Victorian Bloomsbury: Talk with Rosemary Ashton

Thursday, 18 October 2012

Bishopsgate Institute, 7.30pm
In the 19th century, before the era of Virginia Woolf and her famous circle of writers, Bloomsbury was already the undisputed intellectual quarter in London. In this talk Victorian Bloomsbury author Rosemary Ashton brings to life the educational, medical and social reformists who lived and worked in Victorian Bloomsbury and who led campaigns for education, emancipation and health for us all. This is an insight into a little-known aspect of 19th century London.

Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, London
Tickets: £8 (£6 concessions). Buy tickets here.

More about 'Victorian Bloomsbury'

While Bloomsbury is now associated with Virginia Woolf and her early-twentieth-century circle of writers and artists, the neighbourhood was originally the undisputed intellectual quarter of nineteenth-century London. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival resources, Rosemary Ashton brings to life the educational, medical, and social reformists who lived and worked in Victorian Bloomsbury and who led crusades for education, emancipation, and health for all.

Ashton explores the secular impetus behind these reforms and the humanitarian and egalitarian character of nineteenth-century Bloomsbury. Thackeray and Dickens jostle with less famous characters like Henry Brougham and Mary Ward. Embracing the high life of the squares, the nonconformity of churches, the parades of shops, schools, hospitals and poor homes, this is a major contribution to the history of nineteenth-century London.