As the Bible is the book of preference for me, I began to wonder what brought the people in the Scriptures to the place where they met the Master. The stories mostly wrote themselves. The hardest person to write about was the demonic from Gadarene. How does a person become so demon-possessed? Why does Jesus say to some, stop sinning? What did they do? They were more than likely doing the same things we are doing today.

The romantic notion of the Cockney, the shrewd and slangy common man coming from nowhere and surviving by his wits, is best exemplified by E.J. Milliken's character 'Arry and the songs he sings. The songs and stories, as well as the character of 'Arry, were Milliken's vehicles for social criticism, namely the intolerance shown by the aristocracy. Those songs, colorful additions to Victorian history and humor, tell the story of 'Arry, a commoner who is enamored of the social hierarchy, but is keenly aware how close the top and bottom rungs are. Central to the themes of the songs is the Cockney whose pride is his dialect. Confidence in the face of the class system and withering social criticism make memorable the songs of 'Arry and Milliken. This work analyzes the Cockney ballads and contains extensively annotated lyrics for the songs. Each chapter is dedicated to a facet of the everyday life of the common man in Victorian England, including relationships with women, travel and war, and are prefaced with a short analytical history of the period which also places the songs in context.

On October 15, 1880, with great excitement and fanfare, two Sarah Bernhardts set sail for New York from Le Havre for a theatrical tour of the United States. One wanted to introduce French culture to a backward country, and the other wanted to make money. As an actress, she behaved in a fashion that amused and scandalized her audiences, and as a woman, she was an unwed mother and a shrewd businessperson. Bernhardt's multiple personas and ""otherness"" were what fascinated the American public; her name, her eccentricities, and her genius had already made her world famous. Sarah Bernhardt's first American theatrical tour, from her arrival in 1880 to her return to Europe in May 1881, is chronicled here. She traveled as far west as Kansas City and as far south as New Orleans, all the while sparking cultural commentary about her performances, her artwork, and her lifestyle. This book provides an overview of the contemporary reviews, caricatures and satires, considers Bernhardt's reception by the American press and American audiences, and discusses the way in which the Bernhardt iconography was created and the assumptions that underlie it.

As the Bible is the book of preference for me, I began to wonder what brought the people in the Scriptures to the place where they met the Master. The stories mostly wrote themselves. The hardest person to write about was the demonic from Gadarene. How does a person become so demon-possessed? Why does Jesus say to some, stop sinning? What did they do? They were more than likely doing the same things we are doing today.

The so-called "New Woman" -- that determined and free-wheeling figure in "rational" dress, demanding education, suffrage, and a career-was a frequent target for humorists in the popular press of the late nineteenth century. She invariably stood in contrast to the "womanly woman," a traditional figure bound to domestic concerns and a stereotype away from which many women were inexorably moving.

Patricia Marks's book, based on a survey of satires and caricatures drawn from British and American periodicals of the 1880s and 1890s, places the popular view of the New Woman in the context of the age and explores the ways in which humor both reflected and shaped readers' perceptions of women's changing roles.

Not all commentators of the period attacked the New Woman; even conservative satirists were more concerned with poverty, prostitution, and inadequate education than with defending so-called "femininity." Yet, as the influx of women into the economic mainstream changed social patterns, the popular press responded with humor ranging from the witty to the vituperative.

Many of Marks's sources have never been reprinted and exist only in unindexed periodicals. Her book thus provides a valuable resource for those studying the rise of feminism and the influence of popular culture, as well as literary historians and critics seeking to place more formal genres within a cultural framework. Historians, sociologists, and others with an interest in Victorianism will find in it much to savor.