Go There) to grace its cover. 13 According to Victorian gender ideals , the city was a distinctly masculine world. 14 The urban habituá was a grounding image of middle class masculinity, and wandering the city was supposed to be a great pleasure. And yet actual evidence of any such untroubled mastery of the city is lacking.

While men were supposed to feel in control of the city, in fin-de-siècle London they threatened to become overwhelmed by its masses in unsettling and emasculating ways. The world of the flâneur was a slow and silent one, and was hard to find in the frantic streets of London. 15 In the English capital, one of the fundamental pillars of the flâneur was on shaky foundations — a fundamental knowledge of the city. The size of late-nineteenth-century London proved a daunting challenge. Between 1871 and 1900 the population of the city rose faster than any other provincial centre, and outstripped the national population. 16 By the year 1900, 20% of the population of England and Wales lived in London. 17 Even Walter Benjamin found London an unsuitable site for modernity as it was simply too crowded. This made it difficult to move throughout the city, and the crush of bodies made the ability to see one's surroundings difficult. 18 Instead of actually following in the flâneur's footsteps, men in London sought out ways to reduce the city in order to consume it. 19

And yet men's untroubled experience is taken for granted in contrasting women's challenges in navigating the city streets. In fact, for female writers, the opportunities available in London made it an ideal place for adventure, fortune, and even independence. 20 In some respects women were freer in London than men because there were no expectations that they should thrive there or be in control. While women might have been chastised for pushing the boundaries of propriety, there was never any expectation of mastery over the city. Any bit of knowledge they gained was thus a victory. And yet where women found a site of opportunity, men found pressures and expectations. For a middle class or upper class man, London proved to be a serious challenge to the male urban identity. Unlike women, who were acknowledged to only have certain areas they were supposed to inhabit, the city as a whole was supposed to be at his command. And yet the deeply divided London landscape proved off-putting and intimidating to many London men.

The feeling of being overwhelmed by the city was a quintessentially modern problem for the late-Victorian man. 21 While feeling alone in a city was nothing new, the particularities of the nineteenth-century context made the challenge more troubling. To feel helpless or powerless for a nineteenth-century man was out of keeping with dominant views of masculinity. While a man might have been allowed to be earnest and even emotional at the beginning of the century, by its close self-control and dominion over inferiors was considered requisite for any man of the middling classes or above. 22 While men had a role in both the public and private spheres, it was outside the home that men were supposed to be at their most confident and competent. Men were supposed to present their most confident selves in the public sphere. 23

As John Tosh notes, manhood can be acquired at maturity, but it is something that needs to be constantly shored up, in particular in public, as it is "inseparable from peer recognition, which in turn depends on performance in the social sphere." 24 Thus how men presented themselves in the public sphere, and their mastery of the urban scene, was important to their sense of identity and self worth. And yet London offered a frightening aspect to both the newcomer and the native alike. As such a large and ungovernable mass, to know or feel in control of the whole of London seemed an almost impossible dream. And yet the desire to know this unknowable city persisted, and men sought to navigate their identities within the urban metropolis.

As researchers continue to expand research into masculinity, it is clear that gender is far more complicated than simple binaries of men vs. women. There is no single kind of masculinity, and masculinity can be as much about comparing oneself to other men as to women. 25 And concepts of manhood and masculinity were played out in numerous arenas in the public and private spheres. Yet current accounts of men's relationship to the city often lack complexity, largely because scholarship has often focussed more on women's complicated and contested experiences, leaving men's less developed. 26 The gap between prescriptive literature and experiences is wider, and more complex, than credited. And while it is difficult to peer into the hearts and minds of Victorian men, it is possible to get hints of the distance between ideals and reality, in particular in looking at literature that directly reflects on urban life.

Examining the genre of male urban writing, charting the experiences and writings of a selection of middle and upper class men, opens up a wide-ranging picture of their relationship to the city. While some men exuded confidence and nonchalance, others openly expressed fears and anxiety, while others simply retreated to smaller, more familiar spaces. The rest of this article explores male reactions to the city as both strangers to the city, and as purported experts. While approaching the city from different perspectives, the writers all share the problem of how to explore, understand, and translate London to an outside reader. As virtual tour-guides, their texts show that their perceptions were far more diverse than the all-seeing gaze of the flâneur. The tourist or new resident to the city allowed himself the flexibility of not knowing the city, while gaining confidence with every new discovery. The local expert could claim absolute knowledge of the hidden treasures, or a very small place. And the historical escapist found the modern city too large and unknowable, instead engaging in nostalgia for another time.

II. Visiting London

creative writing victorian london

To know the city was a challenge, but for a visitor to the city, the prospect seemed all the more daunting. To the Londoner W. J. Loftie, not only could a traveller never understand the English capital, he could not even understand its basic outlines: "The foreigner cannot, in a short visit, form any idea of the size of London." 30 Loftie believed that any true understanding of a city was steeped in personal memories and an appreciation of the collective memory of that place and space. A visitor simply could never have the history to acquire such memory. Even Yoshio Markino, a Japanese watercolour artist who spent forty years in London felt its size was the most daunting boundary he could not overcome. "I have found out it is larger than any other town. London is on the extremely larger scale altogether. She is just like a vast ocean where sardines as well as whales are living together." 31 Instead of understanding the modern city as a site of "male subjective desire" over an imagined feminized sexual object, London threatened to overwhelm male visitors.

Not only could a visitor never claim full knowledge of the city, he would always stand out from the crowd. This included not only racialized difference such as Markino and imperial travellers experienced, but even a traveller from the English countryside "...is instantly to be detected." 33 To be a foreigner in a sense is to be ridiculous, and to be conspicuous in a crowd; such a man could never even attempt to take on the mantle of the flââneur, nor could he experience the city in a genuine way. Manhood was a problematic category, a prize that had to be won again and again, and London seemed to defeat that goal. 34

For many travellers and new residents to London, the city seemed a threatening space. While Henry James eventually became a London habitué, when he first arrived in the city he found it overwhelming. "It is a kind of humiliation in a great city not to know where you are going." 35 Being lost in a city is always a disorienting affair, but for a man in the late-nineteenth century, it was a blow to his manhood, placing him firmly outside the role of the confident urban explorer. For James, this led to an initial hatred of the city that made him fearful to leave his rooms:

London was hideous, vicious, cruel, and above all overwhelming... [I] would rather even starve, than sally forth into the infernal town, where the natural fate of an obscure stranger would be to be trampled to death in Piccadilly and have his carcass thrown into the Thames. 36

James's admission was surprisingly frank, and yet his feelings were not isolated. The dangers of anonymity were a constant refrain in visitors' impressions of London.

Another American visiting the capital, Richard Grant White, tried to overcome his ignorance of the city by walking its streets, so often recommended by mass-produced guidebooks. And yet he did not find these experiences let him be more in touch with the city or its inhabitants. In fact:

I never felt so lonely as I did in these solitary rambles in London, — never so much cut off from my family and my home, I may almost say from humankind. In mid-ocean I did not feel so far removed from living contact with the world ... I could not take in even London; and what was out of London was beyond beyond. 37

Above all it is a sense of being overwhelmed that is almost palpable in such descriptions. While White would later boast that he in fact had succeeded in learning the city and blending in like the locals, he betrays this latter confidence several times.

