Dangerous, even deadly: Teething in Jane Austen’s World
!8th century French physician Jean Baumes (1783) wrote “All experience teaches that dentition is to be dreaded.” Why the dread?
Continue reading →What do Show Chickens have to do with Dragons? Everything!
It kind of goes without saying that historical fiction takes tons of research. Tons. Literally heaps and gobs of it. Great stacks and piles. I thought my doctoral dissertation took a lot of research. That was nothing in comparison to the thousands of pages I have read and saved on my hard drive. History=Research. OK. Moving on. What has surprised the daylights out of me is how much time I spend researching things that do … Continue reading →
Regency Medicine: Betwixt and Between
I’d like to welcome Kyra Kramer today as she shares a fascinating article on Regency Medicine and how it was more medieval than modern. There would be significant changes in health care in the later decades of the 1800s, with the emergence of germ theory producing biomedicine as we would recognize it by the Edwardian age. The Regency, however, was in some ways the last gasp of medieval medicine – a Tudor merchant would be more … Continue reading →
Providing for young ladies’ future in Jane Austen’s World
How did dowries provide for a young woman’s future? A Woman’s Dowry Though Pride and Prejudice’s (1995, movie version) Mr. Bennet referred to dowries as “bribes to worthless young men to marry his daughters,” dowries were more commonly considered a means by which a responsible family compensated a husband for their daughter’s lifelong upkeep. How’s that for a romantic notion? Dowries (or more commonly the interest earned off a dowry) were used to provide a … Continue reading →
Translation is Treason
Translation is Treason, or so I’ve been told… I am so excited to let you guys know that one of my books is now out in Spanish! How cool is that? What’s even better, I got to work with and get to know Teresita in the process. She is such a delight that I wanted to give you the chance to get to know her and take a peek into the surprisingly complicated process of … Continue reading →