If you think that personal ads and dating services are only 50 or 60 years old, think again.
In a new book titled Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England, University of Missouri Kansas City English Department chair Jennifer Phegley argues that today’s internet dating has predecessors in Victorian personal ads in newspapers, matrimonial agencies, and courtship correspondence groups.
In the first half of Monday's Up to Date, Phegley talks with Steve Kraske about how many of our modern marriage traditions – including wedding dresses and honeymoons – have their roots in the Victorian era and how Victorian ideas of romance may have left us with unrealistic expectations about finding our “soulmates.”
Phegley will discuss her book at the Kansas City Library Central branch on Thursday, February 9, at 6:30 p.m. The event is free; RSVP here to attend.
Jennifer Phegley is associate professor of English at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Mo. Her published works include Educating the Proper Woman Reader: Victorian Family Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health of the Nation; Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present; and Teaching Nineteenth-Century Fiction.
