Well, have you? Swan Upping is the traditional census-taking of Mute Swans on the River Thames, wherein swans are rounded up, checked for bands or banded, and released. The king or queen of England, by ancient law and custom dating … Continue reading
I am an avid collector–and reader–of nineteenth century media. Give me an 1816 La Belle Assemblée or an 1810 Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts and Sciences, and I’ll be happy for hours: though the serialized fiction featured in them can be … Continue reading
One of the joys of leafing through the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a marvelous compendium of early 19th century British slang, is running across expressions and figures of speech still in use today that you would never guess were … Continue reading
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
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
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
Not too long ago I posted about the engraving of a wonderful reading chair that appeared in the early 19th century magazine, Ackermann’s Repository, but this print may just win the prize…not only for itself, but for what the editors … Continue reading
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, a popular weekly magazine published in London between 1822 and 1847, ran the following short piece in its November 26, 1825 issue which got me giggling–I hope it will do the same to … Continue reading
