P&P Finally!

Yesterday I finally got the chance to see the new Pride & Prejudice movie, after having spent several weeks listening to rants and raves and mixed reviews. Now I can be opinionated about it, too, and at great length, for which I apologize!

I’m always fascinated (and sympathetic) to those who take the huge RISK of trying to bring a beloved book into a film. In fact, my critique partners, Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton, and I wrote an article on the path taken by the producers of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and how we as authors could apply similar methods when faced with the task of revising an unwieldy manuscript.

There are things that must be cut, for practical purposes, and then many things which must be added as well in the way of sensory detail not supplied by the author. And inevitably, these changes will annoy some viewers. So I have a healthy respect for anyone taking on the task of reinterpreting a classic, even if I don’t always agree with the interpretation. How stale a production might be that tried too slavishly to reproduce a book! Rather like a musician merely playing every note the composer wrote, without putting her own soul into the work.

Since we’ve already talked about it, I’m not going to delve too much into details of historical accuracy and fidelity in this P&P. Some things did jar me but I got used to them as there was so much to like, even love, about this film. Anyway, on to my favorite thing about this movie: the characterizations!

First let me say I’m a huge fan of Colin Firth in the role of Mr. Darcy. But I absolutely loved Matthew McFadyen’s different take on it, too. I’ve already heard protests that Darcy was arrogant and not shy, but I disagree. I think of this passage from the book (which was kept in the movie, though slightly adapted):

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."

To me this doesn’t smack of a lack of desire to make friends; just an admission of difficulty negotiating tricky social waters. I see this Darcy as a serious young man, who succeeded to wealth and its accompanying responsibilities fairly early in life, and who has already been burned at least once (by Wickham) and possibly by fortune-hunting females as well. He’s too smart to be unaware of Caroline Bingley’s plays for him. I could see that that might add a level of wariness that would make it hard to start up relationships.

At the same time, he’s powerfully attracted to Lizzie’s playfulness, which comes across nicely in Keira Knightley’s performance. She comes across a bit sillier at the start than I expected, but it gave her more room to grow, too. Again, a different but effective interpretation (and I loved Jennifer Ehle in the ’95 version, too). As for the critics who must endlessly harp on her underbite—it’s just plain mean-spirited. She’s very cute and has such lovely expressive eyes.

I was also impressed by the treatment of secondary characters. Rosamund Pike was lovely as Jane (the actress in the ’95 version was not quite pretty enough—I feel mean-spirited myself to say that, but it’s true). Simon Woods was a bit startling as Mr. Bingley—what a buffoon! But also fun. Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennett was an interesting blend of wit and sympathy (I always found him a fallible but sympathetic character despite some Austen scholars’ desire to assign him the role of villain in the piece). And it was no surprise that Dame Judi Dench made a splendid Lady Catherine De Bourgh.

The really pleasant surprises (to me) were the well-rounded characterizations of Mr. Collins, Mary and even Mrs. Bennett. Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander) was delightfully absurd and yet escaped pure pomposity because he was so earnest in his desire to please. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him as he presents that little flower to Lizzie, or when he tries to get Darcy’s attention at the ball. Mary (Talulah Riley), too, was more than a mere pedant; she looked so sad and confused and out of place in that household. Now I really understand why people are interested in writing her story! Even Mrs. Bennett gets her semi-redeeming moment, when she challenges Lizzie to think how she would feel with five daughters to settle in life.

Now as for that controversial ending—I have to say it felt wrong to me. NOT because it added a prologue not in the book, and NOT because it showed a bit of sensuality. I liked that! But it felt rushed and somehow out of order. A friend with whom I saw the movie said it was odd for Darcy and Lizzie to be talking about pet names after they’d clearly consummated their marriage already. That may be part of my problem.

What I personally would have liked to see is more of what happened between the engagement and the post-coital bliss. Maybe a wedding scene. Or maybe even the beginning of the wedding night, with all that lovely awkward tenderness of young lovers, then a discreet fadeout, to keep the rating OK for teens but allow those who want to imagine the rest.

