Jane and the Waterloo Map: Guest Post by Stephanie Barron + Grand Giveaway!
Today, I am very pleased to welcome award-winning author Stephanie Barron with a fabulous post on Jane Austen and Carlton House. To celebrate the release of her new novel, Jane and the Waterloo Map, Stephanie is also hosting a Grand Giveaway. Details after the post![…]Continue Reading
Literary Obituaries: Death Notices for Austen, Byron, Brontë, and Dickens
Today, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens are generally recognized as four of the greatest authors in English literature. But how did their contemporaries view them? Were their works appreciated? And how did the 19th century public feel when three of them, still in their prime, met an untimely end? To discover the answers to these questions, one might delve into the legions of biographies written over the years or have a look at their letters, journals, or contemporary reviews of their poems and novels. However, since it is less than a week until Halloween, I thought we might instead take a brief look at their obituaries.[…]Continue Reading
Aphrodisiacs, Elixirs, and Dr. Brodum’s Restorative Nervous Cordial
(Image Courtesy of The Wellcome Library, CC BY 4.0.)
During the 18th and 19th century, patent medicines were everywhere. These various powders, potions, elixirs, and cordials were primarily peddled by quacks, some of whom purported to be doctors from respected universities like St. Andrews in Scotland. The claims they made on behalf of their products were extraordinary. According to advertisements of the era, a restorative cordial or tonic could do practically anything, from curing dropsy in children to curing impotence in men and hysteria in women. Some even proclaimed that they could cure a fellow of the desire to engage in that “solitary, melancholy practice” so common to the male sex (i.e. Masturbation).[…]Continue Reading
Shawls and Wraps in 19th Century Art, Literature, and Fashion History
From the Regency era to the end of the 1860s, there was no fashion accessory as versatile and ubiquitous as the shawl. Available in all weights of fabrics, including silk, lace, muslin, and cashmere wool, and priced for all budgets, shawls graced the shoulders of women in every strata of society. They were no less well-represented in art and literature of the day. Shawls were referenced in the novels of such literary luminaries as Elizabeth Gaskell and William Makepeace Thackeray. They were also featured in countless portrait paintings, draping the figures of fashionable 19th century ladies of every age.[…]Continue Reading
Elizabeth Bennet, La Belle Assemblée, and Early 19th Century Fashion
“Votaries and observers of fashion, but not her slaves, we follow her through her versatile path; catch her varied attractions, and present her changes to our readers as they pass before us in gay succession.” La Belle Assemblée, 1812.
Somehow, I cannot picture Elizabeth Bennet reclining on the drawing room sofa, idly flipping through the pages of the latest issue of La Belle Assemblée or The Lady’s Magazine. And yet, if she had indulged in a bit of frivolous fashion magazine perusal, what advice might she have read there and what images might she have seen?
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813. The story itself begins in the year 1811 and concludes at the close of 1812. In June of 1812, Elizabeth Bennet is home at Longbourn, anxiously awaiting the July arrival of her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, who are to take her travelling in Derbyshire. Whenever Mrs. Gardiner visits Longbourn, she delivers to her country relatives “an account of the present fashions” in London.[…]Continue Reading
