Just realized I am way behind on my winner announcements!!! So…winners, I has them…
For my Two Sinful Secrets the winner is…Melody May! Since I have your email, watch your inbox for more info
The winner of Sarah Mallory’s The Illegitimate Montague is…Barbara E! Please send us your info at riskies AT yahoo…
So what am I doing this week? Getting out the Christmas decorations, finishing revisions and starting the next book, and getting ready to head to Santa Fe to do last-minute wedding prep stuff! (the big day is a week from Saturday–I can’t believe it’s coming up so soon). But here at the Riskies we have some Big Changes coming up as well. Next week we are switching over to a new design, with all sorts of new features and fun things, and to celebrate we’ll have prizes all week. Be sure and join us for the party!!!
Last week, when i talked about my new book Two Sinful Secrets, Elena asked me about sources for this period. Researching is one of the most fun aspects of writing historicals, and delving into a newer-to-me period is always a ton of fun (at least it is for a history nerd like me!). In my first series as Laurel McKee, “The Daughters of Erin” trilogy, I used the history of late 18th/early 19th century Ireland as an integral part of the conflict and characters. I didn’t do that with this new series, “The Scandalous St. Claires”–history is more a background, we don’t actually see Queen Victoria etc. But it’s so, so important to me to get the background just right. Every time period has its own “feeling,” its own atmosphere and attitudes (though human nature is, in so many things, eternal, so it’s always easy to recognize characters even if they’re products of their time). I used the early Victorian period, mid to late 1840s (mostly because I love the “Young Victoria” style fashions), so the massive changes of the period hadn’t quite taken hold, but events were moving at a faster and faster pace. Industry was overcoming the agrarian lifestyle, a strict morality (outwardly at least–inwardly the Victorians were some of the naughtiest people in history) was creeping in, and lots of good things were going on that could be mined for romance stories….
Here are a few of the sources I enjoyed while researching this era:
–Suzanne Fagence Cooper, The Victorian Woman (2001)
–Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas (1973) (this one had great info on the life of the slums and the lower classes, perfect when outlining the childhood of my first St. Claire heroine, Lily in One Naughty Night)
–Jennifer Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780–1880 (2007) (I think Elena recommended this one way back when, and it was so valuable to me since the St. Claires are theater owners! The theater was really booming in the Victorian era…)
–Martin Pugh, Britain Since 1789: A Concise History (1999)
–E. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain (1996)
–P. Levine, Victorian Feminism (1987)
–J. Walvin, Leisure and Society 1830-1950 (1978) and Victorian Values (1987)
–Donald Thomas, The Victorian Underworld (1998)
For Two Sinful Secrets I also had to research Paris in the era, which of course I loved! More info on that later (plus fun Victorian Christmas stuff–they really, really loved the holiday!)
Have you found any good historical sources lately? Any Christmas traditions you think came from historical time periods that you use in your own celebrations??
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday with family and friends–and that you are staying warm (it’s snowing here!). I will be back next week with more wedding pics, but for now check out this gingerbread Downton Abbey..
(January marks another entry in the Castonbury Park series…Bronwyn Scott’s Unbefitting a Lady! Bronwyn is visiting us this last weekend of the year to talk a little about the research behind the story of the horse-mad Lady Phaedra. Comment for the chance to win a copy!!)
As the Duke of Rothermere’s youngest daughter, Phaedra Montague is expected to be the dutiful darling of elegant society. Too bad, then, that this feisty Lady has swapped her dance cards and silk gowns for racing tips and breeches!
With the arrival of gorgeous groom Bram Basingstoke, Phaedra can’t help but be distracted. He’s as wild and untamed as the stallion he’s training. But Phaedra is supposed to act properly at all times. Even if this dark-haired devil in a billowing white shirt is tempting her to a very improper roll in the hay…
1817, a great year to be a horse!
