Redefining the region

This searchable database makes it possible to get to know much more about local colour in the long nineteenth century, in the form of media illustrations and literary texts. Who were the artists making illustrations of the region for the press? What kind of images of specific regions were made, and what did these illustrations focus on? Who were major local colour authors from this period, and what regions did they write about?

These are questions that you can explore through the data collected here. It is possible to search on names, titles but also on regions. This helps you to see how the region you are interested in was imagined at the time, or to find out what texts about this region were written.

The database also incorporates a map search that can be filtered, and makes it possible to compare the cultural production of regionalism over a selected period, or in connection to specific countries, provinces and even municipalities.

Regions and their communities and traditions were immensely popular during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Regional culture was central to the visual arts and was displayed at various world exhibitions which took place between 1851 and 1913. Newspapers published reports about ways of living in localities at home and abroad. Especially from the mid century when illustrated news became common, these periodicals provided their readers with glimpses of life in regions such as Friesland, Cornwall, The Black Forest, Brittany, Andalusia and Dalarna.

What is more, literary fiction about regional life was a widely read genre, and helped consolidate the reputation of authors such as Thomas Hardy, Jacob Jan Cremer, Berthold Auerbach, Selma Lagerlöf, Giovanni Verga and Alphonse Daudet.

What makes this flourishing production of cultural representations of the region even more interesting is that they travelled across national borders. Literary works were translated, or reprinted in special editions for the transatlantic market; illustrations of regions were reprinted in different national contexts, and authors of local colour fiction were reviewed in the foreign press.

This searachable, open access database was developed as part of the project Redefining the Region: The Transnational Dimension of Local Colour funded by the Dutch research council NWO through a VICI grant (VI.C.181.026; PI: Prof. Marguérite Corporaal).

Developed at Radboud University