Back in late 2024, I had a big history study urge. I wanted to do the Victorians again, as I really enjoyed A102, an introductory history course I did with the Open University to begin my BA, back in 1994. I found most of the course, after thoroughly messing up my room opening loads of boxes. I definitively have too much stuff (but never too many books). Re-reading the book has been very interesting.
I am much more opinionated about history and attitudes and academic study now than I was then (my early 20s). I still really appreciate historical methods, only way to go to get some approximation of facts and interpretation of them; but I don’t have patience with a lot of the way things are phrased. I realise I am much more comfortable coming at history through art than only discussing primary sources. The art – novels, paintings, music etc – leads you directly back to the primary sources, which I seem to find a lot less objectionable and cold than simply going straight for the primary sources. Primary sources can feel almost without context; whereas art produced at the time, with a thorough understanding of those who wrote/drew/painted/composed it as you can have (for your bias and theirs) with the time available to you to read/watch; feels so much more grounded and enmeshed to me. Art produced at the time, of course. The background, the mileu, you get a greater sense of it if you include art, of any kind.
I found myself arguing quite judgementally and arrogantly with the book, writing little caveats and comments all over it in the margins; not so much because I was disagreeing with it – many points of view and ways of approaching the texts were given, but simply because I seem to …be a hell of a lot more argumentative now (my early 50s). Whodathunkit??
Some of the primary sources were excellent and eye-opening (and sad), like Mayhew. Some of the long extracts from history books were stimulating, like Bedarida.
I skimmed the last chapter, as I realised I really want to move on to the Literature
primer, and also some of my other OU textbooks about the Victorian Novel. I also blame Pretty Little Liars for this – my sudden January rewatch
is making me feel literary; they are all about American novels and plays – which I am
also itching to re-read – but I want to get a bit lost in Georgian and Victorian
England, the real and imagined.
What can
I say? The apocalypse is a bit nigh; so
I’ll read whatever the hell I like – I’m going to roam all over the place with
my reading till it all burns. A happy way to spend some time when I'm not worrying about anything and everything. I may get back to you with more thoughts as I read. I realise I've again been absent a while. Life, work, having nothing to say, y'know; the usual.