White eventually presents an account of his experiences of London that is both marked by judgemental arrogance, and undercut by anxiety. He comes to assert his own knowledge of London only at the expense of critiquing native Londoners. He was astounded by Londoners'

... actual ignorance of their own neighbourhoods, of the principal streets, great thoroughfares, and public places. The very cabmen were not to be trusted; and I had to set one right when I had been in London only a fortnight. I found that it was much better to trust to my own general knowledge, and to my feeling for form and distance, than to ask direction form any one but a policeman. 38

Not only does he claim to now be at home in the city after two months, he finds himself directing local cabmen and admits the policeman as his only potential rival for knowledge. His only experience of getting lost he justifies by the fact that it was after midnight, and that he trusted other people's directions rather than his own instincts. 39 This posturing stance very much ties into Michael Kimmel's notion of masculinity as "a defence against the perceived threat of humiliation and emasculation in the eyes of other men." 40 White attempts the model of natural expert to justify his position in the city.

Self-castigation for relying on exterior help or typical patterns was a common trope of London visitors. And the foreigner-as-native persona evolved with certain key criteria. Such a man did not come with guidebooks, but perhaps a map at most. He did not stay in the "tourist" hotels, but instead found his own lodgings in the city. One such would-be native, American essayist E. S. Nadal, explained his mistakes as he detailed his first experience in the city:

The night of my arrival in London I stopped at a hotel not far from Westminster... It was one of those large hotels to which people go who know nothing about London, and I had dined in a hushed and stately dining-hall instead of the dingy little coffee-room one should always seek. 41

Nadal made the "mistake" of staying at a central, well-appointed hotel and enjoying the comforts of its beautiful dining facilities. Such experiences might have been convenient, but they were not "authentic." It was only in the little-known holes in the wall that a man could proclaim his native status and hope to escape the humiliation of being labelled a tourist. And it is a long-established truth that the most vocal critics of tourists are tourists themselves. 42

Perhaps most remarkable about such accounts is they were completely ignorant of their ironic position. Here were men who derided relying on travel guides producing their own travel narratives. In one sense they could act as a stand in for those with no intention of travelling to London — a guide for how they would have acted in the city without having to go there. But more practically, they were also useful for the man travelling to the city so that he, in turn, could take on the persona of the foreign/local man. And yet the writers maintained power through these writings; if their readers did not become experts or experience the city in the same authentic way, their own superior status was reinforced. This seems to be the closest most men came to embracing the ideal of the flâneur — reinforcing the desire to know the city, and setting themselves as more expert than their readership.

Even if a man could claim familiarity with the streets of the city, its basic pathways and some little known secrets, for the middle and upper class traveller, conquering the geography was only half the battle. Equally, if not more important, was to understand the people of London. London certainly had rivals in terms of the beauty of its architecture or the fashion of its dress, but it was the people of London, and how they interacted, that made it so fascinating to visitors. 43 And yet to understand the English social world was not an easy task. Americans in particular were sometimes affronted by the reserve of London society, and were surprised that they displayed no real curiosity about their transatlantic neighbours. While admitting that they were not unkind to foreigners, E. S. Nadal did feel that in meeting a new acquaintance, "They hold back till they are sure, not that he is virtuous, but that it will help them to know him." 44 English reserve is thus transformed into a form of snobbish self-interest.

Other authors rejected any attempt towards mastery of the city or its people, and accepted the role as helpless visitor. This is the kind of experience usually described as the preserve of women or colonial subjects. Indian tourists who flowed into London after the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886 could never be anonymous members of the crowd, and yet they explored the city and its people, not content to remain solely the objects of the domestic imperial gaze. 45 One of the defining characteristics of the New Woman was the ability to travel across the city exploring public transit and doing away with chaperones. 46 Women's entrance into traditional male spaces has been noted as the cause of endless public debates. 46 And yet these experiences are often posited against an imagined male mastery of the city. Perhaps the relationship is less a dichotomy than a spectrum of experience.

And not all men accepted the association between being lost in the city and being less of a man. Some men claimed no more mastery or power over the city than women or colonial visitors. Even for the most "manly" of Victorian men, African big game hunters, the challenge of London was more than they could take. The often-comical representations of these intrepid explorers lost and overwhelmed in the city did not question their manliness, but rather questioned the valorisation of urban life. 48 The American author William Dean Howells took a novel approach to London in his text London Films where he looks at the city as if through a Kodak lens, comparing it to his native New York. 49 And yet his expansive, poetic descriptions of the buildings, the people, the crowds throughout the city are entrancing, do not claim any control of the city. Rather, Howells is swept along by it:

You are now a molecule of that vast organism, as you sit under your umbrella on your omnibus-top, with the public waterproof apron across your knees, and feel in supreme degree the insensate exultation of being part of the largest thing of its kind in the world, or perhaps the universe. 50

Far from the omnipotence of the flâneur, Howell is content to be a more passive spectator, caught up in the power and splendour of London without any temptation to master the metropolis. Here is a man rejecting any idea that to give oneself up to the unknown is emasculating, and he rejects the idea of absolute knowledge being possible or even desirable.

III. London in miniscule

creative writing victorian london

For visitors or new residents to London, they might not have gained a sense of security or control in the city, however they could also easily lower expectations because of their outsider status. Native residents both had more access, and equally more pressure. Despite some overanxious foreigners' remarks that Londoners were the least likely to understand their city, there was a strong tradition of urban exploration and description by its most stalwart residents. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, few asserted the guise of flâneur. Instead, many men admitted their limitations and were happy to break the city down into easily comprehendible chunks. A number of works were produced that described certain areas or neighbourhoods of the city, without attempting the whole. While a man might never know London, he could at least claim mastery over his own neighbourhood.

An initial acknowledgement of failure was a common idiom. Most authors had to eventually acknowledge to the fact that the city was so large that it was inherently beyond the limits of their knowledge. E.V. Lucas, a self-proclaimed "wanderer," found that there was not only no place to begin, but no place to end. Even a thousand books on London he felt would not get at every aspect of the place. 51 Augustus Hare published a detailed two-volume work describing various walks in London including comprehensive paths and full histories for each journey. Yet he had to admit that it was becoming impossible to cover the whole city. To be a true expert of the city was a lost art perhaps never to be recaptured: " Macaulay had the reputation of having walked through every street of the London of his day; but if we consider the ever-growing size of the town, we cannot believe that any one else will ever do so." 52 To emphasize his point, Hare then noted that the population of London outstripped the nations of Denmark and Switzerland, doubled the population of Paris and was thrice that of New York. In acknowledging his limitations, Hare was careful to justify the reasons for this weakness. Men could thus only demonstrate mastery within limits.

Just as some foreigners expounded their own knowledge at the expense of others, London writers suspected that many barely knew the city that they called their home. Visitors were not the only observers to note that locals did not know London as they should:

Scarcely any man in what is usually called "society" has the slightest idea of what there is to be seen in his own great metropolis, because he never looks, or still more, perhaps, because he never inquires.... Strangers also, especially foreigners, who come perhaps with the very object of seeing London, are inclined to judge it by its general aspects, and do not stay long enough to find out its more hidden resources. 53

Admitting how little most Londoners understood their own city was the first step in opening the door to the utter unknowability of the city. Even familiar childhood memories faded when confronted with a constantly changing city. 54 To attempt to understand London was a never-ending task.