OK, everyone, feel free to agree or disagree. What did you think of what was done with the characters? Did you like the ending? If not, how would you have ended the film?

Elena
LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, a Romantic Times Top Pick!
www.elenagreene.com

Laugh-out-loud Regencies

Which are your favorite laugh-out-loud Regencies?

Here are ten of mine, listed in approximate chronological order of publication:


-- PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, by Jane Austen
-- NORTHANGER ABBEY, by Jane Austen
-- THE CONVENIENT MARRIAGE, by Georgette Heyer
-- FRIDAY'S CHILD, by Georgette Heyer
-- IMPRUDENT LADY, by Joan Smith
-- SWEET AND TWENTY, by Joan Smith
-- THE PLAYFUL LADY PENELOPE, by Kasey Michaels
-- AN EARLY ENGAGEMENT, by Barbara Metzger
-- MINOR INDISCRETIONS, by Barbara Metzger
-- THE IDEAL BRIDE, by Nonnie St. George




Which funny Regencies do you like? Which do you think are the funniest?

Which funny Regencies do you think succeed the best as novels (or romances)???

By the way, here are four very different covers for Georgette Heyer's FRIDAY'S CHILD! (Aren't covers weird???)

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER -- in stores now!

Answers to Sunday's lit quiz

And (drumroll)...here they are:

1. A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden. An earlier book and not so well known as Possession.
2. Ah, so near and yet so far...Daniel Deronda by George Eliot.
3. Well done, Elena, who was almost there, and who will be allowed to sharpen pencils today--Villette, by Charlotte Bronte. That one was my favorite, too. Wow.
4. And the romance excerpt, from Beast by Judith Ivory.

Janet

Chocolate Facts

"Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficient restorer of exhausted power. It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits." --Baron Justus Von Liebig

"If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate pot! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?" --Marquise de Sevigne, 1677

After a long weekend of unbridled piggery, what else can I think about today but food? Especially after I attended an open house party last night that featured tiered trays of wonderfully delectable bonbons and truffles. Chocolate--the most important food group. :)

Of course, in "our" time period there was no chocolate as we know it. No Symphony bars with almonds and toffee chips. No Godiva raspberry truffles. No giant Toblerone bars. But the earliest record of chocolate was over 1500 years ago in Central America. The Maya believed the cacao tree to be of divine origin, and brewed a spicy, bittersweet drink by roasting and pounding the seeds of the tree (cocoa beans) with chili peppers and letting the mixture ferment. Yummy--not.

When Cortez brought chocolate back to Europe, they learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the roasted ground beans with sugar and vanilla to mix into a frothy drink. By the early 17th century this powder was being exported from Spain to other parts of the continent. The Spanish kept the source of the drink--the beans--a secret for many years, so that wehn English privateers boarded what they thought was a "treasure galleon" in 1579, they found it loaded with what appeared to be "dried sheep's droppings", and no gold and jewels, they burned the ship in frustration. Dumb move, as chocolate was vastly expensive at the time. Worth its weight in gold. Ha!

The first chocolate house in England opened in London in 1657, and like coffee houses they were used as clubs where business could be conducted, politics discussed, and a pipe smoked. The first mention of chocolate being eaten in solid form is when bakers in England began adding the cocoa powder into cakes in the mid-1600s. In 1795 Dr. Joseph Fry of Bristol created a steam engine for grinding the cocoa beans, an invention that led to the manufacture of chocolate on a large scale. In 1819, Francois Louis Callier opened the first Swiss chocolate factory, thus paving the way for generations of choco-holics.

Chcolate as we know it today first appeared in 1847 when Fry and Sons (mentioned above) mixed sugar with cocoa powder and cocoa butter (created in 1828 by Dutch chemist Johannes Van Houten) to produce the first solid bar. And the rest is, well, chocolate history. :)

Thanks for letting me indulge one of my favorite obsessions! And thanks to the Godiva website for the factoids.

