One of the first things I noticed upon my second reading of Stardust, was the special attention to detail when it came to setting the story in the Victorian age. Instead of merely giving a year, or utilizing the "once upon a time" beginning, the "time" is specified and described in poetic detail:
"The events that follow transpired many years ago. Queen Victoria was on the throne, but she was far from being the black-clad widow of Windsor: she had apples in her cheeks and the Spring in her step, and Lord Melbourne often had cause to upbraid, gently the young queen for her flightiness. She was, as yet, unmarried, although she was very much in love. Mr. Charles Dickens was serializing his novel Oliver Twist; Mr. Draper had just taken a photograph of the moon, freezing her pale face for the first time on cold paper; Mr. Morse had just announced a way of transmuting messages down metal wires." (8)
Gaiman does a lot through this one paragraph of description. One observation is that he made a point to define which Queen Victoria was on the throne at the beginning of the story. As the Queen set the tone for Victorian society, so her persona as the hopeful young woman of promise lends an air of expectation to the setting before the darker times that were to come, as signified by the "Widow of Winsor."
Gaiman also mentions Dickens, who was a popular, thrilling writer who was publishing, as the quote mentions, serially. This further lends to the atmosphere of expectation. As one waits for a new installment of the latest Dicken's story, so we wait for the beginning of Tristan's story.
The last two figures mentioned, Draper and Morse, were celebrities of science and invention. Their contributions to Victorian culture further lent an air of expectation and wonder, the same kind that we encounter when we find ourselves curious about the queer village of Wall and its inhabitants.
Though these are but small observations, Gaiman's use of Victorianism as a setting for Stardust does a lot of other things in the text as well, and is worth looking into.
Some ideas for this post inspired by the following article: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/collins/
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