Many authors could only find meaning in London's past. J. Ewing Ritchie's text, About London , goes back to the time of the War of the Roses to find the origins of everything best about London society. 55 The truth of London seemed to be found in centuries past. Laurence Gomme seemed to agree; his London states that the only way to understand modern London, and England, was to understand its beginnings. And the reason for such exploration lie in the fact that London is best understood as a living museum — its very buildings, monuments, and passageways tell a truth to future generations. 56 To Gomme and other antiquarians, understanding the history of London is the best way to seek out its current truth and its future as: "history is a living force not a dead record." 57

Even a book that began with an ostensibly modern aesthetic — another trip aboard the railway—could very quickly become a history lesson. To G. K. Chesterton every railway station turned his mind to London's history: "Crowded and noisy as it is, here is something shy about London: it is full of secrets and anomalies; and it does not like to be asked what it is for. In this, there is not a little of its history as a sort of half-rebel through so many centuries." 58 While abandoning the ideal of total mastery over the current city, in some ways these stories do declare knowledge over the city in particularly powerful ways. By seeing the city through a more historical and academic point of view, the city becomes something to deconstruct, research, and possess through learning. These men assert their power and knowledge over the city in less experiential, and more bookish ways.

Others are more explicit that they turn to London's past because they find it superior to its present. Donald Shaw found the early twentieth century far inferior in not only its material aspect, but also in its people. Instead of "solid silver spoons and a higher type of humanity" he found only "electro-plate and the shabby-genteel masher." 59 It is no surprise he situated his meditation on London almost a half century earlier. This was a trend that would only increase after the end of the First World War, when nostalgia for a golden age of London was rampant. Yet a work looking wistfully back on London such as James Bone's The London Perambulator could not choose which historical London was best. In walking along St. James's Street and Pall Mall he quickly jumps from the Tudor period to Pepys' London. 60 In these ways the antiquarian asserted another form of male mastery over the city. If the flâneur's all-seeing gaze was beyond them, they could demonstrate knowledge of the history and legacy of historical London. And emphasizing the depth and complexity of London's history makes it a greater accomplishment to sort through and rationalize it all.

Authors had to admit that to know London in its entirety was an unreachable goal in the modern age. E. V. Lucas found that there was not even a single London to understand. Instead he likened the capital to a nation in and of itself, containing many towns and villages within it. The capital of this country was the heart of London where the restaurants, shops, music halls, theatres, and architectural monuments were located. This was the showpiece of this country and what most visitors came to see. But it was only a tiny fraction of the whole, and for many Londoners, had no relation to their everyday lives and experiences. Most kept to their own villages and rarely left their small, prescribed spheres. 61

For most of the authors of such works, their prescribed sphere was the West End of London. A belief in the centrality of the West End could sometimes extend to ignoring the rest of the city entirely. Though the heart of the West End was home to very few, it symbolized to many all that was best about the metropolis; not only the upper, but also the middle classes, looked to the West End as the heart of London. During the summer, when the wealthy social elites fled the city by the first week of August, authors referred to the city as "empty," despite the fact that millions of people still filled the capital. It was only the most prominent edifices of the West End that were left empty, and the rest of the city would have remained busy with activity. While the West End might have held the most impressive sights of the capital, it was nowhere near its entirety. The city was diverse, its residents were highly segregated and thus understanding the city would have been beyond many of its habitués. 62 For many, the boundaries of the West End were as far as their knowledge of their city extended. These men's constrained, restricted vision of London hardly live up to the flâneurial ideal. Instead of confident urban explorers, they stuck to familiar spaces and safe neighbourhoods.

More adventuresome writers set their pens to uncovering the unknown or secreted delights of a familiar metropolis. Fred Lane's series of articles for The English Illustrated Magazine focussed on the hidden romance of new places and perspectives. He was particularly taken with the life of the rails, and spent a day riding around on various underground trains to get a new outlook of the city. He also spent time examining the various railway stations of the city, and not only described the buildings, but recommended when and how to view each site. While St. Pancras might not be striking at first glance, he wrote in "London Railway Stations" that one must go to the Midland terminus when no trains were leaving, at night, walk along to the back of the third platform in order to get the best impression of the station which only then appears like a temple. 63 He also recommends walking about the city when the public houses are shut, between twelve-thirty and five in the morning. It is here that the real nightlife of the city comes alive. And he warns "In the Small Hours" that while people assume the city is asleep, in fact:

The sleep is more apparent than real, however, for so varied are the occupations and pleasures of the inhabitants of this modern Babylon, that it is well-nigh impossible to pass through any important thoroughfare, no matter what the hour, without encountering some of one's fellow-men. 64

The native of the city has the opportunity to learn the most interesting moments of the city over time, and to uncover what places or moments are most overlooked. As such, these visions of the city are authoritarian and confident, demonstrating knowledge built over a number of years. And yet these descriptions of the city are deliberately episodic and incomplete.

Similarly, H.D. Lowry wrote a series of five articles for the Windsor Magazine detailing various parts of "Unknown London." In his first outing Lowry takes his readers to Walworth Road in Southwark, a place his readers could easily describe as an "English Hades." 65 And while he cautions readers to look deeper to find the community spirit of the place, he is still happy to leave the crowded and chaotic borough. His next trip to the London docks is pitched as a world of adventure, opening up the British Empire and the world through the intense dockside activity. At the West India Docks the author admits to a desire to travel, yet acknowledges he is "filled with regrets that he has not the spirit to act up to his boyish resolves and enlist, though it were but as a cabin-boy, in the glorious comradeship of men that go down to the sea in ships." 66 His last articles cover the Italian community at Saffron Hill, community charity concerts, and the Inns of Court 67 . These stories glimpse into only unknown places and communities, and leave as many questions as answers for both the reader and writer. The impression the series as a whole leaves is that there are as many stories in London as one could possibly imagine, and it would be impossible to visit or understand them all.

creative writing victorian london

To understand London proved an elusive goal that the honest observer had to admit he fell short of. For the native or long-term resident of the city, London proved a daunting space, and outlining its history or dissecting it into its disparate parts proved a way to ignore the unknown and unknowable. The tourist found himself faced with the more difficult task, as he was a stranger in the largest city in the world. And the tactic of overcompensating for their inadequacies by pointing out the lack of Londoners' own knowledge of their cities was a poor substitute for real knowledge of the metropolis. Yet in being a local, knowledge of the city should have been implicit and its lack was more galling than that of a foreigner.

While men could explain the key sights of the city on the most basic level, this knowledge did not allow these men to feel truly at ease in their positions as urban spectators. London was such a giant that instead of power and certainty, men found only mysteries and unrealised expectations. In exploring the relationship between affluent men and the city, it is clear that while some men struggled to live up to the Parisian model of the flâneur, most conceded it did not fit the realities of London. Nor are the three alternatives presented here the only possibilities, as the East End pleasure seeker and the mission-guided charity workers had their own alternative stories to tell. Much work needs still remains to be done in understanding the gendered nature of the city that defied simple binaries. What is clear from this study is that male experiences with the city are far more diverse and complicated that current narratives state. Historians have done such admirable work exploring women's entries into the public sphere and how they created new opportunities for themselves in the city; however, this should not be done at the expense of abridging men's experiences. London men found the ideal of the confident urban explorer to be a role they were often drawn to, and yet not one that was comfortably achieved.

Last modified 21 May 2014

Descriptive Writing: Victorian London

Curriculum support • 20 mins • free.