Quiz: Test your purple prose radar

I recently wrote an article on the romance genre for The Editorial Eye, a newsletter for people fascinated by the minutae of words, English usage, and grammar. My point was that just because romances are popular, prolific, and have silly covers, it doesn't necessarily follow that they have no literary merit. Part of the article was this quiz. Can you identify the romance excerpt? And, for extra credit, can you identify any of the writers or books? Answers will be posted in a day or so.

1. She began to go out along the rocks, very fast, holding her arms wide to balance herself, half-running, half-striding. He went after her. Another tall wave bowed, jarred, cracked and whispered at her feet. She turned to him a face he had never seen, blindly smiling, wild, white and wet.
2. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no trembling of mouth or hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was [hero’s], who, though she never looked towards him, she was sure had not moved away.
3. He deemed me born under his star; he seemed to have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once—unknown and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me.
4. Black pearls popped and flew everywhere. They bounced well; they bounced high. They rolled magnificently across the deck in every direction, as well as off the deck and down onto the next—a quick, nacreous spill swallowed up into the wet night, the roll and clatter smothered almost instantly by the hiss of the ocean.

The Right Fabric and Accessories

Continuing my sewing theme from last week, I am going to provide a few links for finding period fabrics and accessories.

Fabrics aren’t that hard if you know what you are looking for. If you know something about period fabrics, you are ahead of the game.

The best way of getting an idea what fabrics of the time were like is to look at real Regency gowns. There are sites on the internet—unfortunately, Cathy Decker’s Regency site is on the fritz again ( http://hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/reg3.html ) but there are others where pictures of real gowns can be found, as the Kent State University Museum:
http://dept.kent.edu/museum/costume/bonc/3timesearch/tsnineteenth/1800-1829/1800-1829.html

There are samples of fabrics also on Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion site, which also happens to be an invaluable resource when considering your first costume.
Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion on fabric:
http://www.songsmyth.com/fabric.html

You can look for vintage costume sellers on line, if not for clothing to buy, but to peruse for research.
http://www.meg-andrews.com/

Once you have an idea what type of fabric you need, you can find the right kind of cotton print, for instance, in a Joann’s Fabrics. Here are some sources that offer more specialized fabrics including vintage reproductions:

http://www.farmhousefabrics.com/

http://www.reproductionfabrics.com/index.php?

Now, for the trimmings: Accessories

Austentation—hats, reticules, and research too:
http://www.austentation.com/home.html

Ostrichs on Line—feathers, fans, Masks…
http://www.ostrichesonline.com/index.html

A site with a shop for various items including US Civil War and Victorian costume, but many items could be used for the Regency as well, including the ladies’ corsets. Click Victorian clothing, then Ladies (if you are a lady!) to see the choices.
http://www.ushist.com/index.html

Frederick’s of Hollywood for their renaissance corset, which creates the “right line” for a Regency lady (unless you are undressing in public, no one will know it isn’t fully ‘period’!)
http://www.fredericks.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=Holiday2002&category%5Fname=Corsets%2DIntimate+Fashion+Styles&product%5Fid=50640

Check wedding gown suppliers for things like flat shoes (dyeable) and long gloves. Certain flat dance shoes can double for Regency shoes as well. Lastly….you all know this…there is Ebay.

Ebay is where I have found the classic Javamar shawl (NOT in pure cashmere, but close enough, with the woven pattern and length that wealthy Regency Ladies used with their gowns), reproduction Georgian jewelry, vintage hats, vintage fans, long leather gloves and vintage style fabrics. I have also done searches for parasols and walking sticks.

I am stopping here…I am somewhat limited by being on a newer computer, and I have not yet found a way to copy my shortcuts from my old computer onto this one. (Somehow I can’t copy my old, huge favorites file to disk—sigh). But hopefully this helps you on your costume venture.



Laurie

Family Ties

Thanksgiving weekend is the time to spend with family, to relish the shared moments and history of your lives, while celebrating the future.

Sure, if you have a normal family. Me, not so much.



Most of us join the Dysfunctional Family Circus, a time where most everyone is tense and Things Get Said and Things Don't Get Said.


