Thekindvictorian - .. - Tumblr Blog

Lena Achtelik

The Decatur Daily, Illinois, August 20, 1929

~A traveler's journal, written 1925 (not victorian I know, but so pretty!!)

oh to be a 19th century author whose homoeroticism in your only novel is so strong it is quoted in your trial for sodomy

https://www.instagram.com/pale_tale/

The Illustrated Police News, London, England, November 11, 1871

a Victorian dating ad. You can BET this is going in my thesis

(Because of the tea, but also it’s just hilarious)

Colourized fashion illustrations from the August 21st, 1869 issue of  Harper’s Bazaar

Click for higher quality 

Masterlist

I hear a lot of people ask what historical memes were and say we’ll probably never know

but one 19th-century meme has become possibly the most enduring meme in human history (to date)

“Okay.”

so, back in the 1830s, the hot trend among the Youths™ of Boston was intentionally misspelling words and abbreviating common phrases with acronyms that therefore had the wrong first letters. examples included “K.Y.” for “no use” (”know yuse”) and “O.W.” for "all right” (”oll wright”).

on March 23rd, 1839, the Boston Morning Post got in on the joke with “O.K.” for “all correct” (”oll korrect”). Martin Van Buren picked it up as part of his campaign, it was propelled into the national spotlight, and the rest is history

that’s right

the word “okay” is a Victorian meme

imagine if the newspaper had printed “O.W.” instead

Oliver Herford in the Pittsburgh Daily Post, Pennsylvania, September 29, 1917

“Among the more elderly inhabitants of the South I found a melancholy tendency to date every event of importance by the late war. ‘How beautiful the moon is tonight,’ I once remarked to a gentleman who was standing next to me. ‘Yes,’ was his reply, ‘but you should have seen it before the war.’”

from Oscar Wilde’s Personal Impressions of America

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard. Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

(From “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, O.Wilde)

Dedicated to Oscar

(by mari.o)

*adjusts Victorian shirt* What do you mean? *writes poetry with an expensive fountain pen* Am I really  *drinks Absinthe* too dramatic?! *flings herself on a 19th century chaise lounge* Don’t be ridiculous!

Why can’t we make puff sleeves fashionable again? They look perfectly dashing. They are also perfect for dramatic flare and we all love that dramatic flare, do we not? Let’s make this happen.. Influence all to wear puff sleeves. It is time. 

Make Dorian Gray blond in films you cowards

Ok I’m just going to say it

LET THE PEOPLE KISS OSCAR WILDE’S GRAVE AGAIN.

I understand the kissing and touching was eroding the stone but I can’t help but feel that’s what he would have wanted. To be kissed to erosion, to be loved into ovblian, knowing the press of lips from adoring fans was powerful enough to crumble stone...

Like can you please let us be fucking dramatic please?

Instead of saying "do it for the aesthetic" I’m gonna start saying "make Oscar Wilde proud"

if my best friend were to confess his love, devotion and adoration for me i simply wouldn’t stab him to death.

buying second hand books is the best. someone has annotated the picture of dorian gray repeatedly calling dorian a drama queen, it is really improving the experience of reading this book

gayest shakespeare sonnets: a selection

turns out all the sonnets are really gay but here is my list of the absolute gayest ones, because i was not prepared for how explicit these were going to be and it devastated me 

sonnet 20 - this is the ‘master-mistress of my passion’ one

sonnet 22 - ‘Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; / Thou gav’st me thine, not to give back again.’

sonnet 23 - acting metaphors! the difficulty of expressing verbally what silent love hath writ! gazing at your love with your whole heart in your eyes!

sonnet 25 - rich and noble people have joy in honour and wealth and so on but turns out having joy in being gay is way better than that - ‘Then happy I, that love and am beloved / Where I may not remove nor be removed.’

sonnet 26 - begins ‘Lord of my love’ and just gets gayer from there

sonnet 27 - for those nights when u can’t sleep for staying up pining and thinking about him

sonnet 41 - this one’s sad bc his boyfriend is Straying but also love btw a man and woman is explicitly directly made analogous to the love between the speaker and the addressee so like. stop no-homoing the sonnets

sonnet 53 - compare ur bf to both helen and adonis, no big deal

sonnet 57 - this love is the speaker’s WHOLE LIFE and he knows he’s a fool for his bf but he can’t help it

sonnet 61 - another too-gay-to-sleep one

sonnet 71 and sonnet 72 - don’t be sad for me when i’m dead, i’d rather be forgotten by you than have you be sad or be exposed to ridicule over your love for me - please read these ones they make me cry

sonnet 80 - RIVAL POET someone else is writing fancier poems about you!! now what!!

sonnet 87 - ‘Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,’ aka If You Love Someone Let Him Go (sad)

sonnet 91 - i’m not rich or noble but at least i’m not straight, mark two - ‘Thy love is better than high birth to me, / Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, / Of more delight than hawks or horses be; / And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast’

sonnet 93 - ‘So shall I live, supposing thou art true, / Like a deceived husband’ - just comparing yourself to his HUSBAND. bye

sonnet 108 - the reason he’s writing all these sonnets is to immortalise their love for antiquity - ‘So that eternal love in love’s fresh case / Weighs not the dust and injury of age’. also, ‘sweet boy’