Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Accessory Vices

Updated on January 17, 2013 by Elena Greene

A few days ago I went into DSW to the clearance section looking to see if I could replace some everyday sandals that have gotten a bit ratty this summer. I didn’t find my sandals, but I came out with these. They begged me to take them home with me; they fit, they’re my favorite color and they’re sparkly. Just right for running around Price Chopper!

I don’t know if I would have had a shoe thing during the Regency. Ladies’ shoes tended to be simple, kind of like ballet flats we might wear now. Here is an example from the Northampton Central Museum, found on the footwear page at Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion (one of my favorite online resources on Regency costume). These shoes are circa 1810 and leather, so not quite as delicate as they might look. Styles became plainer (and more round-toed) as the era progressed. Although flats are cute, there is just not enough variety for me to want to collect them.

I suspect that hats were the accessory vice of choice for many Regency ladies. However, many styles of hat that I like on other people don’t look good on me. So I rarely wear hats, but when I do, I have a simple crocheted wool hat for winter and a straw cloche for summer. I wouldn’t be able to pull off any of these elaborate styles from 1811. I’d end up wearing something small and simple. Cute, but one or two would be enough.

So my vice of choice would probably be jewelry. I probably have even more pairs of earrings than shoes, though that isn’t as expensive as it sounds. I like costume jewelry best; it’s often as pretty as the “real” stuff and I don’t have to fret about losing it.

During the Regency, I think I would be happy with paste and pinchbeck. Paste was the term for a type of glass that was cut to resemble gemstones. It takes a better eye than mine to distinguish the stones in these earrings from diamonds.

Pinchbeck was an alloy of base metals that looks enough like gold to please me. I’ve long admired this set of earrings from www.georgianjewelry.com, one of my favorite places to window shop for my heroines.

Do you have any accessory vices? If you were a Regency heroine, how would you spend your pin-money?

Elena

www.elenagreene.com

www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged accessories, Georgian jewelry, regency bonnets, regency hats, Regency jewelry, shoes | 9 Replies

Welcome Syrie James

Updated on January 17, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I’m thrilled today to welcome Syrie James, one of my favorite Austenesque authors. Syrie is giving away a copy of her latest book, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, to one person who comments today.

S Syrie JamesAuthorPhoto2011 - Credit William James yrie James is the bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels, including The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë, Dracula My Love, Nocturne, Forbidden, and The Harrison Duet: Songbird and Propositions. Her books have been translated into eighteen foreign languages. In addition to her work as a novelist, she is a screenwriter, a member of the Writers Guild of America, and a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California. Connect with her on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Syrie’s talking about a subject close to the Riskies’ hearts today–research. Take it away, Syrie….

The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James I had done a great deal of Austen and Regency era research when I wrote my novel The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, an education which has been enhanced over the years by additional reading and by JASNA’s many fun and informative conferences and meetings. I’d visited England many times including a wonderful, self-guided Jane Austen tour several years before.

To add to that background, I paid great attention to the story structure, character types, character arcs, locations, situations, and themes of Austen’s novels, to ensure that the book would fit within her canon, and be the kind of novel she might have written. I immersed myself in research about life in the Regency era. I pored over the annotated versions of Austen’s novels edited by David M. Shapard, finding valuable information about the world and the language in the annotations themselves. I re-read Jane Austen’s letters again and again, because they are full of a wealth of small details.

The novel also required research into a variety of additional subjects related to specific aspects of the story. I found a friend and Londoner who was kind enough to research obscure facts for me, such as clerical stipends and the cost of nineteenth-century bell forging. She also read the first draft of the manuscript to make sure it didn’t contain any egregious Americanisms.

For the modern day story, I worked with a doctor to hammer out and verify the medical details, such as Mary I. Jesse’s condition, the subplot regarding Samantha’s doctor boyfriend, and the back story regarding her mother’s illness. I worked with a university Special Collections Librarian to understand Samantha’s current occupation, and with an English professor to gain insight into Samantha’s teaching background.

I contacted Oxford University for details regarding their doctoral program. I researched the sales records for the most expensive manuscripts ever sold. I studied the way sales are conducted at Sotheby’s Auction House. And of course I continued to re-read Austen’s novels the entire time I was writing, to keep her voice in my head!

Question of the day–what’s YOUR ideal research trip?