Family issues led me to thinking about the current popularity of connected Regency books, usually through siblings. Mary Balogh wrote about six siblings in her Slightly series, and she did a fantastic job of delineating the differences between all six. Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series focuses on eight siblings, all of whom eventually find their HEA. Eloisa James has just released the second book in her Four Sisters series, and in her first book of the series, she did a remarkable job of distinguishing the sisters from each other.


And, of course, for every sibling series I cite, there are zillions more residing in books out there--readers like to read connected books, and making the connection through siblings make a shared history possible, and limit the essential backstory so the author can concentrate on the romance at hand.

I have to admit, even though I love reading these connected series, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that every single sibling is happy in love. Think about your own family; is everyone blissful in their relationship? If you say yes, you are an unusual person (and I envy you!). When I think about the connected series in toto, I have to say the idea of that many pleased siblings makes me faintly nauseated.

And yes, I am an only child. Why do you ask?

The connected series I tend to believe more are those where the bonds are of friendship, not blood. Friends have to stretch and grow in their relationships, and their respective dynamics can make for fascinating reading.
Mary Jo Putney's Fallen Angels, Lynn Kerstan's Black Phoenix Brotherhood, and Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues are good examples.

So what do you think about connected series? Do you like it when siblings find love, each in their own books? Or, like me, do you try to ignore the other books as you're reading the one, keeping a Kantian a priori attitude about your book of choice?

Megan

Gobble, gobble, gobble.

No, the English don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but they do have their own breeds of turkeys. At left, a handsome Norfolk black, and on the right, a Cambridge bronze, tho I'm afraid to me they just look like turkeys. Did you know male turkeys are called stags?
Turkeys came to England from Spain in the sixteenth century, and the aristocracy, accustomed to dining off large birds such as swans, cranes, and peacocks, gobbled them up. Turkeys were bred in East Anglia, and each year in late August thousands were herded to London to be sold--now that's a mind-boggling thought, herding a bunch of turkeys, not the cleverest of birds--and they were fitted with little leather boots to protect their feet (aaaaw). Pepys mentions eating turkey around Christmas time, and the Mayflower pilgrims took some East Anglian turkeys with them to the New World where they were bred with the native species. Goose was still the traditional Christmas dish in the regency (along with capons, roast beef, or rabbit depending upon the family income) but was gradually phased out by the turkey--one reason for the immense popularity of goose is that since it's an acquatic bird it has a large fat layer, much prized then for cooking and for use as a preservative.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone!

Janet

A Rose By Any Other Name...

My personal book purchases are almost always based on author. Either I buy books by favorite authors, books by intriguing people I've met at conferences or by authors recommended by writer friends. So titles and covers don't play into my purchases much, but I do have some preferences and pet peeves about titles.

One thing that bugs me (and don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed many books with these titles) is the mass repetition of titles in the romance genre. Just a half-hearted search has turned up loads of books with variants of "ideal/perfect" and "bride/wife":

• THE IDEAL BRIDE (a fun romp of a trad Regency by Nonnie St. George and a historical by Stephanie Laurens)
• A/THE PERFECT BRIDE (Samantha James, Jo Ann Ferguson, Sheila Walsh, Eileen Putnam, Jasmine Cresswell)
• AN IDEAL WIFE (Betty Neels, Mary Balogh)
• THE PERFECT WIFE (Lynsay Sands, Shari McDonald, Jane Goodger, Victoria Alexander, Mary Burton)

These titles are just so unmemorable (not that the stories are, necessarily). But maybe there's just something so intriguing about this combination of concepts that keeps these books flying off the shelves. Ditto with all the Regencies with titles including "London Season". Still, I worry that sameness of titles connotes sameness of stories. I'd rather see more attempts at original titles (while fully recognizing that the authors might not have had a choice in the matter).

Another pet peeve is titles that are misleading. The worst offender I can think of is a book titled CAPTAIN CUPID CALLS THE SHOTS, by Elisabeth Fairchild. Between the cute title and the rather insipid cover, no one could guess that the story involves a hero with post-war traumatic stress!

