Every time there’s a heavy rain, the sewers overflow into the river itself. The river’s full of refuse. The fish are dying. All they need now is an unusually hot May, and the Great Stink of 1858 could replay itself.. The program is called Costing the Earth.

And did you know that this coming week, May 5 – May 12, is Canadian Children’s Book Week? In celebration of children’s books, my friends at Young Kingston have organized a group signing at Novel Idea Books on Sunday, May 6. I’ll be there from 3 to 4 with the award-winning Ann-Maureen Owens. Hope to see you there!

It’s 1862. You’re a sixteen-year-old girl. What are your choices like in Victorian England? Click here to read the full essay.

My theme for this blog tour is Victorian Obsessions and some of my research for it led me to a series of poems I haven’t thought about since I was a PhD student: Modern Love, by George Meredith. Modern Love is actually a sonnet sequence – a chain of fifty connected poems, each with the same rhyme scheme and all on the same subject.

That’s already ambitious. Yet Meredith goes further. Most sonnet sequences are about love – the development of a romance, the triumph of true love, pure and passionate. But Meredith turns this around completely, because Modern Love is about the breakdown of a marriage; his own marriage. Here’s the first 16-line sonnet, “By this he knew she wept with waking eyes”:

By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:

That, at his hand’s light quiver by her head,

The strange low sobs that shook their common bed

Were called into her with a sharp surprise,

And strangled mute, like little gasping snakes,

Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay

Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away

With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes

Her giant heart of Memory and Tears

Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat

Sleep’s heavy measure, they from head to feet

Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,

By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.

Like sculptured effigies they might be seen

Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;

Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

This sonnet blows me away every time I read it. It’s ruthless and violent, fiercely radical and brutally effective. I’d never guess that it was written in 1862; to me, it sounds more like 1962. And it’s a great reminder – especially to me, since I’m now writing about “the Victorians” and invariably generalizing a bit – that every era has its startling exceptions.

What do you think of the poem? Are there other exceptions (Victorian or otherwise) that it calls to mind?

As well as a blog tour, I’ll be having a launch party in Kingston to celebrate the publication of Traitor. Hurrah! The details:

Saturday, March 3, 2012, from 3 to 5 pm

Novel Idea Books, 156 Princess St, Kingston

If you’re local, I’d love to see you there!

All around the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel.

The monkey thought it was all in fun,

Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,

A penny for a needle,

That’s the way the money goes.

Pop! goes the weasel.

But then I got thinking about the British version, which is the one my husband grew up singing:

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle.

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle,

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel.

If you’re as history-obsessed as I am, you will found yourself looking for meaning even in traditional children’s songs. The explanation I like best involves, coincidentally, the Victorian period. If you know that “pop” is a slang term for “to pawn” and that “weasel” is Cockney rhyming slang for “coat”, then the lyrics suddenly make sense. This isn’t just an odd little nursery rhyme featuring lively weasels; it’s about grinding urban poverty. Go ahead, check it out!

This grittiness makes me like the song even more. How about you?

This is a reader’s choice award for ages 11-15, it’s linked to a great reading-promotion program in Ontario schools, and the whole thing culminates in a 2-day gala at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. The craziest part, though? Being in the company of writers I think of as superstars, like Kelley Armstrong. And Gordon Korman, for crying out loud, whose work I loved as a kid. Plus, there are writers on the shortlist whose work I don’t know, but am really looking forward to discovering (click here for full shortlist). It’s all a bit dizzying.

But enough diva-ish fluttering. There are thousands of resources, both print and online, that I used when writing the Agency books. This is because my research began long before I thought of writing a novel, back when I was working on a PhD thesis in Victorian literature and culture. And that’s the beautiful, maddening, addictive thing about research: you start in one place and end up light years away, with pages upon pages of facts and anecdotes that probably won’t make it into the finished work. And it doesn’t matter, because you’re the richer for having read them. It’s brilliant.

