Victoriana is a term used to refer to material culture related to the

Victorian period In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edward ...

(1837–1901). It often refers to decorative objects, but can also describe a variety of artifacts from the era including graphic design, publications, photography, machinery, architecture, fashion, and Victorian collections of natural specimens. The term can also refer to Victorian-inspired designs, nostalgic representations, or references to Victorian-era aesthetics or culture appropriated for use in new contexts The term "Victoriana" was coined in 1918, just before a wave of interest in Victorian objects and artifacts began in the 1920s. Another increased period of collecting of Victoriana emerged in the 1950s. In 1951, the

Festival of Britain The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people: ...

commemorated the centenary of the Victorian era's first world's fair, the 1851 Great Exhibition held at

the Crystal Palace The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibit ...

. In the 1960s and 1970s, the eclectic character of Victorian era wood type inspired graphic designers like

Seymour Chwast Seymour Chwast (born August 18, 1931) is an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer. Biography Chwast was born in the Bronx, New York City and in 1949 graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn where he was intr ...

and Push Pin Studios. Items such as Stevengraphs were popular collectable items during the revival of interest in Victoriana in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s,

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, promoted an interest in Victoriana by emphasizing " Victorian family values" as part of a roadmap to cultural, moral, and economic improvement.

Popular culture

In science fiction circles (especially in genres like

steampunk Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian ...

), Victoriana is used loosely to describe mock-Victorian worlds, where visual references to the machinery of the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

are incorporated into urban, romanticized pastiches with fantastic creatures and imagined mechanical contraptions. * Victorian decorative arts * Victorian fashion *

Neo-Victorian Neo-Victorianism is an aesthetic movement that features an overt nostalgia for the Victorian period, generally in the context of the broader hipster subculture of the 1990s-2010s. It is also likened to other "neos" (e.g. neoconservatism, neoli ...

Gothic fashion Gothic fashion is a clothing style marked by dark, mysterious, antiquated, homogenous, and often genderless features. It is worn by members of the Goth subculture. Dress, typical gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, exotic hairstyles, dark ...

Vintage clothing Vintage clothing is a generic term for garments originating from a previous era, as recent as the 1990s. The term can also be applied in reference to second hand retail outlets, e.g. i''n vintage clothing store''. While the concept originated ...

* -ana

Popular culture

References

Further reading