Victorian Christmas Decorating, featuring Frosted Branches and Gilded Acorns
There’s nothing more quintessentially Christmas than a Victorian Christmas, complete with mistletoe, tinsel, and candles on the tree. But there was more to Victorian holiday decorating than tinsel and candles. Just like us, many Victorians had a fondness for glitter and gold. In my new Victorian Christmas romance A Holiday By Gaslight, there’s a scene in which the guests at a country house party decorate for Christmas by gilding acorns and artificially frosting the tips of holly and ivy leaves with crystals. These Victorian decorating ideas didn’t originate in my fevered authorial brain. They were actual methods used to create glittering, gold-flaked, holiday cheer.[…]Continue Reading
A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty Paperback Release Day!
Today my non-fiction fashion history book A Victorian Lady’s Guide to Fashion and Beauty is out in paperback in the United States! It’s already available everywhere else in both ebook and paperback. I apologize that it’s taken so long for it to be available in the U.S. (and I doubly apologize if it’s already back-ordered here). […]Continue Reading
Victorian Dining Etiquette: Common Sense Advice for Eating in Company
With the holiday season well under way, it seems an appropriate time to review a few of the many Victorian era rules for dining in company. The etiquette of the table hasn’t changed a great deal over the years. Some rules are merely a matter of basic common sense. Nevertheless, we could all do with a refresher now and then. To that end, I’ve gathered ten tips from various Victorian era etiquette books and articles addressing the basics of dining etiquette. I present them to you below.[…]Continue Reading
Victorian Advice on Civility Toward Women
(Private Collection)
Nobody likes to be shouted at or spoken to in an abusive, combative tone. In the Victorian era, however, such behavior was especially distasteful when engaged in by a man and directed at a woman. Men were generally larger in size and more powerful in position. It was their duty as gentlemen to treat women with respect, whether those women be the lowliest of servants or the grandest of ladies.[…]Continue Reading
An Informal Afternoon Tea: Etiquette, Fashion, and Excess in the Late 19th Century
(© Dundee Art Gallery and Museum)
During the late nineteenth century, an afternoon tea was one of the most informal entertainments to which a fashionable lady could invite her friends and acquaintances. The menu was simple, as were the dress requirements, and etiquette only required that a guest stay—at minimum—half an hour. It was an easy method of entertaining and one that soon grew in both popularity and extravagance, leading an 1895 edition of Table Talk to declare that the once inexpensive ritual had evolved into “a party in the daytime…[a] large, gas lighted ball at five o’clock where half of the ladies were in décolleté dresses, the other in fur tippets.”[…]Continue Reading