Kitan Cox

What paints a better picture: "walking" or "striding"? Descriptive writing can make all the difference!  In this class, students will be given an overview of how to write descriptively for a specific descriptive  writing assignment: ‘Describe a street in Victorian London.’ They will also be shown how to use a range  of descriptive techniques as well as how to adopt an effective structure to engage and entertain  readers. This class is great for students in Year 9 or above who want to improve their writing!

Like this? Try:  Descriptive Writing: Playground Scene ,  Descriptive Writing: Crime Scene ,  How to Become a Freelance Writer ,  Getting a Book Published

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creative writing victorian london

6 Novels That Perfectly Capture the Magic and Grit of Victorian London

creative writing victorian london

Think of Victorian London and chances are you’ll conjure drifting smog and a fog-shrouded Thames, labyrinthine alleys and cobbled streets, grand landmarks and tragic hovels. Danger may lurk, wonders may be revealed, fortunes won or lost, and connections made or missed. Chances are this Victorian London of your imagination will be in motion with carts and carriages and characters from all walks of life jostling for your attention—there will be smells and sights and sounds galore. I’d like to introduce you to some authors I love imagining this city I love. Each of these writers has a unique take on it during a unique time. Even as a Londoner versed in the history of my city, I’ve found diversions and thrills in these pages. Victorian London was a time of extremes, of magic and grit—when innovation and discovery existed alongside crushing poverty and hardship. These writers capture exactly this light and darkness.

The Doll Factory

London at the time of the Great Exhibition is the setting for Macneal’s immersive historical novel. Iris Whittle paints china doll faces but dreams of more, and soon she experiences more, her life heightened by a brush with a member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. For Iris, London is a place of freedom and captivity, opportunity and danger.

creative writing victorian london

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The Crimson Petal and the White

From the opening pages it is clear that Faber’s London is as complex and uncensored, as are the characters that inhabit it. William Rackham, a man with creative leanings and the inheritor of a family trade, embarks on an affair with business-savvy prostitute called Sugar. At home, William’s wife, Agnes, is descending into madness and their daughter is in want of a governess.

creative writing victorian london

London in the 1870s. Sugar is a nineteen-year-old prostitute yearning for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of Victorian society offers us intimacy with a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters. Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, this panoramic, multidimensional novel is teeming with life, and rich in texture. . . . Page Count: 901

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Fingersmith

The underbelly of London life features wonderfully in this tale. Elements of the sensation novel popularized by the likes of Wilkie Collins can be found here—mistaken identities, hidden secrets, intrigues, and madness. Our heroine’s childhood home is a gloomy, lonely, country mansion. The London where she ventures, by contrast, is a dynamic den of thieves and ne’er-do-wells.

creative writing victorian london

Orphan Sue Trinder is raised amongst “fingersmiths”—transient petty thieves. When a fingersmith known as Gentleman asks Sue to help him con a wealthy woman out of her inheritance, she never expects to pity her helpless mark, let alone come to care for her. But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

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Marley

Marley is a gloriously dark descent into the roots of the Scrooge-Marley relationship. Described as “a noirish prequel to A Christmas Carol. ” Clinch breathes new life into these characters in a setting as vividly realized as the story he tells. Clinch evokes all the senses, and as a result London rears up—real and troubling and heart-rending.

creative writing victorian london

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The Clockmaker's Daughter

Morton’s London is as multilayered and as varied as the voices that tell this story. A child abandoned in the streets of Victorian London grows up to become a thief, a muse, and a mistress. When a Thames-side artists’ gathering ends in gunshot, leaving one woman dead and another disappeared, a mystery is created only to be unravelled many years later.

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Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens’s nocturnal wanderings and ceaseless fascination for the London are mapped out here in vivid fiction. His second novel offers a cast of unforgettable characters—workhouse boy Oliver, juvenile pickpocket the Artful Dodger, rotten Bill Sikes, and damned Nancy. And London herself; sprawling, cruel, and absolutely full of darkness and light.

creative writing victorian london

The book is quite harrowing when you think about it - an orphan boy is abused and put through some awful social systems before landing at a wealthy man's home. It's certainly not as "lovely" as the musical OLIVER! which was inspired by Dickens' novel. Part satire, part morality tale, and part fairy tale, the story has inspired so much popular culture and media over the years, yet we still enjoy the proper source material today.

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Jess Kidd is the award-winning author of three books. Get more info about her latest novel, THINGS IN JARS, here.

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Creative Arts and Humanities BA

London, Stratford (UCL East) Creative Arts and Humanities BA (2025)

UCL's BA Creative Arts and Humanities is a bold and exciting interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, uniquely bringing together creative writing, film and moving image and performance, and is the first of its kind in the UK.

UK tuition fees (2024/25)

Overseas tuition fees (2024/25), programme starts, application deadline, ucas course code.

  • Entry requirements

Contextual offer information

Contextual offer, uk applicants qualifications.

For entry requirements with other UK qualifications accepted by UCL, choose your qualification from the list below:

Equivalent qualification

Pass in Access to HE Diploma with a minimum of 33 credits at Distinction and 12 credits at Merit, all from Level 3 units. Please note, where subject specific requirements are stipulated at A level we may review your Access to HE syllabus to ensure you meet the subject specific requirements prior to a final decision being communicated.

Not acceptable for entrance to this programme.

D3,D3,D3 in three Cambridge Pre-U Principal Subjects, to include an essay-based Humanities or Social Sciences subject.

A,A,A at Advanced Highers (or A,A at Advanced Higher and A,A,A at Higher), to include an essay-based Humanities or Social Sciences subject.

Successful completion of the WBQ Advanced Skills Challenge Certificate plus 2 GCE A levels at grades AAA, to include an essay-based Humanities or Social Sciences subject.

International applications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website .

Access and widening participation

Undergraduate preparatory certificates.

The Undergraduate Preparatory Certificates (UPC) prepare international students for a UCL undergraduate degree who don’t have the qualifications to enter directly. These intensive one-year foundation courses are taught on our central London campus.

Typical UPC students will be high achievers in a 12-year school system which does not meet the standard required for direct entry to UCL.

For more information see: ucl.ac.uk/upc .

  • English language requirements

The English language level for this programme is: Level 3

Information about the evidence required, acceptable qualifications and test providers can be found on our English language requirements page.

A variety of English language programmes are offered at the UCL Centre for Languages & International Education .

Course overview

UCL's BA Creative Arts and Humanities is an interdisciplinary degree that will enable you to develop both your creative and critical skills, focusing on the role of narrative across three forms of creative practice:

  • Writing: narratives for paper, screen and the digital sphere in fiction and non-fiction genres.
  • Moving image: making narratives for screen, both fictional and documentary, from static images, storyboards, texts and scripts, to filming, final edit and display.
  • Performance: working with voice, body and movement to communicate ideas and emotions through performance for stage, film and digital media.

Working with academics as well as industry practitioners, you will develop your knowledge and critical understanding of these modes of creative practice in historical, contemporary and future-facing contexts. You will also develop your own creative skills and explore what creativity means in different contexts and how it can be harnessed for meaningful impact in society.

The degree will encourage you to ground your creative expression in practical engagement, with audiences, with communities and with different organisations or employers. You will learn the skills of collaboration, learning how to create with and for others, and develop a range of skills that can be applied across a range of roles and sectors.

Based at our new campus in Stratford, UCL East, you will be part of a community of students studying interdisciplinary degrees in both arts and sciences subjects that are focused on creating, designing and making, with a strong emphasis on active engagement with the world to effect change. 