Giles Worsley writes, “The stable was a setting to showcase the horse, a physical expression of the horse’s importance.” The stables were a world of its own within the estate. The concept of a stable included so much more than just a barn. It included outdoor training ovals (a left over innovation from the mid 1700s), a carriage house or carriage bays, outdoor paddocks, the stable block and the riding house (indoor riding arena, often complete with a viewing gallery). With that in mind, it made sense to set so much of Bram and Phaedra’s story, ‘Unbefitting a Lady,’ in the Castonbury stables. 1817 is an exciting year to be in the stables because many English horse enthusiasts are in the middle of a stable revolution. It’s a great time to be a horse! People are studying and learning how to harness architecture to make stables healthier places. 1790-1830 is a time of great stable modernization. There are lots of renovations being done regarding ventilation and health. Let me share two of those innovations with you; the iron hayrack and the loose box.
The iron hayracks hanging from the walls of the stalls: According to Giles Worsley in his book, “The British Stable,” hayracks were originally nothing more than wooden managers that ran the length of the aisles. These took up a great deal of space. Once iron became more accessible, iron hayracks could be fashioned and mounted in the stalls, freeing up space on the floors and they were more likely to withstand horses chewing on them, unlike the wood mangers. Iron hayracks were definitely starting to be in use in the more serious stables by 1817 and Kedleston, the estate we modeled Castonbury after did indeed use iron hayracks.
Moving towards the loose box : The loose box is the style of stall we’re most familiar with now in our barns. But before this, horses had a three sided stall with the aisle end open and they had to face the wall. Loose box stalls were used only for isolating horses who were ill. But the racing industry around the 1790s began to see the benefits a loose box stall would afford a horse in general. There are some early architectural designs in 1803 and 1810 that start to show the proliferation of loose box stalls for stables at Normanton and Tottenham Parks. By 1816, just a year before Phaedra’s story, the Ashridge stables in Hertfordshire were designed to incorporate a large number of loose boxes and by 1829, the loose box had become the norm. This is a transition that took about thirty years to catch on. Grooms felt leaving the horse loose in a stall caused too many problems.
Other improvements that took place between 1790 and 1830 include ventilation and lighting but we’ll save that for another time.
I always love Jane Austen week here! (And not just because it reminds me that my mom’s birthday is also December 16 and I need to remember to get her a gift…) It gives me a chance to revisit these books that mean so much to me, and maybe do a little re-reading and reminiscing.
My “first” was Emma. I found an old, yellowed paperback copy at my grandmother’s house, it had a girl in a pretty dress on the cover so I decided to give it a try. I had already read some Heyer and a few Barbara Cartlands, so I knew a little about the Regency period (enough to know I loved it and wanted to live in that world, though not at that point much “real” history). I love, love, loved the story, and immediately ran to the library to find the rest of the Austen novels, plus a bio! I was amazed to find out the author had been dead over 200 years and wasn’t a writer working right then, her characters seemed so real and vivid to me. Some of their concerns were different from mine (marrying asap and to the right man, since there is no other choice!), some I could relate to (parents can be sooo annoying!), but the characters at their core seemed like people I knew and wanted to spend time with, and that has never changed.
Last night I went to a jazz concert, and listened to a 15-minute version of a song I love (“Take the A Train”), and heard things in it I never had before, and realized Austen has much in common with this other love of mine, jazz music. There are always variations on a theme in Austen, things that keep popping up on re-reading that I never saw before, things that resonate with me at different ages, and that means her books always repay revisiting. That’s her rare genius. And since I’m getting ready to get married on Saturday (a core concern of all Austen characters!) I am thinking I need to re-read some Pride & Prejudice or Persuasion to make sure I’m ready…
All commenters on today’s blog get put in the drawing for our grand prize (a $50 Amazon giftcard!), but I am also giving away an adorable Jane Austen puzzle! It would make a great holiday gift if you have an Austen fan in your life (or a great gift to yourself!). How did you get hooked on Austen? What was your “first”? (You never forget your first!!)