the strand magazine Archives - The Skittish Library

Just like today, Victorian magazines were interested in celebrities. The Strand Magazine had a series called “Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times in their Lives”, showing a range of paintings, photographs and biographical information over the person’s life. 1890s celebrities, however, seem to pretty much be either members of the nobility or clergymen, like some kind of Jane Austen fantasy.

I like seeing pictures of the children who would become Very Important Men. Infants had their own clothing styles which to us look extremely feminine – as seen here with The Duke of Wellington and the Bishop of Worcester in an issue from 1894.

The Duke seems to morph from Mia Farrow to Thomas Walsh of The Duckworth Lewis Method in 45 years.

Any excuse to link to the divine Duckworth Lewis Method, frankly! Here’s “Test Match Special”, a little cricket-pop treat for you (Neil Hannon 4 Eva):

The Strand magazine was an iconic, long-running magazine which was such an institution in its day that when it finally ceased publication in 1950, the news was announced on the BBC by a newsreader supposedly wearing a black armband.

I have a number of bound early editions from the 1890s and what strikes me is that they’re not only still an interesting read, but also they have really set a lot of the tone still seen in subsequent magazines. There’s the very Victorian serial short stories (the Sherlock Holmes stories were famously first published here) but also a lot of true crime, “celebrities”, humour, amusingly shaped vegetables, and this, the “Beauties” series. Dreamy pictures of young ladies (and also “Beauties – Children”) for the readers perusal. Note the subtly androgynous nudey drawing on one page – a subliminal way of emphasising what a lot of the male readers may have been thinking, perhaps?

Madame Laura Schirmer-Mapleson rather stands out. I love her confident grin at the camera but she’s not the standard slightly ethereal young lady. However, she was something of a celebrity – she was an opera singer (as was Madame Sigrid Arnoldson). Although, sadly, she died of pneumonia the following year.

Incidentally, if you’re interesting in reading more, there’s a great resource to look up huge numbers of public domain issues of The Strand here – https://archive.org/details/TheStrandMagazineAnIllustratedMonthly