Hello! I have spent a lot of time talking about stuff my characters are reading lately and have mostly been picking muggle stuff that is published IC. So here is a thread to share the love, and by 'the love' I mean 'books for your throwaway sentences.'

1888 - Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward
  American Utopian socialist fiction where someone time-travels into the future. I've actually read this one so if you want more details lmk?

I will be back later

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   Aldous Crouch, Amelia Evans

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MJ made this!

Oh this is my thing.

Treasure Island was in 1881-2

Sherlock Holmes has appeared briefly already but gains popularity in 1891!

Emily Dickinson's poems were published in 1886!

  

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MJ made this <3

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865! So not while we've been operating, but I've mentioned it IC lol

  

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MJ always makes her so pretty

this isn't a book but Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me was first published in 1862 and was already being called an "old adage."

  

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Lou made this! <3

1891&1892 - Tess of the d'Ubervilles. It was given mixed reviews and considered 'scandalous' because it "challenged sexual morals" of the VE. Which partially meant that people back then were shocked at the idea of a SA victim being just that: a victim wronged by those around her.

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   Cassius Lestrange, Elias Grimstone

Things happening on the muggle London communist scene around now, aka some recs from Jude & friends:

— So Marx died in '83 but Engels was still kicking around London at this time and published Vol II of Das Kapital from Marx's notes in 1885.
— Das Kapital part one came out in 1867 (in German) and only in an English translation in 1887.
— Engels' own The Condition of the working class in England (1845, German) finally had an English translation in the 1880s (but was published first in New York and the edition in London in 1891!).
— Also Engels (not in English yet, but exists, Jude has probably struggled through the German): The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, about bourgeois marriage, relationships, inheritances, the enslavement of women, etc.
— Annie Besant had written a fair amount by this time, including the pamphlet Why I Am a Socialist (1886).
— Also The Fruits of Philosophy by Charles Knowlton (1832) became famous in Britain after 1877 when Annie Besant was tried for co-re-publishing this pamphlet on birth control; the trial obviously made it a bestseller lol.

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   Cassius Lestrange, Reuben Crouch

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Not a book, but Scheherazade the symphonic suite was first performed in 1888, so it can totally be played by a wizard orchestra at de Montfault theatre!

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   Cassius Lestrange

Carmilla, for all your lesbian vampire needs
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde exists
The French version of "The Wolf Leader" by Dumas is published, but the English version is 1904. (Most of Dumas' stuff is published but double check for English translations.)

  

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set by MJ!

From wikis timeline of LGBT history in the United Kingdom: "1885 – A collection of the poems of Sappho were translated and published in English by Henry Thornton Wharton as Sappho: Memoir, Text, and Selected Renderings. Wharton maintained a homosexual interpretation of “Ode to Aphrodite”."

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   Cassius Lestrange, Elias Grimstone

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Oh Nimiane Delaney has written a few in a magical version of Jane Austen. I've always canonned that they are very popular among women.
The Whispering Winds, 1880
A Companionable Silence, 1883
Miss Sibille Blythe, 1885
A Tale of Cauldrons, 1887
Star Crossed, 1889
Waves of Time, 1890

  

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom

Wasn't quite sure where else to share this but why does this first English description of an opossum sound like a Barnaby Wye quote? XD

“An Opassom hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bagge, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and sucketh her young.”

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   Barnaby Wye

Wasn't quite sure where else to share this but why does this first English description of an opossum sound like a Barnaby Wye quote? XD

“An Opassom hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bagge, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and sucketh her young.”

thank you kit for the headcanon I didn't know I needed of barnaby once meeting an opossum, omg

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   Roberto Devine

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The Bronte Sisters published their works under pseudonyms in the late 1850s.
The greek classic: Xenophon's The Persian Expedition was a common adventure read for little boys during this time
1790-1794: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women and A Vindication of the Rights of Men
The Travels of Sir John Madneville, Canterbury Tales, and Macro Polo's The Travels had been around since the middle ages
In the late 1700s Alexis De Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America.
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Gerald of Wales' The Journey Through Wales/The Description of Wales were floating around at this time.
If someone were interested in Roman history at this time they may have read Tactitus's Annuals of Imperial Rome or Juluis Ceasar's works on invading Europe (whose name is escaping me).
For the philosophy minded there is also Saint Augustine's Confessions.
And for Russian Lit:
Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky - 1866
War & Peace by Tolstoy - last volume in 1867
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy - published in installments between 1875-1878
The Brothers Karamzov by Dostoevsky - 1879-1880
The Death of Ivan Illyich By Tolstoy - 1889