Fun with WordPress Plugins! Take my “How Well do you Know the Regency?” quiz and share the results with the world! (also, any suggestions for improvement in quiz format and presentation are welcome)
One of the questions has some long answer possibilities, so that one may look a bit strange. But let’s get going!
Tell us how you did in the comments, too!
[slickquiz id=1]
I’ve pulled out my copy of The Epicure’s Almanack for this post. This will appear to ramble a bit, but it’s only an illusion, K?
The Blind Beggar of Bethenal Green described as “a house of entertainment” Let’s put that in oh, riiigght. Entertainment.
tossing up piemen “that attend executions, fairs, boxing-matches, and other polite assemblies.” Category: local color (apparently it was a thing to toss a coin and allowing the vendor to call heads or tails. Free pie if the customer won. If the vendor won, he kept the money and the pie.) This was also called “tossing the pieman.”
Plympton’s Pastry shop: Category: local color. Although we think of pasty shops as a place to buy things with sugar in them, Plympton’s sold sweet and savory pastries.
A ham and beef shop: Category: puzzling. Why ham and beef? Why not ham, beef, and veal?
Eating House: Category: vernacular. Not a restaurant, but an “eating house.” Even so, some of these eating-houses had accommodations upstairs. One displayed a variety of meats in the window.
Hyde Park Coffee House, Hotel and Tavern: Category: Regency Starbucks. Located at 242 Oxford Street. Commanded a view of Hyde Park and the hills of Surrey
Copping’s Ham and Beef Shop: Category: less puzzling now. 178 Oxford Street. “A good mart for purchasing those articles, and tongues ready drest, by weight, to carry away with you, which you must do, since there are no eating-rooms attacheed to the shop. Mr. Copping has acquired fame by the sale of his excellent plum puddings.”
The Prince Regent’s famous confectioner, Monsiuer Parmentier, had a shop (“emporium”) at No.9 Edward Street. At 29 Duke Street was the emporium of Signor Romualdo. The nobility ordered supplies from these two places. In this area [Mayfair] there are china and glass shops that on “a few hours notice” could “furnish a splendid equipage for tea and turn out, as well as all the moveables and ornaments for large rout parties.”
Our author, Mr. Ryland, in this book, is having us on. He describes a party at the Earl of Shrewsbury’s new, but empty, house. A party that, alas, did not actually happen as descried. The local emporiums, he says, completely furnished the house from a room ablaze with light — lots of chimney glass — and another “somber” room decorated so as to resemble an Acadian grove. “It was filled with orange and lemon trees in full bearing, myrtles, and a great variety of odoriferoius shrubs and plants, in part natural and in part artificial, tastefully disposed and arranged in gradins.”
I had to look up gradin, but it’s what you’d suspect: an arrangement of tiered seating– in this case for the plants.
It makes sense, when you think about it, to have someone supply the china, glasses, and silverware for a large party. Otherwise, the family china might disappear, be damaged or broken. When I planned my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party, I found a place that would deliver the correct number of place settings, dishes, etc. And they came the next day to take away the dirty dishes, too. Boy, was that nice!
What I find fascinating about this is the dozens of clues about what London was like — A London I wish we saw more of in the pages of books. Eating-houses, dozens of “ham and beef” shops, where you might, or might not, be able to sit down and eat your purchase. And all around Mayfair, shops to cater to the wealthy. Things feel close together for us because, well, relative to what it can be like in the US, you didn’t hop in your car (or the metro) and zip across town and back to run your errands. You walked, rode a horse, or drove a carriage. For us, Regency London would be smaller in every way, more condensed and compact.
Ironically, I just moved my WIP out of London and into the countryside.
Has your vision of London changed at all?
Most of you who follow this blog probably know that Megan Frampton is fun and quirky, has excellent sartorial taste, and mostly wears black (presuming that those last two are not mutually exclusive). You have probably read some of her writing but, unless you’ve read it all, you don’t know the breadth of her talent. So, today, I’m going to give you a little taste.
Those of you who have been following Megan for a while, probably remember A Singular Lady, her maiden publication, a trad Regency from Signet in 2005 (right before Signet stopped publishing Trads). This is Megan’s trad voice: a bit formal with an undertone of humor, something you would definitely recognize as “Regency.”
If you’re new to Megan, you might not know that she also writes women’s fiction as Megan Caldwell. Her first book, Vanity Fare, was published by William Morrow late last year. The Amazon description of Vanity Fare calls it “a charming tale of food, family, literature, and romance in which a 40-year-old newly single Brooklyn mother embarks on a culinary writing career and finds herself at the center of a deliciously tempting love triangle.” And so it is. This fun book showcases Megan’s sharp, snarky, engaging contemporary voice. This voice is highlighted in the interstitial material (a specialty of Megan’s) in which the heroine writes copy for a new bakery across from the New York Public Library, using literary references. Each chapter is headed by a bakery item such as sourdough bread called Middlestarch, The Bun Also Rises, Dorothy Parker House Rolls, Lord of the Tea Rings, Tender is the Bite, and more. This easy way with puns becomes lighter and easier in the body of the book:
If he were a baked good, he’d be Irish soda bread. Not that I knew he was Irish; but I imagined he’d be delicious, filling, and packed with a few surprises. In the bread’s case, it was raisins, and I wondered what his would be: a shoe fetishist? Nah, he’d probably dismiss something like that as foolishness. A closest reader? Ditto.