Update: Entries open until Saturday 12 midnight EST.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Jane Austen, Research | Tagged Syrie James, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen | 15 Replies

GRAVE MATTERS

Updated on January 17, 2013 by Laurie Bishop

An add from The Wooler’s British Gazette in 1822 (partial text)*:

“Many hundred dead bodies will be dragged from their wooden coffins this winter, for the anatomical lectures (which have just commenced)…the only safe coffin is Bridgman’s Patent Wrought-iron one… Those undertakers who have IRON COFFINS must divide the profits of the funeral with EDWARD LILLIE BRIDGMAN.”*

It seemed that the bodies of executed prisoners was in short supply, forcing surgeons and students to seek bodies by other means. This meant that if one were interred in an ordinary wooden coffin, there was a good chance that the churchyard would not be one’s final resting place.

Physicians were willing to pay a good price for dead bodies, and hence the growth of the business of the “Resurrection Men.” A body snatcher could deal his way to a higher price by threatening to sell his bodies elsewhere. On occasion, a particularly interesting specimen could bring a pretty penny…in 1783 a young Irish Giant named Charles Byrne, in the process of dying and having heard that his body was desired by a Scots surgeon named John Hunter, took every precaution to insure the safety of his body after death–but Hunter at last parted with the outrageous bribe of L500 to obtain Byrne’s body. If you would like an even more ghoulish note, so frightened was Hunter that his prize would be stolen from him in turn that he immediately boiled the flesh from Byrne’s body in the dead of night and preserved the skeleton.**

Obviously, moonlight was not the friend of the body snatcher. Complete darkness was needed to carry out the work. Additionally, it became necessary to have a scout at the gravesite, at the end of services, to spot any traps…then once it was dark, the robbers quickly dug down to the head-end of the coffin, broke through and pulled the body out head-first, disturbing the site as little as possible. One disposed of the grave-clothes also, as the punishment for being caught with a corpse wearing grave clothes was much greater than being caught with a naked body.***

But graveyards were not the only source of bodies, particularly as the demand grew and graveyards became more guarded. Bodies were obtained by subterfuge from workhouses and such places…and eventually, even by murder.

A murderous pair named John Bishop and James May worked London’s East End in 1831 until a suspicious surgeon called the police. They were tried and convicted, and their own executed bodies were delivered for dissection. **** Unfortunately for them, or perhaps because of them, the Anatomy Act passed short months later, doing away with the practice of giving the bodies of the executed to the executioner for disposal. Eventually, the practice of donating bodies for medical practice and research lost its negative connotation, and the “Resurrectionists” went out of business.

So there’s a spooky bit of history for the season…Happy Halloween!

Laurie

*Low, Donald A., The Regency Underworld (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999) p. 77
**Ibid p. 80
***Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993) p. 254
****Hughes, Kristine. Everyday LifeVictoriancy and vicCincinnatiand (Cincinnatti: Writer’s Digest Books, 1998) p. 65

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged Resurrectionists | 5 Replies

Are They . . . Or Aren’t They?

Updated on January 17, 2013 by megan

This year, my son is going out trick or treating for Halloween dressed as the Grim Reaper. Apropos of nothing, but it does demonstrate the allure the Dark Side* has, even for six year-old boys (maybe especially for six year-old boys).

Villains. In some romances, villains are two-dimensional characters set on one thing (Revenge/Rape/Disgrace/Financial Gain/Name Your Poison). They are obvious in their intentions to everyone but the oblivious hero and/or heroine, and they are what makes some well-written love stories go down the tubes for me.

And you would think writing about evil would be so easy! And fun, too! After all, Milton spends oodles of time writing about Satan, and Satan comes off as much sexier and fun than the other guy. Satan talks about his choice of Hell as a residence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, that serve in heav’n

For me, the best villains are those characters whom you can’t tell are villainous from their first appearance on the page. What are their motivations? How will they attempt to achieve them? And then, when the book is over and all is revealed, you can reflect on how the villain fooled everyone, including the reader. Shakespeare says it better than I do:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Villains who end up being heroes or vice versa appear in Edith Layton’s False Angel and The Duke’s Wager, Mary Jo Putney’s The Diabolical Baron, Falling For Chloe by Diane Farr, Lady Sophia’s Lover by Lisa Kleypas, Bliss by Judy Cuevas . . . the list goes on and on (for more villains, check out All About Romance’s Special Titles Listing on Villains, which gives details about who becomes a hero/heroine in subsequent books).

