Browse Items (716 total)

This article essentially gives a beginner's guide to palm-reading or cheiromancy to the reader, instructing them in what all of the different aspects of the hand mean in order to read it "properly." What struck me in "Character in the Hand" is that…

This poem which appeared in the comic and satirical newspaper "Funny Folks" speaks on the subject of cheiromancy (spelled here as 'chiromancy'), and comically reveals the subjective and ultimately false nature of palm reading by telling the love…

The author of this poem is satirizing palmistry in a way not unlike Wilde's criticism in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. The title pokes fun at the idea that palmistry can be a cure for the unwed, or coelebs, searching for wives. The poet mocks Frith's…

This is a comic from the British comic magazine called "Illustrated Chips" which indicates a satirical perspective on receiving information on fate from a machine fortune-teller. This comic mocks fortune-telling as the results of a few fortunes told…

This essay appeared in a periodical about 10 years after Oscar Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime", where the practice of cheiromancy was prevalent throughout the story. This practice of telling how a person is, based off the lines of their hands…

Here we see another colored lithograph, advertising the ‘National Skating Palace.’ The viewer is led to believe this was a highly respected experience for two reasons. Firstly, having a lady, so gracefully skating towards us and inviting us to…

Though not from the Victorian era, this article is about the first horoscope ever put in print. On August 24th, 1930, Scottish publisher John Rutherford Gordon put to print a horoscope for Princess Margaret to commemorate her birth in the Sunday…

St. Gerome was a European artist, who designed the beautifully detailed illustrations for Olive Schreiner's "Dreams". The book itself was printed on hand-made Roycroft watermarked paper, while the illustrations were inked with brown ink. The elegant…

Baby farming is the historical practice of accepting custody of an infant or child in exchange for payment in late-Victorian Era Britain and, less commonly, in Australia and the United States. Amelia Dyer participated in baby farming, but instead of…

The American Woman Suffrage Association was officially enstated in 1869 created by Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, and T.W. Higginson. Published by the American Woman Suffrage Association, Olive Schreiner first released "Three Dreams…