But it’s also a pretty unhelpful thing to say here. But there are some books and sites that I go back to very regularly, and those are the ones I’ll share here today. Without further ado:

Online Resources (no particular order)

I adore Lee Jackson’s Dictionary of Victorian London, a compilation of primary sources (that is, sources from the Victorian era). It’s addictive reading; I dare you not to spend four times as long there as you’d intended. Don’t miss the “Flash Dictionary” of slang!

The Old Bailey Online archives the proceedings of London’s central criminal court, from 1674-1913. Again, utterly addictive and a fantastic window into Victorian crime. My friend John Nicholls first told me about to the site. Thanks, John!

The Times Archive is just that – a searchable archive of every article published in that newspaper, from its launch in 1785. You have to pay for access, unless you belong to an institution (eg, university) that subscribes.

The Victorian Peeper (I know – sounds vaguely rude) is an truly wonderful blog written by Kristan Tetens, “a historian of nineteenth-century Britain based in twenty-first century America”. It’s an endless delight and offers links to previously unknown sources, such as the one below.

Hidden Lives Revealed is a sometimes heartbreaking archive of case files and photographs of orphans at the Children’s Society, 1881-1918. The photographs are particularly illuminating.

The Victorian Web is an academic site with about 40,000 short articles on the Victorian period. Many of these were written by Brown University undergraduates and some aren’t 100% reliable, but it’s a terrific starting point and most of the essays have a partial bibliography for further research.

Print Resources (alphabetical by surname)

Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. 2001. An authoritative history of the city.

Flanders, Judith. Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain. 2007. Wonderful social history and a window into real people’s lives.

—. The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed. 2004. You wouldn’t think a book about domestic life could be gripping, but this is. One of my favourite non-fiction books, period.

Picard, Liza. Victorian London. 2005. A lively general overview, but if you’re already deep into the era, you can skip this one.

Ross, Ellen, ed. Slum Travellers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860-1920. 2007. Letters and reports from reform-minded ladies of the period. Great for contemporary flavour.

Smith, Stephen. Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets. 2004. Useful chapter on Victorian burial practices.

Sweet, Matthew. Inventing the Victorians. 2002. Debunks a lot of tenacious myths about Victorian culture and morals.

Tomalin, Claire. The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. 1990. Definitive biography of Dickens’s long-time mistress. It’s also a sparkling social history and portrait of theatrical life.

Wilson, A.N. The Victorians. 2002. Authoritative, sometimes infuriating, interesting.

Wilson, Bee. Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats. 2008. Gripping stuff – the chapters on “food adulteration” are wonderfully, horribly vivid.

This is a longish blog post but a very short bibliography. Don’t forget the goldmine at the back of nearly each of these books: the notes and bibliography, which will lead you in all kinds of wild new directions. I hope you have a blast!

Then, Booksmuggler Thea reviews Body, calling it “another winning, impeccably well-written historical mystery”. Huzzah!

Thanks so much for joining me on this blog tour. Regularly scheduled blogging returns on Thursday, when I continue my English adventures. See you then!

And over at Teenreads, I’m dispensing bad advice. Ever wondered How Not to Be a Writer? I’ve got tips for you!

Fortunately, it’s not all about me. The Body at the Tower blog tour is at Steph Su Reads today, where I guest-post about Notorious Victorian Joseph Merrick – aka the Elephant Man – and the way he used celebrity as a survival strategy. His is a tragic but also smart and fascinating story.

Steph then reviews Body: “damn if the pages didn’t nearly catch on fire…” *evil cackle from smug author*

There is no real-world launch party today, but stay in touch: I’m planning an online launch party in September. Details to follow.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to celebrate.

Mariah also reviews Body. As she warns, you’re in for “slight spoilers for first book. And possibly some fangirling.”

I’ll see you tomorrow – which is, by the way, the OFFICIAL PUB DATE for Body! – at Steph Su Reads with part 2 of Victorian Celebrities.