About
Our Project: The Map of Victorian Literary Sociability
The Map of Victorian Literary Sociability is an open-access tool that seeks to map the spatial networks of Victorian writers, artists, editors and publishers. The map geo-references the residences of these cultural figures in order to examine how propinquity may have facilitated careers and collaboration in nineteenth-century Britain. We hope that this project will shed particular light on how nineteenth-century women were able to construct careers. In Victorian London, women were not always welcome in the spaces of the club or the publisher’s dinner, but they did have opportunities to network in each other’s homes and at literary soirees. This project tracks the movements and networks of a variety of Victorian cultural figures in urban centres and far beyond.
This interdisciplinary project combines the knowledge of those working in English and Geography in order to develop a methodology for geocoding Victorian addresses. Historical geocoding brings with it the complexities of sparse information at the building level, changes in street names and addresses, and completely altered or reconstructed areas. However, newly digitized resources, from census data to fire insurance maps, are enabling us to piece together a fuller picture of who lived where in Victorian Britain. Our open access guide to nineteenth-century geocoding is available here.
A caveat: most of the addresses you see on this map are geocoded to the exact building, but in some cases not enough information exists to pin down the exact house, and the pin appears on the centre of the street, neighbourhood, or town that the historical figure lived in. Similarly, while we have striven to be as accurate as possible in terms of the dates that a person occupied a residence, in some cases we do not have exact dates. We have recorded these uncertainties in our metadata, and invite those intending to use our database for research purposes to download our data. We welcome anyone with more specific knowledge on the residences of a historical figure to contact us and help us refine our data by contributing a person or address.
Special thanks to the Orlando Project, who have generously shared expertise and spatial data on Victorian women writers throughout the development of this project. This project was made possible through a Mellon subgrant administered by Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary. We are especially grateful to John Brosz, Tom Hickerson, Christie Hurrell, and Ingrid Reiche for their financial and intellectual support of this project.
Our Team

Dan Jacobson
Associate Professor, Department of Geography

Peter Peller
Director of the Spatial and Numeric Data Services, Libraries and Cultural Resources

Sonia Jarmula
English MA

Hannah Anderson
English MA

David Lapins
Geography BSc

Kaelyn Macaulay
English BA
Contributors
Sarah Bilston, Trinity College
Abigail Burnham Bloom, Hunter College, CUNY
Alison Booth, University of Virginia
Susan Brown, University of Guelph
Alison Chapman, University of Victoria
Sharon Cogdill, St. Cloud State University
Sarah Comyn, University College Dublin
Sondra Cooney, Kent State University
Amy Cote, University of Toronto
Richa Dwor, Douglas College
Denae Dyck, University of Victoria
Caley Ehnes, College of the Rockies
Jana Smith Elford, University of Alberta/University of Ottawa
Kailey Fukushima, University of Victoria
Ali Hatapçı, Université Paris 7
Alison Hedley, Mcgill University
Kathryn Holland, MacEwan University
Christopher Keep, Western University
Alyson J. Kiesel, Carthage College
Andrea Korda, University of Alberta
Mary Elizabeth Leighton, University of Victoria
Paisley Mann, Langara College
Susan Jaret McKinstry, Carleton College
Janice Niemann, University of Victoria
Robert O’Kell, University of Manitoba
Carolyn Oulton, Canterbury Christ Church University
Michele Robinson, University of North Carolina
Phyllis Weliver, Saint Louis University
Jason Wiens, University of Calgary
Miranda Wojciechowski, Indiana University