Dr. Alexis Easley, a professor of English and chair of the Departments of English and Communication Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, is the editor of a new book — Shopping as Comedy: A Victorian Scrapbook.
Published by Routledge, the volume is a critical edition of a Victorian scrapbook, composed of cuttings from advertising images from the 1880's. The images in the book are arranged in hand-drawn domestic spaces and embellished with watercolor details. At the foot of each page is a handwritten running text, written by an unknown Victorian author, that provides a narrative to explain the accompanying images. It also includes four original short stories. The satirical commentary on late Victorian shopping and commodity culture provides insight into the interests and responses of consumers during this period.
In the introduction, Easley wrote: "During the early Victorian era, scrapbooking was a popular leisure-time activity for middle- and upper-class women. When composing albums, women repurposed scraps from cheap newspapers and periodicals, altering, arranging and embellishing these materials in inventive, personally meaningful ways. Their albums incorporated poetry, jokes, articles, recipes, along with a wide variety of visual materials."
She added that "women were not just gullible consumers of advertising copy. Scrapbooking provided a means of actively engaging with print culture... Women used printed scraps not only to tell stories about their daily lives and experiences, but also to respond critically to commercial print culture - the advertisements that aimed to construct their identities and consumer desires."
