• Retro-fails: ten unsuccessful Victorian-era inventions from both sides of the Atlantic.
• Fun and games with the world's oldest deck of cards (from the 16thc.)
• From farm to fashion: straw shoes for would-be ballerina, 1830-40.
• Catharine Macaulay, the first English woman historian.
• The New England Primer: death and mayhem in books made for children.
• The incredible women who swam the Thames in the early 1900s.
• The anti-drinking PSAs of the vaudeville era were gorgeously morbid.
• Image: Beautiful watercolor of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra.
• Anne Blunt, a 19thc. traveller, artist, and "noble lady of the horses."
• Ghostly voices from Thomas Edison's talking dolls can once again now be heard.
• Austen, Heyer, and the Prince of Orange: pugs in literary history.
• Delightful animation based on sketches of Macau by 19thc. British artist George Chinnery.
• Temples of literature: (successful) writers' houses in pictures.
• Patent application for a collapsible 1860s hoop for supporting women's skirts.
• Fantastic resource: over 6,000 historical wallpaper patterns digitized.
• Attempting to control the uncontrollable: Elizabethan sumptuary statutes. (Where were the fashion police?)
• Image: Secret door and staircase hidden in 18thc bookcase at Admont Abbey, Austria.
• Vintage photographs of New York City c. 1900.
• When fashion and tragic history meet: the story of Jacqueline Kennedy's pink Chanel suit.
• Letters from a Scottish schoolteacher who survived the sinking of the Lusitania.
• How 19thc. schoolchildren trolled one another.
• "Is it proper for women to be learned?" The questions people asked advice columnists in the 1690s.
• "Does not want poems about love and roses": a guide for women on how to pitch to an 1880s magazine.
• Image: 18thc. exhibition of dancing dogs.
• And in the 18thc., The Lady's Magazine: understanding the material magazine.
• Historical hunting weapons: a splendid 17thc. wheellock.
• "From my doleful prison in the Tower this sixt of May": letter from Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII.
• Fantastically preserved 18thc. Jacobite silk garters.
• Image: Could be in fashion now: knitted garment, Sweden, c.1835-40, naturally dyed wool, silk ribbons, velvet.
• The oldest mulberry tree in Britain was planted in 1548 at Syon Park in West London.
• Finally returning the spoils of WWII, taken by Americans.
• A dead prostitute, a male impersonator, and a medium: all found in three sensational 19thc. pamphlets.
• Behold the Grand Cassowar! Gilbert Pidcock's traveling menagerie.
• Image: This London Illustrated News sketch shows how little polling stations have changed since the 19thc.
• The man whose wife had sex with the lodgers, 1900.
• "A heart above all mercenary views": A Georgian "lonely hearts" advertisement.
• Corpse medicine: what the 17thc. believed were the healing qualities of hanged men's hands and mummy flesh.
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2 comments:
I give a series of lectures on Literary Pilgrimages, on the theory that we cannot really know a writer through his books alone. His/her parents' home, university and marital homes are equally important. And because I am an art historian, I focus on the architecture, furniture, study and garden.
In Temples of Literature there are some wonderful photos. I don't know one or two of the writers (eg Lucy M Boston) so I will have to look for them further. But what a great link. Thanks
Thank you for linking to my post, I really appreciate it!
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