I rather like Jean Ross Ewing/Julia Ross's titles, though I find them amusing in a way. THE SEDUCTION, THE WICKED LOVER, NIGHT OF SIN, GAMES OF PLEASURE are titillating titles with their hint of the forbidden, though the stories are more psychological than the titles might imply and the innate message (as in all good sensual romances) is the healing and cleansing power of loving sex. And the covers are so elegant and luscious!

OK, now to titles I've loved. Some of Mary Jo Putney's: THE RAKE AND THE REFORMER, THE ROGUE AND THE RUNAWAY. They just evoke conflict and adventure and have a nice rhythm. "R" is a sexy letter, too, though maybe as a Risky Regency, I'm a sucker for that particular alliteration. :)

Loretta Chase's Regencies had some memorable titles. VISCOUNT VAGABOND and THE DEVIL'S DELILAH. More alliteration (!) but these are also fun, as are her stories. I also like MISS WONDERFUL and MR. IMPOSSIBLE.

I've been fairly lucky myself in having some say in my titles. How about the rest of you Riskies? Have you had to give up a favorite title, or fight to keep it?

As readers, what sort of titles turn you off, or compel you to buy the book?

Elena
LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, a Romantic Times Top Pick!
http://www.elenagreene.com/

Regency Shakespeare

I find Shakespeare fascinating. Shakespeare has been hugely popular on British stages almost non-stop since his own time, and the Regency was a high point for Shakespeare in many ways. Of course, the Regency Shakespeare wasn't exactly like our Shakespeare....and certainly it wasn't Shakespeare's Shakespeare...


Here we have two pictures of the reconstructed Theatre Royal, Covent Garden -- where John Philip Kemble produced and starred in many of Shakespeare's greatest works. Kemble's sister, Sarah Siddons, was one of the theatre's biggest draws, and had a following so passionate it was almost religious. (After the theatre pictures, we have two pictures of Kemble, one of Siddons, and one of Kean.)


What fascinates me most are the differences in the Shakespeare plays in the different periods. When I researched my workshop "The Regency Joy of Sex (Drugs & Gaming Hells)" for this year's Romance Writers of America national conference, I was most intrigued by the changes made to Shakespeare's text in the period -- and the changes that weren't made. In other words, what parts of Shakespeare they found taboo (or, in Regency parlance, "indelicate"), and which were acceptable for a theatre audience comprising men, women, and children drawn from all classes.


So what was acceptable? When John Philip Kemble edited Shakespeare's text, here are some words he left in: virgin, adultery, fornicatress, naked, damned incest, bosom, virgin-violator, bastard, deflowered maid. (However, in one passage, "virginity" was changed -- implying the word "virginity" was more shocking than "virgin", which at the time didn't necessarily have the purely sexual meaning we attach to it.)


So what was taken out? The most common change I found was the invariable changing of the word "body" to the word "person." It seems the Regency folk didn't really mind sex, or talk about sex, but some words they found too gross, too vulgar, too indelicate -- and "body" was one of them. (Versions of the Bible in this period also took out the word "body" and similar words.)


In one passage, "virginity" becomes "honour." The word "lechery" becomes "wenching." One passage from "Measure for Measure" was cut and rearranged thus:

SHAKESPEARE'S ORIGINAL: Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man!
J. P. KEMBLE'S VERSION: Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, to take away the life of a man for--

Ah, yes, the telling "trailing off" trick. (Too true!)

Is anyone else fascinated by Regency Shakespeare? Any questions? Comments? Favorite plays? Plays you wish you could see the Regency versions of? Or any comments on the topic of bowdlerism in general? (Though the term did not yet exist, and Bowdler was only getting started in our period...)

