Black Victorians / Black Victoriana / Edition 1

by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Joan Anim-Addo, John Turner, Jeffrey Green, David Killingray

Overview

Black Victorians/Black Victoriana is a welcome attempt to correct the historical record. Although scholarship has given us a clear view of nineteenth-century imperialism, colonialism, and later immigration from the colonies, there has for far too long been a gap in our understanding of the lives of blacks in Victorian England. Without that understanding, it remains impossible to assess adequately the state of the black population in Britain today. Using a transatlantic lens, the contributors to this book restore black Victorians to the British national picture. They look not just at the ways blacks were represented in popular culture but also at their lives as they experienced them—as workers, travelers, lecturers, performers, and professionals. Dozens of period photographs bring these stories alive and literally give a face to the individual stories the book tells.

The essays taken as a whole also highlight prevailing Victorian attitudes toward race by focusing on the ways in which empire building spawned a "subculture of blackness" consisting of caricature, exhibition, representation, and scientific racism absorbed by society at large. This misrepresentation made it difficult to be both black and British while at the same time it helped to construct British identity as a whole. Covering many topics that detail the life of blacks during this period, Black Victorians/Black Victoriana will be a landmark contribution to the emergent field of black history in England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813532158
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
GRETCHEN HOLBROOK GERZINA
PART I  The Black Victorian Experience in Britain
Queen Victoria s Black "Daughter " 11
JOAN ANIM-ADDO
Pablo Fanque, Black Circus Proprietor 20
JOHN M. TURNER
Reexamining the Early Years of Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, Composer 39
JEFFREY GREEN
Tracing Peoples of African Origin and Descent
in Victorian Kent 51
DAVID KILLINGRAY
PART II  Transatlanticism and the Migration of
Black Victorians
Mrs. Seacole s Wonderful Adventures in Many Lands
and the Consciousness of Transit 71
LlZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT
"A Colored Woman in Another Country Pleading for
Justice in Her Own ": Ida B. Wells in Great Britain 88
NICOLE KING
"No Longer Rare Birds in London ": Zulu, Ndebele,
Gaza, and Swazi Envoys to England, 1882-1894 110
NEIL PARSONS
PART III Representations, Conceptualizations, and
Discourses of Back Victorians
The Representation of Africa in Mid-Victorian
Children s Magazines 145
KATHRYN CASTLE
The Blackface Clown 159
MICHAEL PICKERING
Anti-Imperial London: The Pan-African
Conference of 1900 175
JONATHAN SCHNEER
Reconstructing Victorian Racial Discourse: Images
of Race, the Language of Race Relations, and the
Context of Black Resistance 187
DOUGLAS LORIMER
Notes on the Contributors 209
Index 211
Illustrations appear between pages 118 and 119.

Editorial Reviews

Using a rich diversity of approaches, these essays give voice to hitherto unheard stories and provide historical and theoretical frameworks in which to understand them. Reading the volume creates an exciting feeling of discovery.

Yale University - Margaret Homans