An incredible lover? Now that I could see. He’d be thoughtful, unselfish, and get the job done — and done well — in as businesslike manner as possible.
But, if you’re at this blog, you’re probably interested in Megan’s Regencies. Let’s start with Hero of My Heart, published by Loveswept in April of this year.
Hero of My Heart is is the story of a drug-addicted marquess and a vicar’s daughter who is being sold on the block by her no-good stepbrother. Our marquess steps in, buys the girl, and decides to save her by marrying her.
If he could just get her to Scotland, just get her to shut up for long enough to realize he was doing this for her own good, for her ultimate survival, it would be fine. He could ensure her safety, give her all his unentailed funds and property, and then disappear. It would be a final act of contrition to atone for all that he had done.
In this book, Megan serves up a well-written, Regency road story with a side of angst. Her voice is elegant and true to the period and, occasionally, we see a little hint of the irreverent contemporary author.
But, if you’re longing for a Regency story with a bit more of Megan’s quirky voice, I have a treat for you. In Baring it All, a Loveswept Historical short story just out this week and What Not to Bare, a full-length historical romance from Loveswept, out in October of 2013, you will find a delightful combination of well-researched Regency Historical, with the lighter voice of Megan’s contemporary novels. No, it’s not first person and no, it doesn’t sound contemporary, but you can forget about the angst and enjoy Megan’s wonderful humor.
Baring it All is the story of a couple who have entered into an arranged betrothal. The heroine is in love with the clueless hero. The hero is… clueless.
She could almost hear the conversation: his father pronouncing at the breakfast table, “Son, you have to be married sometime, and it might as well be someone you know. Lady Violet is an excellent choice.”
To which Christian probably mumbled through his toast, “Fine, excellent. Can you pass me that notebook? I think I’ve discovered a shortcut for Pythagoras’s tetractys. Oh, and I’ll take care of that other thing next week. ” That “other thing” being asking Violet to marry him.
See? A felicitous combination of a solid grounding in the period with Megan’s witty voice. This, and What Not to Bare are a new voice for Megan that I think you’re going to love.
My apologies for not being around much this week. I’ve been fighting another sinus infection while madly trying to finish the latest version of the balloonist story and get it out to my critique partners.
The good news is I finally settled on a title and I have a cover! Please forgive the historically inaccurate shirtlessness–I decided it was more important to convey the level of sensuality and make sure people didn’t mistake this for a sweet traditional Regency.
I’m hoping to get the critique-ready ms out by tomorrow, before taking my oldest to a 3 week summer youth program (first time she’s away that long), so I don’t have much time to chat. But here’s the short blurb I came up with for the story.
A village schoolmistress’s life takes a turn when a Waterloo veteran turned aeronaut crashes near her cottage. Passion sweeps them along, taking them on a scandalous flight across the English countryside. They must marry, but can they make a life together?
Now I’m off to re-edit the Dreaded Chapter 27 (which required an untold number of Hershey’s nuggets to write in the first place). Please wish me luck!
Occasionally I find a book that’s so extraordinary, so wonderful, that all I want to do is read to the neglect of all else. Yet at the same time I can’t bear the thought of coming to the end, and want to take my time savoring every phrase and sentence.
I’ve been fortunate enough to read two such books in the past couple of weeks. The first one, , by Kate Atkinson, I borrowed from the library for the kindle, and then decided to buy it. In hardback. It was massively on sale but I knew this was something I’d keep and that this was too good for the kindle. It’s astonishing. I reached a new level of appreciation for a book on the commute–crying in public on the Metro (ranking way higher above my previous criteria, missing my stop or getting on the wrong train). How to describe this book … well, it’s about a woman whose life ends many times until she can get it right and includes amazing vivid scenes of life from before World War I through the blitz. Read more about the book at Kate Atkinson’s site.
The other book, which I’m just a few dozen pages into, is Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall, the center volume of her three-book series about Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell has been branded a villain in history, the right hand man of Henry VIII who was responsible for the dissolution of the monasteries (or so the simple version goes). He rose from humble beginnings to a position of great power, playing the dangerous game of power with the Tudors. It’s all familiar history that’s been dumbed down, prettified, and made safe by The Tudors and Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. But this book, these books, are brilliant and complex and chillingly beautiful; written in third person present tense, an interesting choice, and Bring Up the Bodies has one of the best backstories in a sequel that I’ve ever read.
Have you read either of these books or authors? What have you been reading?