strand magazine Archives - The Skittish Library

This Reminds Me of our Wedding Night, 1894

Comedy vegetables. Never not funny. I see these as a staple of British humour. Medieval peasants surely found most of their laughs from rude veg, and thanks to Blackadder and That’s Life, they reached a certain cultural highlight in the 1980s. The Victorians, despite their dour reputation, were often as skittish as the next man, and they were no exception to the delights of the naughty tuber.

There was a series in The Strand magazine celebrating them. Baldrick would be proud of the turnip below. Especially the second picture of the same turnip with a hat on.

And here are some potatoes:

(Although I suspect Mr Fox’s “duck potato” is ever so slightly doctored.)

Fashion Forward, 1893

Possibly my favourite thing in books is predictions of the future, when their future is your now. It’s a fascinating little insight into the minds of the time, extending on what surrounds them in their present. Sometimes this is strikingly insightful, sometimes it’s just bonkers.

And so here is a rather marvellous, not entirely serious, article from The Strand Magazine, 1893. “Future Dictates of Fashion”, predicted from 1893-1993. What I think it largely shows is that minimalism and simplicity were fairly unimaginable concepts to this particular Victorian. Also, god only knows what they would have made of the actual short skirts that came into fashion long ago themselves now. And the possibility of hat-wearing not being all-but-compulsory anymore.

Interestingly, there is a brief aside on tobacco which just might possibly have been the most ridiculous thing the author was intending.

Apart from that, pretty spot on. I know I was wearing something very similar in 1993. My favourite here would have to be the Mikado-style policeman’s uniform from 1960….