Daniel T. Ames

From Ames' Guide to Self-Instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship, 1884. There is no biography of Ames on wikipedia!

Tintype

Why do people from this era look so creepy?

Victorian etiquette

This is a pretty funny description of some ill-mannered guests. Times haven't changed much.

For Annabelle

Annabel Lee page 1 holograph, originally uploaded by vidalia_11.

In E.A. Poe's handwriting. From site http://www.columbia.edu/acis/textarchive/rare/76.html/

The Heart of the Rose (1889)

By Edward Burne-Jones. I don't know anything about the theme of the painting. I suppose it's based on some difficult Victorian epic poem. It's so romantic and evocative. I love walled-in gardens, especially from medieval paintings of the Virgin and Child or courtly romance.

The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke

By Richard Dadd, painted 1855-1864. At the Tate Gallery, London.
From www.tate.org.uk/:

Dadd painted this work in the Bethlem Hospital where he was sent after murdering his father and being declared insane. The scene was drawn from his imagination. It shows the ‘fairy-feller’ poised to split a large chestnut which will be used to construct Queen Mab’s new fairy carriage. The subject, shifting scale and style of the painting all contribute to a sense of the fantastic that fits Herbert Read’s idea of an imaginative tradition that runs through to Surrealism. The work might also have fitted the Surrealists’ interest in the art of the insane.

From wikipedia:

The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke is a Richard Dadd painting. It was commissioned by George Henry Hayden, who was head steward at Bethlem Royal Hospital at the time. He was impressed by Dadd's artistic efforts and asked for a fairy painting of his own. Dadd worked on the painting for nine years - paying microscopic attention to detail, as well as a layering technique producing near-3D results - and it is generally regarded as his most important work. However, Dadd himself considered the painting to be unfinished, and as such added the suffix of "Quasi" to its title.

Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

When I was a teenager, my parents gave me a book of Doré illustrations. I loved it and looked at it hundreds of times. Well, I had good taste because (a) I still have the book; and (b) it holds up as beautiful, fantastic art. What a storyteller, what an illustrator!
http://dore.artpassions.net

Excited by new blog I found

Bewitched by the October Moon, originally uploaded by Annabelle13.

A flickr user, Annabelle13, has the most surreal and haunting group of collages. She also has two blogs that are quite beautiful. Check them out.

underneathasugarywatermelonmoon.blogspot.com
pastoraldreams.blogspot.com

Charles Altamont Doyle

The artist Charles Altamont Doyle was the father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was institutionalized in mental hospitals from middle age onward, although by today's standards he was not insane. Nor did he think he was insane, and tried to prove with his art that he wasn't. It didn't work. Basically, he was an alcoholic and depressed. He was a trained artist and his works are poignant and delicate. There's an interesting book called The Doyle Diary by Michael Baker (1978) that reproduces Charles Doyle's journal sketches from his time in Sunnyside mental institution in Scotland. If you think these works are strange, his brother Richard "Dicky" Doyle was a famous Victorian artist well known for his fairy illustrations. Years later, Arthur Conan Doyle publicized "fairy photographs" which he believed were real. By today's standards, these photographs are pretty fake looking. Even back then, they were debunked. My point being that the entire family (not just the one who was institutionalized) had a "thing" for fairies.

St. Giles His Bells (unknown location).

Meditation, Self Portrait (V&A Museum, London). This watercolour comes from one of the sketchbooks used by the artist during his stay in the Royal Montrose Lunatic Asylum in Scotland. His son, the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, organised an exhibition of the artist's work in London in 1924. http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/16458-popup.html

A Christmas Carol

Okay, I've pretty much forgotten the story, but this is an adorable Victorian illustration for it.

Berenice Abbott (II)

Abbott took this eerie photo of a Victorian mansion, probably about to be demolished. Wheelock Mansion, 661 West 158th Street, Manhattan (1937). At the NYPL Digital Gallery.

The Diary of a Nobody

From Wikipedia: The diary is that of Mr Charles Pooter, a lower middle-class man, a city clerk, with modest social pretensions. Other characters include his wife Carrie (Caroline), his son Lupin, his friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing, and Lupin's unsuitable fiancée, Daisy. The humour comes from Pooter's unconscious gaffes and self-importance, as well as the snubs he receives from his supposed betters. This is a very funny book, originally serialized in Punch in 1888-89. I didn't want it to end, but unfortunately, it did. It is also free as an audiobook from Librivox.org, very entertainingly narrated by Martin Clifton.

Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures

"Curtain Lectures delivered in the course of Thirty Years by Mrs. Margaret Caudle, and suffered by Job, her Husband." The curtain refers to curtains hanging around the bed as Mrs Caudle nags and scolds her downtrodden husband. This is a satirical work from 1846 by Douglas William Jerrold, published in Punch magazine. It is public domain and available on the web to read. It is hysterical. http://www.hereweare.net/CAUDLE/CAUDLEHOME.htm