Research help?

[zinfic]

Dear smart people on my f-list!
When writing a story set in Victorian London in the late 19:th century, where is one most likely to fail in regards to gender/class/race/etc? I have a ton of research to do for this thing and I need somewhere to start.

Also - resources?

Comments

[anyanka_eg]

If you have specific questions ask me and I'll ask my mum who knows everything about everything with regards to history. She'll love helping you. She might even beta it for you, if you want a history pedant to read it :-)

She has access to all the census surveys and can look at what people were living on which streets. Might not be what you need but it does let you know where certain trades congregated, how many people were crammed into slum housing or how many servants families had.

Tell you what might be good is this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0753820900/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R17CWA2E0P1VT3

I'll ask mum if she can recommend anything to give you a real flavour of the period, bookwise. I suggest the Sherlock Holmes books, maybe a couple of Dickens (A Christmas Carol perhaps), Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman, can't think of anything else.

[zinfic]

Thank you! That would be much appreciated. It's a Sherlock Holmes fanfic (can't resist holmes_big_bang) so the period would be the 1880:s. I've just started doing research and I anticipate a long list of questions before I'm done. Maybe I can call on you and your mum for the ones I can't find the answers to myself, or hoist off on my own history teaching mother?