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One of the joys of writing historical fantasy is mining the past for tidbits and obscure events on which to hang a story…and one of the best places to do that is the wealth of magazines and other periodicals that … Continue reading
Marissa Doyle
One of the most interesting people I “met” over the course of doing research for Evergreen is Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, known as “Mamie” to her friends. Mamie Fish, along with her frenemies Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs, was one … Continue reading
Over the course of doing research on 19th century vocabulary, I ran across a fascinating fact about one of the most common casual expressions in use in modern times—“okay”. Or should I say “OK”? If I want to be 19th … Continue reading
I’m going to post a word, and I want you to tell me what mental image you get when you read it. Ready? Penknife. So what picture did you get in your mind? Maybe an object with short blades that … Continue reading
It’s easy to assume that crazes are a modern phenomenon. But the 20th and 21st centuries by no means have a monopoly on them. As far back as the middle ages there were dance crazes, religious fervor crazes (one of … Continue reading
Spring has arrived, according to the calendar. The bulbs in my yard seem to agree…except of course it just had to snow the day after I took that picture! In the 19th century, it wasn’t just the early spring bulbs … Continue reading
One of the most engaging and romance-novel-like yet true stories of the 19th century has to be that of a lady named Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith, whose long and busy life took her from Spain to … Continue reading
This is a brief article from the April 3, 1824 edition of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, which was sort of the Reader’s Digest of the day, containing a variety of articles often reprinted from other journals as … Continue reading
I ‘m really quite glad that the phenomenon of txt–that truncation of words and phrases used when the cost of sending data was a lot higher than it is now–has mostly fallen by the wayside. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m … Continue reading
It’s amazing what you can find when you clean out a bookcase. Recently my mother was doing just that, and found an old issue of Heritage, the British history magazine, from February/March 1990. Naturally she saved it for me so … Continue reading