Well that depends on your setting.
Does it include magic or is it strictly technology? How big of a sector does electricity take in, does electricity exist at all (as a usable source)?

OP here
Electricity's gonna be pretty out of the picture, and magic's gonna be more in the guise of the supernatural, kinda like aetherial... well... stuff.
Kinda real-world pre-electric victorian tech, really.
The Airship's gonna play a pretty important role in the story i'm writing, so i figured i should really come up with some details regarding it first.

Well there aren't really that many possibilities, especially since you said no Steampower.
It could be muscle-powered, basically you ride a bike that is hooked up to the propellers.

Alternative: Aether (depends on what characteristics you give Aether)
You could have Aether be a highly compressable gas. Releasing the Aether gives you push.

Just look at our world, the most used ways to get energy is to burn shit that boils water and use the rising air to turn generators. Water-power is essentially the same. Shit flows by turbines that are hooked up to generators.

You anchor your airship, and instead of using your propellers to move the ship, let the wind move the propellers. Wind power.

You could store the power in salt water Leyden jars, or crude batteries.

I really like the idea of wind power.
mightgo with that. cheers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP6UH4Vuxsc

look up wood gasifier on youtube.com, gasifier may be spelled differently than what I have here, basically it's heating wood enough to release combustable gasses, but not enough to burn the wood itself.

2 words: Zero Point
look it up

How about having the propellors powered in a manner similar to the way a wind up watch works by releasing energy stored in springs? Your airship could have a section of deck filled with laborers turning wheels similar to the ones that ships used to use to hoist up their anchors. As crew members turn the wheels, it compresses one of two giant springs that run the length of the ship. The springs are in turn connected via (insert some kind of clockwork device here) to the propellors. While the first spring is decompressing and powering the propellors, the crew is winding the second spring with the wheels. When the first spring is fully decompressed, the ship switches the propellors over to the second(now fully compressed) spring, and the crew begins compressing the first spring again. Repeat the process and you have a power source for your airship.

Or...related and less probable...power is stored as potential energy in weights connected to pulleys a la pendulum clocks. Actually, maybe not so implausible. Upon liftoff, release all the tethers except for a single tension cable wrapped around a drive shaft. The lift of the airship envelope draws out the cable, rotating a drive shaft that 'winds up' the power system (either weights or springs - I prefer the springs idea), storing the energy for release in flight.

why not use a turbine and boiler?

Steam powered cars had very small, mostly self-contained boilers that didn't burn the car, or the people sitting on the seat above the boiler. The only limitation of actually flying with steam really is the fuel weight, just as it is with rotary engines. You can use turbines or wiz-bang engines that are only slightly different than the combustible-fuel types.

Steam made sense because you could direct the expended steam to provide heating to keep you aloft. In that final extraction, the condensate would be collected and used for feed water again.

maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it called steampunk because its based around STEAM engine technologies?
What if you used steam created from the by product of a hydrogen fuel cell and the fuel cell it's self could be the power source for the electric heater that heats the water up?

Actualy, no. Another word for it is gaslight fantasy. Like victorian era sci-fi.
Not everything in the victorian era was steam powered.

Whale oil for the win!