What this course will give you

The BA Creative Arts and Humanities programme will give you advanced skills in narrative and other forms of communication across three different modes of creative practice: writing, performance and moving image. You will develop an understanding of how these modes work with and influence one another, and be able to develop your own powerful narratives.

You will benefit from world-class research across the arts and humanities at UCL, as well as from creative practitioners working in different fields.

You will be able to specialise depending on your area of interest to develop high-level skills in writing, performance or moving image, to allow you to become a practitioner yourself or take your creative and critical skills into a wide range of sectors.

You will also be part of a vibrant community of researchers, creators and makers at our new UCL East campus, and have access to the rich variety of London's creative and cultural organisations. 

Teaching and learning

In each year of your degree you will take a number of individual modules, normally valued at 15 or 30 credits, adding up to a total of 120 credits for the year. Modules are assessed in the academic year in which they are taken. The balance of compulsory and optional modules varies from programme to programme and year to year. A 30-credit module is considered equivalent to 15 credits in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).

Upon successful completion of 360 credits, you will be awarded a BA (Hons) in Creative Arts and Humanities.

Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability is subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.

The programme’s structure enables you to engage with three modes of creative practice (creative writing, performance and moving image), both critically and practically.

Year 1: You will explore the fundamentals of 'creativity' and creative experiment, and develop your understanding of key concepts such as the role of narrative within creative practice. You will be required to take compulsory modules in all three creative disciplines. You will complete your module selection with one optional module subject to approval.

Year 2: You will be required to take compulsory modules The Collaborative Economy and UCL East’s Collaborative Design for Society, along with at least one 'pair' of optional critical/practice modules, for example both Writing modules or both Performance modules, and at least one other practice based module. You will choose two further optional modules subject to approval. Your choice of modules in your second year will determine the options available to you in your final year. For example, you will need to have taken performance modules in your second year to take final year performance modules. 

Year 3: All students will take the module The Creative Professional, preparing you for today's rapidly changing world of work and the impacts of technology on working contexts and processes, along with a compulsory module in at least one creative discipline. Your learning will culminate in a final-year project to complete a substantial piece of independent creative work in one or more disciplines of creative practice. You will also collaborate with other students on a final degree show to exhibit your work. You will complete your module selection with two optional modules subject to approval.

In each year of study, you will also be able to select from UCL East electives open to students from different disciplines to explore themes of interest.

Compulsory modules

Optional modules, your learning.

This programme offers a distinctive humanities-based curriculum which will require you to engage with both theoretical/critical and creative/production elements of creative production, channelled through a focus on three forms of creative practice; writing, performance and moving image.

The teaching and learning methodologies used throughout the degree will vary depending on the creative discipline but will include lectures, seminars, practical workshops, peer-to-peer reading, collaborative enterprise activities and body, movement and voice training.

As a full-time student, you would be expected to spend approximately 40 hours a week studying. This is made up of a combination of contact hours and self-directed study.

The programme includes a wide variety of forms of assessment reflecting the different nature of outputs developed across creative disciplines. You will be able to demonstrate your learning through both group and individual assessment of group work outputs and processes, where you can develop and build skills relevant to employment, such as team-working, collaboration, organisational and personal time management.

You will be supported to understand assessment in these different areas and how they relate to real-world outputs. You will also be enabled to understand the processes of assessment and what it means to be successful at different levels of your degree programme through different approaches, like peer and collaborative assessment.

Example assessment types include critical essays, performance, short films, presentations and reflective learning diaries or picture essays.

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble . Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team .

The foundation of your career

As a graduate of the BA Creative Arts and Humanities programme, you will develop the following skills and attributes to prepare you for a wide range of life and career choices:

  • A critical understanding of the complex, diverse and often tangled stories of the contemporary world, including who gets to tell these stories and why.
  • The ability to develop narratives clearly and innovatively in a range of creative forms, combined with an ability to combine, translate and switch between forms of creative practice.
  • The ability to transfer narrative and creative problem-solving skills into the workplace, understanding how they can of value in economic, cultural and social contexts.
  • Critical understanding of the creative industries as a major global sector, including current issues and future trends, and issues around diversity and inclusion.
  • Experience of creative production across a range of creative formats, including writing, performing, podcast and audio production, and film.
  • Skills in working collaboratively with, and for, others to produce creative outputs.
  • Creative problem-solving skills, and the ability to respond creatively and flexibly to briefs.

You will also be well placed to go onto postgraduate study, whether more specialised programmes in particular forms of creative practice (such as master's degrees in Creative Writing or Drama), more vocational programmes (Master's in Arts and Cultural Management, Master's in Journalism, for example), as well as more traditional master's programmes in the humanities.

Employability

Likely employment destinations for graduates will include the many possibilities contained in the creative economy, including all forms of media, social media enterprise, cultural heritage, journalism and digital content creation.

We believe that graduates of the programme will be valued anywhere that narrative insights are essential to communicating core purposes and where the ability to harness creativity is held in high esteem. 

  • Fees and funding

Fees for this course

The fees indicated are for undergraduate entry in the 2024/25 academic year. The UK fees shown are for the first year of the programme at UCL only. Fees for future years may be subject to an inflationary increase. The Overseas fees shown are the fees that will be charged to 2024/25 entrants for each year of study on the programme, unless otherwise indicated below.

Full details of UCL's tuition fees, tuition fee policy and potential increases to fees can be found on the UCL Students website .

Additional costs

Media equipment will be provided for students to use as part of compulsory modules.

There may be additional costs to purchase entry to art galleries, museums or similar as part of field trips for some modules (such as Making Moving Images I and II).

Students may wish to purchase entry to other museums/galleries around London as part of their wider experience but this will not be a requirement of the programme.

There may be additional travel and expenses, such as refreshments or meals, associated with an internship or the undertaking of project work at an employer’s premises.

Students may incur travel costs if they wish to attend UCL events on the Bloomsbury campus or if they have permission to undertake a module or other learning on the Bloomsbury campus.

A guide including rough estimates for these and other living expenses is included on the UCL Fees and funding pages . If you are concerned by potential additional costs for books, equipment, etc., please get in touch with the relevant departmental contact (details given on this page).

  • Funding your studies

Various funding options are available, including student loans, scholarships and bursaries. UK students whose household income falls below a certain level may also be eligible for a non-repayable bursary or for certain scholarships. Please see the Fees and funding pages for more details.

Scholarships

The Scholarships and Funding website lists scholarships and funding schemes available to UCL students. These may be open to all students, or restricted to specific nationalities, regions or academic department.

Your application

Your application will be assessed on the basis of past and projected academic performance, your personal statement and your academic reference. Your application should provide evidence that the majority of the following qualities are applicable to you: - Prepared for critical enquiry into the arts and humanities. - Prepared for engagement with practical creative skills, such as in writing, performance and moving image. - Prepared to think critically and creatively to seek new connections between humanities knowledge and humanities practice. - Interested in engaging in wider societal, cultural and global issues from a humanities perspective. - Interested in careers involving cultural entrepreneurship and intercultural exchange. We are interested in your experience of critical thinking in arts and humanities and in areas of arts practice covered in the degree (creative writing, performance, moving image). While these may well be covered in your formal academic performance at school or college, we are also interested if you have developed skills outside of formal learning; for example, in developing practical skills in writing for school magazines or blogs, or participating in film clubs (either or both in developing films and in analysing films).

