Update: Due to concern for the spread of COVID-19, the Victorian Society New York will be rescheduling all spring events. We will continue to monitor developments and remain grateful to all who are working to mitigate this health concern. Thank you for your understanding. VSNY is making plans for its annual "Emerging Scholars" event this […]

  Wednesday, September 30, 2020 6:00 PM - 7 PM EDT on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. ABOUT THIS EVENT Join Baruch College history professor Vincent DiGirolamo in a discussion of his award-winning pictorial study of Victorian America’s most omniferent and unshushable creation: the newsboy. DiGirolamo will visually trace […]

Display of James Carr, a Father of the American Ceramics Industry, at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial   Monday, October 12, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. English immigrant potter James Carr (1820–1904) operated a factory on Manhattan’s west side from 1855 to […]

A Conversation with Stephen Berkman and Stacy Renee Morrison about Photography, Shimmel Zohar, and Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander Wednesday, October 28, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom   About this Event Predicting the Past, Zohar Studios: The Lost Years Predicting the Past takes us on a discursive journey through the nineteenth century into […]

Women's stories of the Civil War told through letters, diaries, pension files, and newspaper and government reports. Wednesday, November 11, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. ABOUT THIS EVENT During the American Civil War, women on both sides of the conflict, radiating […]

  Two New Books Shed Light on 19th-Century Complicity and Activism Monday, November 16, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. About this Event Congress banned American participation in the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, but fifty years later the United States was […]

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. ABOUT THIS EVENT Once called "the first artist of her sex in America," Eliza Greatorex emigrated from Ireland and went on to document the Hudson Valley, NYC, Colorado, Germany, France, Italy and Morocco […]

Transformations in Department Store Design, 1880–1920   Thursday, December 17, 2020 6:00 PM – 7 PM EST on Zoom Post-Event Update: A video recording of this lecture can be found here. About this Event This talk will time-travel to the department stores’ golden era when display professionals transformed the shopping experience through design innovation. At the turn […]

Tuesday January 19, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST   About this Event Edgar Allan Poe has a firm place in history as the father of American horror, authoring the poems and short stories we are well versed with today like ‘The Raven’ and the ‘Cask of Amontillado’. What many may not know is […]

Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer   About this Event Trained as a stained glass artist, the Glasgow native Daniel Cottier (1838-1891), by age thirty-five, had created a worldwide network of large shops where one could buy everything for the elegant home--. from furniture to fabrics; from chandeliers to fine china, and from paintings to stained […]

Monday, February 22, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST About this Event Highlighting new findings from her biography, Unceasing Militant, Alison Parker will share how Mary Church Terrell’s family history of enslavement and of opportunities and dangers during Reconstruction helped shape her activism. The Oberlin College graduate became an educator and served as the […]

Submission Deadline: March 10th, 2021     Emerging Scholars Lecture Event: May 10th, 2021 The Victorian Society New York invites university student historians and recent graduates to submit proposals by March 10 for its annual "Emerging Scholars" event, to be held by Zoom on May 10, 2021. The Victorian Society New York, founded in 1966, supports scholarship about […]

About this Event Historian Francesca Beauman, author of Matrimony, Inc.: from personal ads to swiping right, a story of America looking for love (2020), explores the history of personal ads in New York. One Thursday morning in 1861, a woman named Ethel placed an ad for a husband in the New York Herald. She explained that she […]

Wed, March 17, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event DOCTORS BLACKWELL looks closely at the sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, English immigrants who, in quick succession, became the first and third women, respectively, in the U.S. to earn medical degrees—and who, in 1857, founded the very first hospital staffed by women, […]

Tue, March 30, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event Pamela Colman Smith’s illustrations for the Rider Waite tarot deck are known to millions worldwide, but her many other contributions as an artist, folklorist, editor, and suffragist have received relatively little attention until recently. She was active from the 1890s through the […]

Wed, April 7, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event Before there was Isadora Duncan, there was Loïe Fuller (American, 1862-1928), the American creator of modern dance. A ground-breaking inventor, she created a completely new spectacle that combined dance, light, fabric and movement, premiering it at the Folies Bergère in Paris in […]

Alice Austen, The Age of Innocence, and Ice Skating and Fashion   About this Event   Winners of the Victorian Society New York's annual Emerging Scholars contest will speak on a fascinating array of topics. Margaret Simons, a collections and development specialist at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island, earning her master's degree in […]

Wed, September 22, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT   Two new books shed light on 19th-century sea journeys for refuge seekers. About this event Before the Civil War, Irish and Black people escaping horrific conditions in their homelands arrived at New York's harbors via sea passages, which are the subject of groundbreaking new […]

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT The reinstalled Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Collection at the Delaware Art Museum. About this event In August of 2021 the Delaware Art Museum completed a five-year reinterpretation and reinstallation plan for the collection of Pre-Raphaelite art assembled by turn of the century Quaker industrialist Samuel Bancroft. With […]