Does anyone know of sources sbout the Victorian Times ?

Or get a copy of Ian Gibson's "The English Vice"...

@recruit
Your statement about not creating source material myself is important. The story is meant to entertain not to educate. If it is too 'heavy' nobody will continue reading it, but if there are crucial mistakes at the start people won't read it either.

@Goodgulf
I was mesmerized a bit by your 'The Magistrate' and would lie if I say my decision on the Victorian Times was not influenced by it, Tracy is a really nice and enjoyable character. It made me check out the job description of a magistrate, it's unknown in Germany but we got lay judges to keep the law acting according to public opinion. They vote on 'guilty' or 'not guilty' but don't pass judgement on the penalty/sentence. You normally have teams of a judge and two lay judges with only the judge officially allowed to ask questions. My knowledge is about 30 years old though.


Why do you want to place your story into an unknown time?
A few years ago I read a steampunk novel, it seems steampunk is set in Victorian times and it sounded interesting so I read a few steampunk source books.
Result: The time was much easier. For example, women rights, they didn't exist. I know it's not that easy. For us it sounded like a time that's hard to navigate and corporal punishment lured at every corner. One day I came to a bus stop and a young woman was waiting there discussing life on her smart phone, she wanted to live in the Victorian times because they had such nice dresses. It must be nice to be an airhead.
My plan is to use this scenario as starting point for a 'choose your own spanking' story. Bus stop, reader, airhead and an old woman (probably a Gypsy). The airhead is rude, and the gypsy sends the reader and the airhead back in time, that's where problems start to pop up. While I dislike to add magic it is the only way I seecould work for a 'fantasy' story. The male reader even as head of the household and men were, wouldn't witness a punishment of the airhead it's simply not descend. Punishment of girls was in the job description of a governess. OK, the gypsy could join as governess and act as narrator, the reader can't governess sounds female and for an airhead maid the housekeeper who probably is female too would take action. Which might leave the position of butler for the reader but I guess that I wouldn't be able to write. It might be the right time for the airhead. girls were trained to be airheads I fear.

@thepreacherswife
There is only one problem. I checked amazon.de and no search result on the 1st and 2nd page and I stopped to check .com sinc the it will tell me no ebooks from .com for .de

@Moody I am glad you mentioned Steampunk, because that is exactly the sort of imagined past that has real potential. An alternative 19th century Germany incorporating elements from other cultures such as Britain should make a great theme. If you cannot quite make the story fit the setting, change the rules. Or else construct a situation where the airhead girl was directly answerable to the man and he could plausibly punish her. For example he might be a widower and the airhead the governess to his daughter, or his maid/housekeeper. A respectable German man might not really have made her bare her flesh for a beating by him, but what if a culture had arisen which saw men as entitled to exercise such power?

I agree about the difficulty of making mistakes that are either so glaring as to put the reader off or more likely confuse them. I have been thinking of the example of female clothing. Readers will know that in Europe between 1830 and 1900 all but the poorest women generally wore thick layers of clothing on their lower half often designed to accentuate the shape of their buttocks. If a story has a man putting such a woman over his knee and spanking her, we know that he is going to find it almost impossible to get close enough to her flesh to have any effect. Are we to imagine that the clothes have magically disappeared, or that the man is only pretending to spank her knowing that it will not hurt at all? Most male writers will find it difficult to describe the detail in a convincing way and would generally be well advised to simply have her ordered to undress without any details but remembering that it would take some minutes, or else create a situation such as the bedroom where she was already unclothed. A woman writer, though, might think it helpful to describe just what the woman might be wearing and have the process and humiliation of undressing an important part of the scene setting, but would also be aware that the details of female fashion changed greatly with time, place and status. Such items such as a bustle or crinoline were very specific and does the reader really want to know about them when the undressing is simply there to get the character bare-bottomed to move the plot on? [I apologise for the gender stereotyping here.] Some context matters for the reader to imagine the scene the writer is describing, but writers should best avoid things they don't know much about.

Best of luck. I am sure you are thinking on the right lines and I look forward to reading the results.

