You'll need a lot more information than that. When and of what type was the wiring last upgraded? What are the walls made of?

You may need a whole house upgrade or you may need a few drops added to circuits. If your not skilled in electrical work you need to hire a pro.

Battery operated would be fine for a closet where you only need a few minutes of lighting at a time but they won't be sufficient lighting for hours at a time.

Adding wiring is usually the best answer. In many old Victorians you can pull the baseboards and install wiring behind them with fairly minimal disruption. Good electricians can often do wonders pulling wires to new locations with just a few holes in the wall/ceiling.

You can do battery operated lighting. With some of the outdoor lamp and chandlier options now, you can have some pretty nice lighting that lasts for weeks or months before you need to replace the batteries. Many of them can easily last for several hours if you need them to. If you have a window in the room that gets good sun, you might even find a solar version that charges itself during the day. Most summer things are either on sale or clearanced out already, so you might have to do more looking online than in stores.

Are you needing to do this as a more temporary thing till you get more proper house wiring done, or are you planning on this as the full lighting so you don't have to change the house wiring if you don't need to? Something more like just a bedside lamp, or full lighting for the room, or something else?

Thanks for your response. I'm doing this as a temporary measure until we get the house rewired (which could be a while) and I need bedside lighting, maybe 2 sconces. I love the battery idea, just wasn't sure if the power would be strong enough for reading.

Get a back-lit Kindle or similar. Reading in bed solved.

IMO if the wiring needs doing do it NOW not later .