  • How to apply

Application for admission should be made through UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). Applicants currently at school or college will be provided with advice on the process; however, applicants who have left school or who are based outside the United Kingdom may obtain information directly from UCAS.

For further information on UCL's selection process see: How we assess your application .

Got questions? Get in touch

Arts and Sciences BASc

Arts and Sciences BASc

[email protected]

UCL is regulated by the Office for Students .

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Victorian London at Christmas (Descriptive Writing) KS3 KS4

Victorian London at Christmas (Descriptive Writing) KS3 KS4

Subject: English

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Novel Teaching UK

Last updated

8 December 2018

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creative writing victorian london

Students use the images and sentence starters to write a short piece of descriptive writing based on christmas/Victorian London.

Includes worksheets and a short powerpoint to introduce the creative writing task.

Suitable for a christmas themed creative writing class or cover lesson .

Please leave a review if you found this helpful or look at my online shop for other resources:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/NovelTeachingUK

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17 Best Creative Writing Classes in London

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This directory of creative writing courses will help you find the right class for you. Simply filter by genre, price, and location to find the writing class that best fits your needs.

Best of luck! If you run a writing course and would like to get in touch with us about your class, contact us here .

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One-day Travel Writing Workshop

Travel Writing Workshop

Led by Peter Carty, this one-day workshop in central London, also available online, caters to beginners and journalists alike, aiming to equip them with practical skills for travel writing. The workshop, which includes sessions from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm, covers topics like selecting travel subjects, research skills, prose improvement, and getting published, with a fee of £155 including post-workshop support​​​​​​​​.

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Location: London

Categories: Travel

Level: Beginner

Class size: Limited

Price: £155.00

Start date: February, 2024

Website: https://www.travelwritingworkshop.co.uk/about-the-travel-...

Copywriting Masterclass

The Chartered Institue of Marketing

This interactive course unveils the art of copywriting, offering a methodical approach to idea generation, maintaining reader engagement, and enlivening your writing.

Categories: Copywriting

Level: Advanced

Class size: Unlimited

Price: £999.00

Start date: Open all year round

Website: https://www.cim.co.uk/training/list-courses/copywriting-m...

Getting Started: Beginners' Fiction

Faber Academy

Faber Academy offers a variety of fiction writing courses, suitable for aspiring writers, those seeking inspiration, and hobbyists ready to begin a professional writing career. These courses, available both online and in London, cater to different levels of writing experience, from total beginners to advanced learners. Participants benefit from the expertise of tutors and insights from the UK's leading independent publisher, with flexibility to accommodate other commitments.

Categories: Book

Price: £395.00

Start date: July, 2023

Website: https://faberacademy.com/product/getting-started-beginner...

creative writing victorian london

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Essential Business Writing

Walkerstone

This one-day course, priced at £425 + VAT, is ideal for anyone in a business environment looking to improve their writing skills. It covers structuring content, clear sentence construction, and key message delivery, along with elements of marketing essential for effective business communication​.

Categories: Business

Price: £425.00

Website: https://walkerstone.com/courses/essential-business-writing/

Novel Writing

City Academy

Priced at $480, this six-week advanced course is designed to refine writers' travel prose. It focuses on developing a unique voice, perspective, and an eye for timely, engaging travel narratives.

Prerequisites: For the first session, you must have an idea or the start of a novel.

Categories: Book, Fiction

Website: https://www.city-academy.com/novel-writing-course

Creative Writing

This course is designed for beginners who want to develop their writing skills in a supportive environment. It covers techniques for developing ideas, descriptive prose, understanding plot, and regular writing practice. The course is suitable for those interested in both fiction and non-fiction writing and includes practical exercises, group work, and weekly assignments​​.

Prerequisites: Fluency in English is essential for this course.

Categories: Fiction, Essay, Poetry, Nonfiction, Short Story, Book

Price: £350.00

Website: https://www.city-academy.com/creative-writing-beginners

Professional Copywriting

Discover how to effectively communicate your business, product, or service to potential customers with this one-day course. It teaches the persuasive techniques used by professional marketing and advertising writers, applicable to both web and traditional media, to influence and convince your audience.

Categories: Copywriting, Freelance

Price: £345.00

Website: https://www.transmedia.co.uk/course-details.php?CourseID=...

Writing for Children

This course invites you to delve into the world of children's literature, analyzing successful children's books and guiding you in creating your own story. The course includes writing exercises, group discussions, and practical tasks to build confidence and foster creativity, ultimately helping you outline and develop your own unique children's story​​.

Categories: Kids

Price: £275.00

Website: https://www.city-academy.com/writing-for-children

Business Writing

This course focuses on enhancing business writing skills, covering various forms of professional writing from emails to press releases. It helps in organizing thoughts, choosing appropriate language, and creating trust through writing. The hands-on course, suitable for professionals in multiple careers, emphasizes the importance of grammar, punctuation, and avoiding jargon​​.

Price: £250.00

Website: https://www.city-academy.com/business-writing-course

Poetry Writing

Our Poetry courses invite you to explore and respond to various writing themes, delving into the myriad forms of poetry. You'll study works from professional poets, refine your voice through practical exercises focusing on tone, rhythm, meter, form, metaphor, lyricism, and descriptive imagery, all aimed at enhancing your poetic writing.

Categories: Poetry

Price: £129.00

Website: https://www.city-academy.com/poetry-writing

The Ink Academy Creative Writing Course

Ink Academy

This bespoke course offers a tailored learning experience over six months, featuring nine one-to-one sessions with a personal tutor. It includes detailed written reports, edits of up to 43,000 words, personalized advice on pitching and finding an agent, and customized writing exercises. The course is suitable for writers seeking in-depth feedback and guidance on their writing journey.

Class size: Private

Price: £2,100.00

Website: https://www.inkacademy.co.uk/creative-writing-course/

Freelance and Travel Writing

The London School of Journalism

This course, spanning 15 lessons and 35 exercises over 12-15 months, is perfect for those looking to combine their love for travel with a writing career. It offers flexibility to focus on individual writing interests, including specialized tuition in travel writing, and equips students with fundamental freelance writing skills​​​​.

Categories: Travel, Freelance

Website: https://www.lsj.org/courses/distance-learning/freelance-a...

So you’re looking for creative writing classes in London

Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Will Self—London is the birthplace of some of the greatest authors in the past few centuries. And that’s not even to count the way it’s transcended immortality in the literary landscape, inspiring classics from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist to Helen Fieldings’ Bridget Jones Diary. So what better city than London to take creative writing classes?

This directory of the best writing courses in London is meant to help you locate the right one for yourself.  We’ve included filters for price and genre so that you can quickly sort through the writing classes. And before you commit to any one writing class, consider the following questions:

  • Who is the instructor?
  • What is the price of the writing course?
  • How far away is the writing course in London? Is there a remote alternative?
  • How long could the course last?

Got any questions about finding the right writing class in London for you? Feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] . Good luck!

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My Creative Career: Andy Jex, chief creative officer at TBWA\London

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By Amy Houston | Senior Reporter

February 26, 2024 | 13 min read

Listen to article 4 min

As we profile the industry’s top talents , Andy Jex tells of the origins of ‘ Potsy and Jexy,’ explains why clever and humorous ads reign supreme and confesses that he doesn’t miss writing.

