Will you be dressing up this Halloween? If you love the simple elegance of a white ghost costume, you may want to hear about a Regency “ghost” who met an untimely and undeserved end. In late 1803 the residents of Hammersmith (which is now a part of Greater London but was then a small village…
Michaelmas Day, celebrated next day on September 29, is a day rich in religious and secular traditions in British culture. It’s also called the Feast of Michael and All Angels, including the angels Gabriel and Raphael.
Mark your calendar! Our September Monthly Tea is this Friday, September 22, at 2pm ET (5 pm PT). Whether you write romance, mystery, fantasy, or some other subgenre of historical fiction, knowing when to stop researching and start writing is crucial to getting your novel on the page. In this talk, author and translator…
In my last post I discussed Beau Brummell’s sophisticated manner of dress, and what a contrast Brummell’s understated style was to the flashier styles worn by some of his contemporaries. While Brummell may have disapproved of their fashion sense, the men and women whose dress he criticized provided excellent fodder for the caricaturists of their…
There have always been and always will be dandies – men who follow fashion and take an active interest in how they present themselves to the world. However, the Regency produced one of the most influential and famous dandies of all time, George Bryan “Beau” Brummell.
In my last post, I described the miserable marriage of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick. After years of restrictions and neglect, Caroline left England to go abroad, where scandal dogged her footsteps. Following the deaths of her daughter and grandson in 1817, and the imminent succession to the throne of her estranged husband…
August can be an unlucky month for European royalty, and that was especially true during the Regency. Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena in August of 1815. And in August of 1821, Caroline of Brunswick, the Princess of Wales, died a lonely death in London just three weeks after her estranged husband, the former Prince…
Ahoy, mateys! Mark your calendars for our August Monthly Tea on Thursday, August 17 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. This month’s topic is “Pirates and Piracy in the Regency” presented by Sarah Craze. Monthly teas are free to RFW members, but you must be a member to attend. For more details about this online…
The effects of the Mt. Tambora eruption in 1815 weren’t felt in Europe and North America until 1816 and lasted for a number of years. At the time, no one understood that the change in weather patterns was due to a volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies, almost 10,000 miles away. It wasn’t…
Who doesn’t love warm summer weather? Summer is the perfect time for walking barefoot in the grass, outdoor picnics and going to the beach. But in some place in the U.S. and around the world this summer, wildfires are raging and heat records are shattering. Climate change, due to the “greenhouse effect” caused by burning…