Victorian Web

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Overview

The Victorian Web

The Victorian Web,or the Dicken's Web as it was previously known, is a hypertextcollection of essays on British Literature, history and cultureduring the age of Victoria (1837-1901). While the site focuses onthe Victorian period, there is some relevant material both prior toand after this period which are also included. For example, theIndustrial Revolution began before the period but is still includedas it gives some background information for the IndustrialRevolution which occurred in the nineteenth century. Furthermore,the Victorian Web is not just about Britain, it also includescomparative material from outside of the United Kingdom such asiron in Agriculture and technological advances in other parts ofthe world such as Austria, Australia, the Czech Republic, France,Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Italy, Malaysia, Nigeria,Portugal, Vietnam, and the United States.

Audience and Purpose

*The Victorian Web was initially created as a resource for students in Victorian Literature classes at Brown University by students and staff under the direction of Dr. George Landow. At the beginning it was only staff and students at Brown University who helped develop this resource. As the site expanded and moved to a more accessible platform, the popularity of the Victorian Web grew. Many people not associated with Brown University began contributing their work and the site became more of a scholarly resource available to many scholars. Due to the popularity of the site it is open to anyone with an interest in the Victorian period. In October 2009, George Landow began laying the framework for the French and Spanish versions of the site. At the moment only a few topics are translated in French and only the main page in Spanish, but it is an ongoing project envisioned to be complete in three years.

History

The Victorian Web was created as an internet resource for students studying Victorian Literature at Brown University.George P. Landow, a Professor of English at Brown Universitydesigned and edited the initial site using Intermedia, a hypertextauthoring and reading environment no longer available. UnderLandow, David Cody wrote general materials and digitized images.Glenn Everett, also under Landow, wrote basic documents on Romanticand Victorian poets and timelines. Kathryn Stockton helped theproject by creating documents on feminism and literary theory. Thefirst contributor to the Victorian Web outside Brown University wasAnthony S. Wohl, a professor at Vassar College. He contributeddocuments on Victorian public health, race and class issues, andanti-Catholic prejudice in the Victorian period.

In 1992 the Victorian Web underwent a change as all thedocuments were transferred into Storyspace since Intermedia ceasedto be accessible. The next year David Stevenson rearranged all thedocuments into approximately their current forms. He built andlinked all works??? overviews and created a sitemap. In 1994students in Landow???s Victorian literature class were able tocreate new documents for the web which were later added to the storyspace.

1995 saw another major change to the project as Marc Zbyszynski began manually recreating in HTML all link menus that storyspace generates automatically so that theVictorian Web could be moved to the World Wide Web. In the sameyear, Landow created the icons and designed the layout of the HTMLversion of the site.

It was not until the turn of the century that the Victorian Websaw major funding. In 2001 the University Scholars Programme andthe National University of Singapore sponsored the VictorianWeb???s two servers, one in the United States and the other inSingapore until 2008. The University Scholars Programme also fundedscholars in 2001 to work on the books section and the documents onscience, technology, and political and social history.

Technologies

Intermedia's Web View

The Victorian Web was first created using Intermedia, an advanced hypertext system,created by the Institute for Research in Information andScholarship (IRIS). The IRIS was established to explore new uses ofcomputing technology in research, teaching, and learning. IRISwanted to create new ways for people to create, retrieve andorganize information. However, IRIS only lasted from 1983 to 1994.Intermedia was an object-orientated program that ran on a Unixbased system. Multiple users could access the same document whilesomeone was editing it. One of Intermedia's important featureswas the Web View, an advanced navigation tool which reduces thechance of getting lost.

The Victorian Web then got transferred to Storyspace whenIntermedia ceased to be supported. Storyspace is a hypertext writing environment used for creating large, complex, and challenging hypertexts. While other hypertexts emphasize visual presentation, Storyspace emphasizes writing, linking and organization.