Andy Jex

Andy Jex, chief creative officer at TBWA\London

Andy Jex has lived and worked in London all his days. He was even born at the same hospital as football legend David Beckham.

Since his school days, he’s always had a knack for the arts. Subjects like technical drawing and geography brought great joy, although he admits he isn’t amazing at them (although adds his mum would say otherwise).

Growing up in the 80s, and during what he calls the “golden age“ of TV advertising, he muses that it did make an impact. Those ads were as much playground fodder as bands like Wham and football teams were to the kids of the era. It was something that always stuck with the youngster. “I’ve always been fascinated as to why something so commercial or functional seemed to resonate and be memorable and loved by so many people,” he says. “Even when I was doing projects at school, I would somehow end up writing about adverts.”

He recalls that cigarette advertising was becoming a lot more restricted, and the campaigns of that time became almost “cryptic” and “more creative” because of the boundaries. There’s a very fine line between being clever and simple – a motto he always stands by.

“It was just the use of humor. I think it was the thing that got me,” he adds. “Remember, in those days, they’d run an ad for five years. It’d be on telly all the time. But people didn’t seem to get bored of them.”

During his school years, Jex discovered a photography dark room that had been unused for at least 10 years. He cajoled his art teacher to open it up and teach him some of the basics. A fascination began.

It spurred him on to go to Manchester School of Art and do a photography degree. The trouble was, this was around the time when digital photography was becoming popular and being on the film course at that time felt a bit like being left behind. He ended up leaving and pursued another course at the University of Gloucestershire that encompassed lots of different creative subjects.

In 1994, during his second year, one of the learning blocks was advertising. “It sounds naive and foolish to say, but I think I thought the person who put the poster up was the person who designed it and made it,” he remembers. “I don’t think I ever thought about that there was a whole industry behind it all.”

Immediately regretting not studying advertising in the first place, he signed up for the infamous post-graduate course at Watford Ad School when he was around 23 years old. Tony Cullingham, who founded the school, would infamously ask students cryptic questions to gain a place at the college. It’s a method that suited Jex; he’s never been one that pushed for a “correct answer,” anyway.

Getting on to that course felt terrifying, intimidating and hugely exciting, he recalls, but a huge joy.

Jex says that Cullingham, who passed away last year, gave so much to the ad industry and has left an incredible legacy. “All of our work is his work,” he adds.

While at Watford, Jex met his creative partner, Rob Potts. They became known as Potsy and Jexy. “With surnames like that, you’ve got to,” he laughs. At first, they were terrible together, admits Jex, but rather than breaking up, they stuck it out until something good came of it. Which, spoiler alert, eventually happened.

A year after finishing at Watford, the duo was one of the last teams to get a job. They went on a two-week placement at Mother, which had only been around for something like 18 months at that time. “It was a dream,” says Jex. “It was very early days for them, but they were clearly doing something very different.”

During those first seven days, the young creatives were given a brief for Super Noodles. They wrote a script based on something that had happened to Potsy and presented it at 7pm on a Friday. Robert Saville, co-founder of the agency, was impressed by the pitch and said: “Who are you two then?” It was his way of saying it was a good idea, and he ended up keeping the duo for another week to work on it before heading to rival agency DDB.

While there, they were offered a full-time position, but Saville had also made an offer for them to come back to Mother. “We took the DDB one. Our logic was, we wanted to learn the traditional way of doing it before we break the rules,” Jex explains. “Mother was ‘Les Enfants Terribles,’ they were breaking the rules, they were doing it differently. We were like, we don’t even know how to do it properly, let alone do it differently.”

While at the creative shop, they made work very quickly and learned a lot. But the people that had hired them, Richard Flintham, and Andy McLeod, had moved on to set up Fallon in London. It was a huge deal.

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“We didn’t know anything about them [Fallon]. We quickly got schooling in who they were and what they’ve done,” he says. “Rich and Andy were our creative idols. This is an agency that was, like, eight or nine people at the start, so we were the first creative team there. You learn and grow so much just sitting next and working with people like that every day.”

There was a start-up, us-against-the-world mentality to Fallon’s London arm at that time which was exciting. One of the first projects they worked on was for Nando’s, a brand that had only recently appeared in the UK. The campaign work is one that Jex still remembers fondly. It was an out-of-home ad that read: ’Don’t eat eggs, wait until they are chickens, they taste better.’ It was an “odd concept,” but one that was also funny, even if it did ruffle a few feathers.

“We ended up getting a letter of complaint from the egg and dairy marketing board saying that our facts were incorrect and that’s not what happens to chickens and eggs,” says Jex. “We knew that, of course. It was just a bit of fun, and to me, that was my first example of trying to do something that felt clever, yet daft and stupid, but it was inherently very simple.”

Nandos ad

It was a proud moment for the two, one that people noticed and gave them confidence in themselves as a team.

The agency then won the Skoda account, and Jex remembers seeing Flintham and McLeod make ‘It’s a Skoda, honest,’ which was hugely inspiring. The brand was “dead,” and that campaign turned things around for the car manufacturer.

Work for the BBC followed, with an ad for radio station One Extra as one of Jex’s favorites. They filmed people on the streets but overlayed it with sounds from tracks that people would recognize. The sounds of the streets were replaced by songs. It was simple but came to life amazingly. “It was another step up because it was suddenly like a thing that was so big and mainstream and on BBC television after EastEnders every night,” he says. “It won a D&AD, and it was like, oh my goodness, we won a pencil.”

After five years at Fallon, there was “unfinished business” at Mother, so they headed back there to work. “We felt like they’d done a lot for us, and we had turned them down. I think it was a thing we were always going to go back to if they would have us. Luckily, they did want us,” he adds. “They welcomed us like, ‘Oh, you’ve come back,’ but the agency was five times bigger by this point.”

They came into a department that was filled with their peers and began working on another dehydrated noodle brand, this time, it was Pot Noodle. There’s a theme here, for sure. The brand wanted to convey that its product was “healthy,” but Jex knew this was a bit of a stretch. With the help of Saville, they found a fun solution.

There’s an ex-mining town in Wales called Crumlin. Many people there were out of work, and others worked in the factory. The creatives began to think about the concept of food being fuel when an old April Fool’s Day joke was put on their radar. Back in the 60s, there was a news article that said that spaghetti grew on trees. Basing their concept on this, they came up with a “ridiculous conceit” that had the Welsh minors digging up noodles from the ground as if they were fuel.

“I always think that humor is the thing that stays with people longer, is the thing that’s repeatable,” he explains. “Those things that stick in culture are really, really important to me. Being populist, but also not giving people what they think they want. I think it’s giving people something slightly lateral or odd or daft. Being populist and not esoteric, not just for the few, but for the masses, has always been important to me.”

He’s now chief creative officer at TBWA\London, which he joined in 2017 after spending five years at Saatchi & Saatchi as executive creative director. The best part of his job now? The creative review. He says people always ask him if he misses writing the work himself. “My answer is always no, I don’t, because I don’t have to physically be writing it all the time. I’m in reviews 10 times a day on eight different brands with different teams, and that’s what I love.”

He says it goes back to being at school when he had so many interests and was a bit of an all-rounder. When he sits in a creative review now, he feels inspired by people who are coming up with ideas that he might not have and loves helping them make sense of it all. He says it’s important not to kill things off too early, his job now is about being decisive and nurturing the talent coming through.

A spot for McVities starring the legendary news broadcaster Trevor McDonald and work for Nissan called ‘Electrified Art’ is work that he highlights as key moments for the agency in recent times.

