Miniatures and Victorian Fiction

A new book studying the miniatures and Victorian fiction:

Worlds Beyond
Miniatures and Victorian Fiction
by Laura Forsberg

Yale University Press

ISBN: 9780300233810

Publication Date: May 11, 2021

An innovative study of how the Victorians used books, portraits, fairies, microscopes, and dollhouses to imagine miniature worlds beyond perception

In 1856, Elizabeth Gaskell discovered a trove of handmade miniature books that were created by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë in their youth and that, as Gaskell later recalled, “contained an immense amount of manuscript, in an inconceivably small space.” Far from being singular wonders, these two-inch volumes were part of a wide array of miniature marvels that filled the drawers and pockets of middle- and upper-class Victorians. Victorian miniatures pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge, mechanical production, and human perception. To touch a miniature was to imagine what lay beyond these boundaries.

 

In Worlds Beyond, Laura Forsberg reads major works of fiction by George Eliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll alongside minor genres like the doll narrative, fairy science tract, and thumb Bible. Forsberg guides readers through microscopic science, art history, children’s culture, and book production to show how Victorian miniatures offered scripts for expansive fantasies of worlds beyond perception.

One of the chapters mentioning the  Brontës is "Speculative Fictions: World Making in Glass Town and Wonderland".  Next June 16, the author will present her book at the Atheneum of Philadelphia:

In 1856, Elizabeth Gaskell discovered a trove of handmade miniature books created by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë in their youth that, as Gaskell later recalled, “contained an immense amount of manuscript, in an inconceivably small space.” Far from being singular wonders, these two-inch volumes were part of a wide array of miniature marvels that filled the drawers and pockets of middle- and upper-class Victorians. Victorian miniatures pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge, mechanical production, and human perception. To touch a miniature was to imagine what lay beyond these boundaries.

In this illustrated talk, Laura Forsberg guides listeners on a lively trip through Victorian literature, microscopic science, art history, children’s culture, and book production to show how miniatures offered scripts for expansive fantasi
es of worlds beyond perception.