I do know a bit about the Victorian era, but don't take that story as factual. The biggest challenge in historic fiction is avoiding anachronisms. For example, there were no ballpoint pens back then. That's a small thing, but it could disrupt the flow of a story. No one knew about UV rays, or sunscreen. Little things like are what you have avoid.

@ Goodgulf
Well I wrote 2 stories so far. Before Christmas I asked about serials on the forum. Flopsybunny said 'Start small' and I thought to myself 'At school I already started small in German' disregarding her advice. Now I had to realize the advice wasn't dumb at all. The stories play in the end 1970ies in 'Psychology 101' no obvious time problem but in 'Psychology 102' I had to realize that the character couldn't simply check the Internet. Since it was only for ambiente the character could check it later. At least as far as I know there was nothing freely available like our nowadays Internet. You still had to go to the library and turn over dusty old tomes
I think ball point pens activate a memory of a mystery series and crime

@ recruit
I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don't plan on a story playing out in Germany or an alternate reality, even though that might be an option to time travel, a definite option that allows to explain any deviation from the traditional Victorian rules. Since this an English site, an alternate Germany is not a viable option though.

If you’re going with steampunk ten I can definitely recommend a series. It’s called The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger, it probably also qualifies as paranormal romance as it also features vampires, werewolves and ghosts. Its protagonist Alexia Tarabotti, is most certainly far from a helpless and air headed female, though. Modern steampunk tends to feature quite resourceful and intelligent women, who use the stereotype of the silly, helpless female to their advantage. Oh, and if it’s steampunk you have to have at least one airship. They’re a staple. For methods of transportation have a look at the concept behind Outlander, which transports a modern woman to 18th century Scotland by means of a circle of standing stones.

@Seegee
When I thought about a 'Choose Your Own Spanking' story I got the Victorian time in mind because when I joined the library I liked reformatory stories. That was caused by an ebook called 'Reform School Swap' where an eleven year old nerd girl and her 21 year old sister a party girl are mistakenly swapped it was unrealistic but fun. Looking for more I got Louis Woodley's 'Hiding in the Academy' and after that, Anthony Alba's 'Reformatory Girls One' His story 'A Computer Glitch?' I deem it the best Reformatory story out there. You are punished with my presence because Goodgulf pointed me at the library when Flopsybunny forwarded an email to R.G. Chilton because of 'Christmas Across The County Line'. I think Hazard County is ingenious. When I started plotting the story I remembered the airhead, one of the people who probably rides 10 stations and when they get off the bus they already have the one they rode together with on their phone. To prevent mistakes like the Spartans wearing dark sunglasses in the Thermopylaes I decided to do some research, and here I am.

Have you looked at RPGs as a source of information? Ones set in the Victorian era, or with steampunk settings can provide a lot of detail on the tech level, social etiquette, and so forth. For example, Call of Cthulhu has a Gaslight Equipment Catalogue which gives details and prices for many items.

There is a non-fiction book by a modern woman, a woman who practices judo, practices in a medical area, and wears a corset 24/7. Yes, even to bed! She has done lots of research about corsets, writes well, and it is a fascinating read all by itself. She destroys many myths about corsets. For example, every economic class of women wore corsets, including women employed outside the home.

It should be an essential for any of you planning a Victorian Era story. Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and Myself by Sarah A Chrisman.

I am disappointed that several writers, good ones at that, minimize the importance of getting historical details right. One well-published LSF writer spent considerable time, when writing a western, to get the marriageable age correct for the Rocky Mountain states, and the type of revolver in use at that period, both within about a 10-year window in the late 1800's. Knowing that this, that any writer, takes care with her details makes the movie in a reader's mind, fantasy albeit, more technicolor. And, the popcorn tastes better!

Ms. Chrisman has written several other books on Victorian Era topics which I plan to peruse. Disclosure: I don't know the woman, had no part in the production of the book, and no one suggested I mention it here.

@ jonmontanavega
I know women were like onions back then, they probably had more skirts than an onion has skins. The Lady's maid had a reason, which went beyond her other job as a hairdresser. . Not to mention the valet its male counterpart. Yeah males were equally lazy. A husband and his wife would delegate the punishment of their offspring to the governess for a reason.