For people looking to get into this industry, he says: “Don’t believe the people that say it’s dead.” He goes on to stress that, yes, the industry has changed a lot, but the world is much more open now, so the opportunities to reach people and be creative are so thrilling.

“We have to remember that it’s only advertising, people don’t give a shit about it. Our job is to make people give a shit about it and think or care or feel something. And it’s hard,” he concludes. “You’ve got to give people something, a surprising gift that they never knew they wanted. It’s an exciting world, more than it’s ever been. It’s harder than it’s ever been. But it’s full of opportunity.”

Read our interview with Nathalie Gordon, creative partner at Havas London.

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IMAGES

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  2. Creative Writing Victorian London by Jim Johns

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  3. Creative Writing Victorian London by Jim Johns

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  4. Creative Writing Victorian London

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  5. Victorian London at Christmas (Descriptive Writing) KS3 KS4

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  6. Victorian London at Christmas (Descriptive Writing) KS3 KS4

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VIDEO

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COMMENTS

  1. Descriptive Writing Victorian London

    0:00 / 22:04 Descriptive Writing Victorian London | English | Satchel Classes Team Satchel 7.5K subscribers Subscribe 3 Share 293 views 1 year ago Satchel Classes About this class: Like what...

  2. Creative Writing Victorian London

    Creative Writing Victorian London Subject: English Age range: 11-14 Resource type: Lesson (complete) File previews pptx, 1.37 MB A lesson on creative writing using an image of Victorian London as a stimulus. A success criteria is included, as are opportunities for planning and reflection.

  3. A Victorian Street Scene

    A Victorian Street Scene 04/05/2012 arees We are learning about the Victorians this term and we are especially enjoying reading Oliver Twist and writing our very own pieces of Historical fiction. We have been investigating how Charles Dickens helped create a picture of the world he lived in through the descriptions in his written words.

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    By Katie Lumsden. March 2, 2023. Over 120 years since the Victorian era ended, its literature continues to have huge staying power in the collective imagination of the English-speaking world. We all have a clear idea of what "Dickensian" London looks like. We know what it means to be a Scrooge, or to be a bit Jekyll and Hyde.

  6. Describing the Atmosphere in Victorian London

    Hi, Creative writing is a passion of mine. Jennifer has some good points, researching and understanding the era is key. Victorian London is often portrayed as a dank and miserable place with the rich thriving and the poor being exploited. When writing anything descriptive be sure that you are creating an image in the readers head.

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    Our Creative Writing and English Literature programmes cover contemporary and historical literature from Romantic poetry and Victorian novels to children's literature, performance poetry, science fiction, and page-to-screen adaptations. Our students learn about literature and other art-forms, national and international culture and politics ...

  9. Creative Writing in Literary London

    3 weeks Costs $6,950 Extended Deadline April 10, 2024 8 Weeks 2 Days 8 Hours Enroll Now Request Information Program Overview The Destination Daily Life Activities Dates & Fees Our Staff Spark your literary inspiration in London, home to countless authors and stories that have shaped the world.

  10. Knowing the Victorian City: Writing and Representation

    London, and through this seeing, to rationalize and control urbanization and its effects. The early Victorian efforts at seeing the lower classes are the focus of John Marriot's and Matsaie Matsumura's monumental six-volume collection of contemporary documents Unknown London: Early Modernist Visions of the Metropolis. Marriott's "Introduction"

  11. Vibrant Victorians

    Vibrant Victorians. A collection of creative writing tasks inspired by ten early silent films. This series of starter activities uses a range of silent films from the Victorian era as prompts for creative writing tasks. An illustrated presentation, featuring information about the films, discussion points and writing prompts, is provided for ...

  12. 50 Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels

    50 Story Plot Ideas from Victorian and Regency Novels Posted on October 12, 2016 by Bryn Donovan Hey, everyone! Some of my most popular posts of all time are about story plot ideas, and there are really good plot ideas in old novels.

  13. 'Dirty Old London': A History Of The Victorians' Infamous Filth

    Horses drive traffic on London's Oxford Street in 1890. According to author Lee Jackson, by the 1890s, the city's horses produced approximately 1,000 tons of dung a day. In the 19th century ...

  14. Creative Writing Victorian London by Jim Johns

    Creative Writing Victorian London Grade Levels 6th - 7th Subjects English Language Arts, Creative Writing, Literature Resource Type PowerPoint Presentations Formats Included PPTX $3.50 Add one to cart Buy licenses to share Add to Wish List Report this resource to TpT Jim Johns 3 Followers Follow Description Reviews Q&A More from Jim Johns

  15. Researching the Victorian Era

    The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London and Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders. The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England From 1811-1901 by Kristine Hughes. To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace

  16. Victorian London

    6 Location: Sonora, Mexico Victorian London Discussion in ' Research ' started by Marcelo, Jun 25, 2010 . Well, I'm kind of tangled up with two questions, which are the following: 1) In what district of Victorian-era London could I locate my character's manor? 2) Same as the above, but regarding an orphanage.

  17. PDF This half term I am learning: Key vocabulary I How to write a narrative

    How to write a narrative set in the Victorian era Key vocabulary I will be exploring this half term: • The social and historical context of Victorian London . • How to describe a setting. • How to create effective sensory imagery. • How to zoom in in my description. ... Creative Writing: short stories. Crafting a narrative . Bitesize ...

  18. Men on the Town: Writing Late-Victorian London

    And while it is difficult to peer into the hearts and minds of Victorian men, it is possible to get hints of the distance between ideals and reality, in particular in looking at literature that directly reflects on urban life. Men wrote about London in countless ways, in fiction, in government reports, and in tourist guides.

  19. Satchel Classes

    In this class, students will be given an overview of how to write descriptively for a specific descriptive writing assignment: 'Describe a street in Victorian London.' They will also be shown how to use a range of descriptive techniques as well as how to adopt an effective structure to engage and entertain readers.

  20. 6 Novels That Perfectly Capture the Magic and Grit of Victorian London

    by Elizabeth Macneal. London at the time of the Great Exhibition is the setting for Macneal's immersive historical novel. Iris Whittle paints china doll faces but dreams of more, and soon she experiences more, her life heightened by a brush with a member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. For Iris, London is a place of freedom and captivity ...

  21. Creative Arts and Humanities BA

    Experience of creative production across a range of creative formats, including writing, performing, podcast and audio production, and film. Skills in working collaboratively with, and for, others to produce creative outputs. Creative problem-solving skills, and the ability to respond creatively and flexibly to briefs.

  22. Victorian London at Christmas (Descriptive Writing) KS3 KS4

    pptx, 903.34 KB Students use the images and sentence starters to write a short piece of descriptive writing based on christmas/Victorian London. Includes worksheets and a short powerpoint to introduce the creative writing task. Suitable for a christmas themed creative writing class or cover lesson .

  23. 17 Writing Classes in London in 2024

    So you're looking for creative writing classes in London Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Will Self—London is the birthplace of some of the greatest authors in the past few centuries. And that's not even to count the way it's transcended immortality in the literary landscape, inspiring classics from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist to Helen ...

  24. My Creative Career: Andy Jex, chief creative officer at TBWA\London

    As we profile the industry's top talents, Andy Jex tells of the origins of 'Potsy and Jexy,' explains why clever and humorous ads reign supreme and confesses that he doesn't miss writing.