I think that uncertainty is why we are fascinated by Harry Potter’s Professor Snape (the six year-old and I are reading Prisoner of Azkaban now), as well as Gollum from LOTR. My own private obsession, HBO’s Deadwood, features a masterful villain in the character of Al Swearingen–he’s murdered, stolen, and lied, not to mention swearing all the time, and yet there are times when you root for him.

Villainy can be scandalously sexy.

Which is why, this Halloween, you’ll be seeing many more devils**, witches, vampires, and werewolves than Good Samaritans, pilgrims progressing, Mother Theresa, and Gandhi.

Thanks for coming over to the Dark Side with me for a moment,

Megan

*Cara, I promise I had nothing to do with my son wanting to dress in a long, black robe.
**After six years of being a witch, my son made me switch to dressing as a lady-devil. I bought my red sequin horns, tail and pitchfork yesterday.

Posted in Reading, Research, Writing | Tagged villains | 7 Replies

eeek…things that go bump in the night

Updated on January 17, 2013 by Janet Mullany

regency style and just in time for Hallowe’en…the gothic novel, a very popular genre that began in 1764 with the publication of The Castle of Otranto by Hugh Walpole, and ended in 1820 with Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin.

The influence of the gothic novel is still with us today; its elements creep into films and novels, and the contemporary “gothic romance” is enjoying a comeback. So what is it about gothics people liked (then and now), other than a good scare and the idea of the TSTL heroine creeping around dark passages and wearing only her nightie?

They feature exotic, often Italian settings, sinister castles and abbeys–something very popular in the regency era , when landowners commissioned picturesque ruins and follies to grace their landscape. As well as the good scare, they have a strong moral twist of justice done and wrongs avenged, with one or two people, usually the hero/heroine or a narrator (like Robert Walton, the narrator of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), who lives to tell the tale, and with whom we can identify. In some cases, as in Wuthering Heights, the matter-of-fact tone of the narrator (Mr. Lockwood) serves to strengthen the supernatural elements; if a twit like Mr. Lockwood can hear the ghostly Cathy at the window, then it must be true. The monsters, real or imagined, are instruments of justice or revenge, like Frankenstein’s monster, or Conan Doyle’s hound in Hound of the Baskervilles, written in 1902 but drawing strongly on the gothic tradition.

I have a soft spot for gothics since the hero of my book Dedication, Adam Ashworth, publishes gothic novels under the name of Mrs. Ravenwood, and I had a lot of fun creating purple passages to head each chapter. I based most of them on the work of the gothic novelist I know best, Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. She published bestsellers beginning with The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), skewered by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The scene where Catherine explores an ancient chest and finds a laundry list is pure gothic pastiche. And remember the horrid veil?

Ah yes, the horrid veil.

If you’ve read Udolpho (it’s still in print) you’ll certainly remember the scene where the heroine discovers the veil and draws it aside (she’s creeping around a secret passage at the time, having been kidnapped to a mysterious castle) and swoons in horror at what she sees. It’s a tremendously effective scene. Every time she remembers it, which is fairly often, there’s a frisson of terror. And so on through the book. You’re still wondering. The references to the horrid veil become less frequent toward the end and you begin to wonder if Mrs. R has forgotten about it. Oh, surely not. Because if you were a character in a gothic who was denied such knowledge you know you’d go mad, or go into a nunnery, or have to pretend to be a ghost or some such. Then, when you’ve almost given up hope, Mrs. R. delivers, sort of. Busy tidying up the odds and ends of the novel, she reveals, in one throwaway sentence, that what the heroine saw behind the veil was the wax effigy of a worm-ridden corpse. Huh? I believe there’s a reason for the wax effigy being there–possibly a warning for visitors to keep out of the secret passage–you couldn’t expect the owner of a castle in a gothic to do anything sensible like post a “Keep Out” or “Servants Only” sign.

OK, enough from me. What do you like about gothic elements? Have you used them in your books? What gothic-influenced novels do you like? Could you write one with a straight face?

Janet

Posted in Reading, Regency, Research, Writing | Tagged ghosts, Gothic novels | 9 Replies