P. Nicole King

Black Victorians/Black Victoriana is a welcome attempt to correct the historical record. Although scholarship has given us a clear view of nineteenth-century imperialism, colonialism, and later immigration from the colonies, there has for far too long been a gap in our understanding of the lives of blacks in Victorian England. Without that understanding, it remains impossible to assess adequately the state of the black population in Britain today. Using a transatlantic lens, the contributors to this book restore black Victorians to the British national picture. They look not just at the ways blacks were represented in popular culture but also at their lives as they experienced them—as workers, travelers, lecturers, performers, and professionals. Dozens of period photographs bring these stories alive and literally give a face to the individual stories the book tells.

Nicknamed both “Mobtown” and “Charm City,” Baltimore is a city of contradictions. To help untangle those apparent paradoxes, Baltimore Revisited assembles over thirty experts, both from inside and outside academia. Together, they find that the city has become ground zero for neoliberal policies, but also home to intensely engaged resistance movements.