AJVS 28: 1 (2024) Special Issue on 'Water', no. 2

Welcome to a substantial new issue, and one that demonstrates the richness of the theme of ‘Water’. This time last year we released a special issue on this topic, featuring a variety of creative and scholarly responses to Victorian engagements with the subject. Following a conference at the University of Adelaide last November, more contributions came in. 

Here water again emerges as a central aspect of Victorian experience. In the articles which follow, it is a physical phenomenon – as it was for educators in Adelaide promoting healthy schools for boys, or for Antarctic explorers who found themselves constantly overwhelmed by ice. In fiction, the rivers of India challenge locals and colonists alike in the novels of Flora Annie Steel, while water’s various manifestations in George Gissing’s Thyrza have a major impact on the novel’s eponymous heroine. Water takes on some metaphorical resonance in these novels – and even more so in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic poem Aurora Leigh, and the correspondence and fiction of woman-of-letters Geraldine Jewsbury.

This issue contains more some non-watery elements as well, with articles exploring how novelist Frances Browne deploys an able-bodied male narrator to highlight aspects of disability, as well as how a funeral monument reveals the inter-relationships of three notable Victorian women. 

Finally, there are three reviews of thought-provoking recent monographs. Thanks are due too to the retiring reviews editor, Alison Bedford, for commissioning and editing these. 
I am grateful to all contributors, including for their patience over the last months.

Joanne Wilkes
4 December 2024