ERO Presents: A Victorian Family Album

Speaker: Professor Jane Hamlett

In Britain today, family history is hugely popular and millions now subscribe to genealogy sites like Ancestry and Find My Past. But it was in the Victorian period that family archiving first became a mass activity. Industrial technologies, new forms of printing, and photography allowed more people to record key life events, make and share images of their families and to commemorate birth, marriage and death. This talk will focus on the family archives of the

The Luards, are a clergy family who lived at Aveley and Birch, whos papers are held at Essex Record Office. We will explore how the Luards used photos, scrapbooks, newspaper cuttings and ephemera to create a powerful family story of private love and loss, public success, and local Essex and national imperial identities.

Jane Hamlett is a Professor of Modern British History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on the history of the family and the home in Victorian Britain. Her most recent book, Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life, co-written with Prof Julie Marie Strange, explored the rise of pet keeping in modern Britain. She is currently working on a new project on Victorian family archiving.