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The Victorian era was a time of excitement. It was the age of travel, exploration, scientific discovery and the dawning of photography. Both adults and children were introduced to the natural world through a large number of educational publications in which various species of wildlife from insects to elephants were anthropomorphized so as to have greater appeal to the general reading public. Voracious collecting of all manner of plant and wildlife was extremely popular at that time. In my mind, the elephant's foot umbrella stand is the quintessential object that defines the era, for it is exotic yet grotesque. For the insatiable Victorian collector nothing was sacrosanct. In the heyday of collecting, the prestige of a large collection and the finest and most unusual specimens was enormous. While men of science worked in the field collecting, the wealthy sponsored expeditions and were great accumulators.

Yet a strange contradiction existed, for as enthusiastic as the public was about Sir Richard Burton's discovery of the source of Nile and other exotic exploits, they were also captivated by the idea of and belief in fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories and surely a master of logic, was a proponent of the existence of fairies. The publishing of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1848 was embraced by Victorian anthropologists, for they interpreted it as an explanation of fairies as a separate and savage race.

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Jennfier Angus's site.