• It's wedding season - here's a look at the architectural design of 19th c. wedding cakes.
• Tabloid-style gossip from 1782: Gen. George Washington revealed to be female!!
• Gambling in London's most ruinous gentleman's clubs.
• Historical how-to: how to make a hedgehog cake.
• Image: From an 18th c. lady's magazine: "women are, naturally, envious of each other."
• George Dodd's Spitalfields, London, 1842.
• Guaranteed to devour your weekend: huge database of largely forgotten pulp magazines from 1900-1940s.
• Misinterpreting Jane: Austen, romance, and the media.
• Rejection letters: how clueless publishers snubbed eleven great authors.
• "Fire burne and cauldron bubble": online exhibition devoted to witchcraft.
• The original fancy jeans - Levi's Spring Bottom Pants, 1905.
• Delightful hand-tinted postcards from 1950s Sweden.
• Image: Start the day off with a raspberry colored silk round-gown from Italy, c. 1790s.
• Testing confirms that book in Harvard's law library is in fact bound in human skin.
• Top ten strangest miracles of the Middle Ages.
• World's oldest pair of pants (3,000 years!) discovered in China's Tarim Basin.
• The Victorian secret language of flowers.
• Cherries are in season! Try Martha Washington's 1749 recipe for "Preserved Cherries."
• This Regency-style redingote costume has been worn in Vanity Fair as well as in Austenland and Death Comes to Pemberley.
• Image: Lovely early photograph 1884 of buyers and sellers on a busy market day, Whitby Market Place.
• The use of applique in the 19th & 20th c. fashion.
• Oliver Twist and the corrupted city.
• The life & beautiful work of 17th c. flower still life painter Rachel Ruysch.
• How Victorian comics provide an insight into the lives of people in the 1880s.
• An indenture of apprenticeship, 1734.
• Image: This Toronto ad from 1904 for hair wigs & pieces reads: "Homely People never succeed in anything."
• Did the English invent football to keep young men from touching themselves?
• "The Mona Lisa is designed to frustrate": the history of the smile in portraiture.
• Doublet, coat, or vest - who wore it best?
• Byzantine ancestors of tablet computers found in Yenikapi diggings.
• Image: Mugshot of Goldie Williams, arrested for vagrancy in 1898.
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3 comments:
Rejection letters: #10 and #11 are hilarious, and #11 matches my opinion of Hemingway.
Just by coincidence, I was rooting through my books a few days ago and came across Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment, which originally was rejected for publication, as I'm sure you know.
I used to read science fiction pulp magazines all the time when I was a kid. Is there any current such outlet for new short stories/new authors?
Maybe kindle 99 cent books, but those are not as likely to be good as a vetted collection.
Looking around briefly, I found one current digital science fiction pulp magazine: http://www.asimovs.com/E-Asimovs.shtml
Another delightful collection! I particularly like the hedgehog cake (and the illustration of the cake fountain), the raspberry round gown, and the gorgeous use of applique in 19th- and 20th-century clothing. I also liked the wedding cakes, but couldn't help but notice that the ones pictured had a mausoleum-like air. Even though they were designed to represent Temples of Love, there seems to be more than a hint of the Albert Memorial...
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