Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar, and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, Burton spoke 29 languages.
Captain John Hanning Speke was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria.
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
Mountains of the Moon is a legendary mountain or mountain range in east Africa at the source of the Nile River. Various identifications have been made in modern times, the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo being the most celebrated.
Spring-heeled Jack is an entity in English folklore of the Victorian era. The first claimed sighting of Spring-heeled Jack was in 1837. Later sightings were reported all over the United Kingdom and were especially prevalent in suburban London, the Midlands and Scotland.
Henry de la Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford,, styled Lord Henry Beresford before 1824 and Earl of Tyrone between 1824 and 1826, was an Irish peer. Referred to as the "Mad Marquis", he is also remembered as an eccentric.
Ægypt is a fantasy tetralogy written by American author John Crowley. The series describes the life and work of Pierce Moffett, a history professor who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle Hermetic manipulations among the Faraway Hills at the border of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Mountains of the Moon is a 1990 American biographical film depicting the 1857–1858 journey of Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke in their expedition to Central Africa, which culminated in Speke's discovery of the source of the Nile River and led to a bitter rivalry between the two men. The film stars Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as Speke. Delroy Lindo appears as an African whom the explorers meet.
Events from the year 1837 in the United Kingdom. This marks the beginning of the Victorian era.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1888), subtitled A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, is the only complete English language translation of One Thousand and One Nights to date – a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age – by the British explorer and Arabist Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). It stands as the only complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition of the "Arabian Nights".
Events from the year 1858 in the United Kingdom.
we can conquer India; ...but we cannot clean the River Thames.
Jane Barlow was an Irish writer, noted for her novels and poems describing the lives of the Irish peasantry, chiefly about Lisconnel and Ballyhoy, in relation to both landlords and the Great Famine.
Charles Augustus Howell was an art dealer and alleged blackmailer who is best known for persuading the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti to dig up the poems he buried with his wife Elizabeth Siddal. His reputation as a blackmailer inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".
Strange Affair may refer to:
Sunny South, an extreme clipper, was the only full-sized sailing ship built by George Steers, and resembled his famous sailing yacht America, with long sharp entrance lines and a slightly concave bow. Initially, she sailed in the California and Brazil trades. Sold in 1859 and renamed Emanuela, she was considered to be the fastest slaver sailing out of Havana. The British Royal Navy captured Emanuela off the coast of Africa in 1860 with over 800 slaves aboard. The Royal Navy purchased her as a prize and converted her into a Royal Navy store ship, Enchantress. She was wrecked in the Mozambique Channel in 1861.
Mark Hodder is an English author, since 2008 living in Spain. His six-part series of 'Burton & Swinburne' steampunk novels opened with The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack, which went on to win the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award. The following two novels, The Curious Case of the Clockwork-Man and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, were released in 2011 and 2012 respectively to wide acclaim from fans of the genre, with the latter nominated for a Sidewise Award. His fourth novel in the Burton & Swinburne series, The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, was also nominated for a Sidewise Award.
Eugène Maizan was a French Naval lieutenant and explorer, possibly the first European to penetrate East Africa and the first to enter tropical Africa from Zanzibar. In 1844-1845 Maizan reached as far as the district of Dege la Mhora, on the Uzaramo plateau about 80-150 kilometers from the coast, where he was seized by Zaramo tribesmen under Hembé, the son of Chief Mazungera, and bound to a calabash tree before being tortured, mutilated and murdered. Hembé amputated Maizan's limbs and sliced off his genitals while still alive before beheading him. Hembé later claimed to be acting on the orders of Arab ivory traders.
Rev. Lord John Thynne was an English aristocrat and Anglican cleric, who served for 45 years as Deputy Dean of Westminster.
The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring Heeled Jack is a non-fiction book by Peter Haining, published by Frederick Muller in 1977. It is notable for being the first full-length book about the Spring-heeled Jack legend, but is notorious for its numerous uncited claims and fabrications, being the earliest identifiable source of several elements of Spring-heeled Jack fakelore.