Cara
Cara King, MY LADY GAMESTER -- out now!!!
for more info on Regency theatre, see http://caraking.com/Theatre.html
for more info on Regency private life, see http://caraking.com/PrivateLife.html

Christmas Notions

All right, first of all, the answers to yesterday's quiz! They are:

1) A bag
2) A brougham (this was the one I got wrong--I thought they were ALL Regency carriages, oops)
3) Clematis
4) A library that loaned books to members who paid a subscription fee
5) To fill the page one way and then write in the spaces the other way
6) Though I was tempted to go with the decayed fruit answer, it was of course: Add decorative items to it
7) A coat
8) Stays
9) Members of Parliament
10) Poker

So--how did everyone do?

And I have been giving a lot of thought to Christmas matters lately. I took Megan's advice and piled many of my favorite Christmas-set books in a basket, where they look all festive and beckoning! There are several anthologies there, as well as Kate Huntington's "Mistletoe Mayhem", Regina Scott's "Twelve Days of Christmas", Mary Balogh's "A Christmas Bride"--and many others, which I'm sure I'll talk about more as the season goes on.

When I was writing my own Christmas novellas ("A Partridge in a Pear Tree" in "A Regency Christmas", and "Upon a Midnight Clear" in "Regency Christmas Magic", a story that features my own personal favorite couple of my own creating, Antoinette and Mark) I did a lot of research on Christmas in the period. Of course, many of the traditions we consider to be, well, traditional come from the Victorian period. Trees, stockings, Santa Claus, though not Barnes and Noble gift cards (my own favorite family tradition!). In the Regency, Christmas was a much lower-key time, though it had its share of fun. Greenery was used for decorations, rosemary, bay, holly, laurel, mistletoe, fashioned into swags and wreaths. Here is a bit of a poem from 1825:
"Bring me a garland of holly,
Rosemary, ivy, and bays"

Gifts were probably exchanged, though not the great mountains we expect now (no Barbie dream homes and Tickle Me Elmos), maybe a few songs sung, though many of the older carols were heard more as hymns in church. There might be roving bands singing "wassail" songs from door to door, looking for food, coins, and (what else?) wassail. In London, there were often Christmas pantomimes, and it seems Astley's Amphitheater had a Christmas show. On Twelfth Night, there were often masking parties, and cakes where whoever got the bean would then be "king of the bean" for the party.

Jane Austen, as far as I can find, only mentioned the holiday once in her surviving letters, wishing her sister Cassandra a "merry Christmas", and saying she was invited to dine at a friends' house (she was not going to go due to bad weather, but then it seems the weather cleared and she went after all). There are some hints in the books--"Persuasion" features a scene of Christmas at the Musgrave house, where the girls are cutting out silk and gold paper for ornaments, the small boys run riot (too much candy?), and the fire roars. Lady Russell remarks, "I hope I shall remember in future not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holiday." And in "Emma", they attend a Christmas party at the Westons'. Mr. Elton says, "At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather."

I tried to stay true to this in my own stories, while still being festive and holiday-ish (it's a holiday anthology, after all!). My characters play games ("Partridge" centers around a sort of scavenger hunt based on the song), attend parties, and drink wassail, while finding love, of course. Which I hope you'll have in abundance this holiday season.

A Sunday Quiz

I'm on the mailing list for the Jane Austen Centre's newsletter, and this month's edition included this fun Regency quiz. A good pastime for a rainy (here, anyway!) afternoon. Enjoy! :)

A reticule was what necessary lady's item?
1) A bonnet
2) A shawl
3) A bag

Which of these was not a Regency era carriage?
1) A phaeton
2) A chaise
3) A brougham

Which kind of flower was not available in Jane's lifetime?
1) Clematis
2) Tulips
3) Hyacinths

A circulating library is what?
1) On a carriage that tours around
2) In a round room in a country house
3) A library that loaned books to members who paid a subscription fee

To cross a letter is to do what?
1) To sign an x instead of your name
2) To fill the page one way and then write in the spaces the other way
3) To proofread

To trim a bonnet is to?
1) Make it fit a younger sister
2) Add decorative items to it
3) Get rid of decayed fruits adorning it

A Regency gentleman was required to wear which item in the presence of ladies?
1) A hat
2) A coat
3) Gloves

Which supportive undergarment was most popular at the time?
1) A corset
2) Stays
3) A brassiere

Who could "frank" a letter?
1) The royal family
2) Members of Parliament
3) Judges

Which of these games was not a card game of Jane's time?
1) Poker
2) Whist
3) Piquet

(I ended up getting 9 of 10 right, though I have to admit the flower one was a lucky guess!)

