Who were the potential models for Signor Brunoni? Could Dickens (who performed as “The Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos”) have been one of them? What kind of text did Miss Pole use to research how the magic tricks are done? Christopher Pittard’s forthcoming book, Literary Illusions, explores the dialogue between Victorian literature and one of […]

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was one of the most intriguing of Victorian heroines: unconventional, illegitimate, yet at the centre of a luminous circle of influential Victorians, including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, the Rossettis and Gertrude Jekyll. She was someone who opened many of the doors we walk through today with barely a backward […]