Introduction: Seeing how the Victorians saw -- Terms of art : reading the Dickensian gallery -- The difficulty of historical work in the nineteenth-century museum and the Thackerayan novel -- "Truly it was astonishing" : the exhibition, the sensation novel, and the culture of the spectacular -- "The interesting subject of the art of the future" : Thomas Hardy and the historicity of taste -- Conclusion: Rethinking how we see the Victorians.