What will I wear to that Christmas Party?

In the mood to play dress-up? Do you have a Christmas party coming up and a hankering to attend as Elizabeth Bennett (or Darcy, for that matter)? It isn’t so very hard to put a costume together, even with the problem of obtaining period shoes, shawls, jewelry, and hats. You can do a lot by using a little ingenuity.

The easiest solution is to have your costume made. I made a quick list of costumers I am aware of. I know there are more, and a little internet searching would find them.

Seamstresses: The one I used for the beautiful gown I have and wore at a Beau Monde Function is Ute Forlano of Dragonfly Formals: http://www.dragonflyformals.com/
She still has a page showing the gown she made for me, by the way! Just click on the little purple button on the Welcome page that says “Laurie” on it.

Others are available, but of course, I have not tried them. Here are some:
http://www.regencygowns.com/index.html
http://www.earthlydelights.com.au/regency.htm
http://www.lauryllane.com/regalia/home.html
http://www.historyinthemaking.org/index.htm (includes gentlemen’s costumes)
http://stores.ebay.com/Period-Goods_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm (An ebay store—this costumer has good feedback)


If you make the costume yourself, you will need the pattern and the supplies. If you are a novice sewer, as I am, you probably want to find a simple pattern that isn’t period authentic (i.e. regarding the cut of the garment, where the seams are, how it is finished inside, the exact style of closures, etc.). Being a dreamer (I dream that someday I will sew that gown!) I am a collector of patterns, material, trims, shawls, hat forms…you get the idea. So I thought that I would make a list of sources I have at hand.

For the pattern: the “big” pattern makers as McCalls and Simplicity have made Regency “costume” patterns, although I am not sure what ones are in print right now. It is worth a search for one. But there are other patterns available. The first that comes to mind is one which was designed by Jennie Chancey of Sense and Sensibility Patterns. http://www.sensibility.com/

The second place to identify a pattern to purchase is at The Great Pattern Review.
http://www.gbacg.org/Patterns/index.html
These pattern reviews are unfortunately not listed by period but by maker, so it takes a bit of looking to find the Regency pattern reviews. Folkware has an empire gown pattern that has been favorably reviewed, and be sure to look at La Mode Bagatelle Regency wardrobe pattern. There are many patterns in the GPR for the gentlemen, too.

You will want to do a lot of surfing to research styles if you aren’t already familiar or aren’t sure what you want, whether you plan on sewing your costume yourself or not. There are lots of sources of costume prints in the internet, and there are also period portraits—possibly the best resources of all.

Finding fabrics, shoes, hats, gloves, parasols…well, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that for another time.

Enjoy!

Laurie

Regency Christmas Mania!

The weather is finally colder, Thanksgiving and all your annoying relatives are close at hand, and that can mean only one thing: Christmas mania. And although I like to pretend to possessing an insouciant New York je ne sais quoi, I get as swept up in the season as anyone who wears brighter colors. This past week, I dove into what my husband not-so-laughingly refers to as the Leaning Tower of Romance, the stacks and stacks of paperbacks that are spilling off our bookshelves and onto the floor. My purpose: to unearth, and display, my enormous collection of Regency Christmas anthologies*. I know I don't I have them all (a gal's gotta have goals, after all), but an informal count yielded approximately 30 Christmas-themed books. There are one or two medievals in there, but the majority are Regency-set Christmas stories. Every year, I pull them out, place them lovingly in a basket, and display them somewhere near my ginormous Christmas tree (we've got 12' ceilings, and we usually buy at least a 9' tree). And then, because the collection has grown so large, I place the overflow of books on the floor near the basket. And then? I pick them up and read them throughout the season, hopefully with a glass of wine at my elbow. See, it's a busy time at Christmas, and you don't always have the ability to commit to a full-length book. But a short story, penned by masters such as Mary Balogh, Edith Layton, our own Amanda McCabe, Carla Kelly, Allison Lane, et al? Perfect. And if you do get the chance to read a longer book, you've got myriad choices there, too. Mary Balogh has written at least three "Christmas" traditional Regencies, and Diane Farr, Elisabeth Fairchild, Carla Kelly and Lynn Kerstan/Alicia Rasley each have one. Regency Christmas stories convey the essence of Christmas cheer (even though those Regency people didn't celebrate Christmas so much--that came later, with the Victorians). I'm a sucker for all that good will, not to mention the wine, and I love the times when I can settle down with a good book that'll satisfy my urge for a good romance AND a good Christmas story. So what are your traditions? Do you collect any particular type of book (besides Regencies, of course)? Do you collect any kind of Christmas trinket? Which is your favorite Christmas romance story?

