What are we to make of the Victorians’ fascination with collecting? What effect did their encounters with the curious, exotic and downright odd have on Victorian writers and their works? The essays in this collection take up these questions by examining the phenomenon of bric-à-brac in Victorian literature. The contributors to Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians: From Commodities to Oddities explore sites of unusual concurrence (including museums, the home, art galleries, private collections) and the way in which bric-à-brac brought the alien into everyday settings, the past into the present and the wild into the domestic. Focusing on the representation of material culture in Victorian literature, the essays in this volume seek out miscellaneous and incongruous objects that take readers beyond the commonplace paradigms associated with commodity culture. Individual chapters analyse the work of writers as different as Edward Lear and John Henry Newman, Robert Browning and George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll. In so doing they shed light on a dizzying array of topics and objects that include class and capitalism, the occult and the sacraments, Darwinism and dandyism, umbrellas, textiles, the Philosopher’s Stone and even the household nail.

This book is for every living being with a soul: eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mouth to speak the wondrous words only a living Spiritual Guide could give. It's another book of my poetry written from the 1980's through the 1990's. It's bold and descriptive, involving the developing maturity of my Spiritual life. Although my experiences weren't unlike many others, they were MY experiences and my poetry expresses them with a clarity that I've found very enlightening over time, and in my 60th year of life I realize my talents have far exceeded my own expectations!

In my on-going attempt to participate in this world that our Saviour has created, I have been given a unique advantage that many may envy me, and others like me, for--the ability to express thoughts in a poetic manner. You are witness to these special insights of hope, faith, love, honor, and life. Volume 6 is an amalgamation of all previous Volumes plus it has its own cryptic messaging, which your thirst for knowledge and inspiration may find valuable.