Megan
*and in case you think my husband has any right to complain, keep in mind he has over 300 Christmas music discs, with more arriving as I type. Obsessive media types? Uh, yeah, that's us. Too bad our apartment isn't quite as large as our appetite for music and reading.

A nice cup of tea

Now stir the fires, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

William Cowper

My characters and I have this in common--we swill tea. I thought I'd try and explain why tea is so important to the English--there's even an official website, http://www.tea.co.uk which has some fascinating stuff on modern tea drinking, like how to judge your boss from the way they hold their teacup, celebrity teacup designs, and the official Brit medical establishment's view on tea drinking (it's good for you! Ha! It contains antioxidants!). And in regencies, it's always the stuff from China and India, with milk and sugar, none of those nasty herbal medicines, thank you. Why the milk? I'm not sure. One theory is that early English manufacturers couldn't make a porcelain cup that would stand up to the temperature of the tea, so the milk was there to cool it down. Considering that even the most clunky of stoneware has to fire at about 1200F I think this is unlikely--unless the china was cracked to begin with. It tastes better that way, so I guess that's how it came about (oops, some milk spilled in my tea but I'll drink it anyway).

First, the pics. Top left, a Spode teapot with a floral pattern and gold wotsits from the early nineteenth century. Left, a tea caddy from about 1820, made with mahogany and rosewood veneers, two compartments for different sorts of tea, and a glass mixing bowl in the middle. This sort of caddy was used in the drawing-room for the elegant hostess to mix her own, and expensive tea blend. Lower left, an eighteenth-century China import teapot.

Tea was discovered by accident (oops, a leaf fell in my cup, I think I'll drink it anyway) by Shen Nung, Chineses scholar and herbalist in 2737 BC. By the Tang dynasty (618-906 AD) ch'a was China's national drink. It caught on in India and came to Europe in the sixteenth century, and to the coffeehouses of London in the mid-seventeenth. Catherine of Braganza supposedly brought a gift of tea from Portugal for her husband-to-be Charles II. At any rate, by
1660, London merchant Thomas Garway issued a broadsheet selling tea for sale at £6 and £10 per pound. Garway claimed tea was "wholesome, preserving perfect health until extreme old age, good for clearing the sight," able to cure "gripping of the guts, cold, dropsies, scurveys" and claiming that "it could make the body active and lusty." Within a hundred years tea was widespread in England, supplanting beer as the drink of choice, and served in coffeehouses and pleasure gardens like Vauxhall and Ranelagh.

When the main meal of the day moved from midday to the evening fashionable hostesses served tea with snacks such as cakes, sandwiches, and nuts to tide themselves over until dinnertime. I've read this was attributed to Anna, seventh Duchess of Bedford in around 1840, which sounds extremely late. At the other end of the social spectrum, from about 1740 to 1820, workers on farms and in factories defended their right to tea breaks, to the fury of industrialists, landowners and clerics who asserted the habit encouraged indolence and cut down on productivity. Tea drinking, because it requires boiling water, is also thought to have reduced mortality rates among the poor in cities.

Later on tea was championed by the teetotal movement, and with the opening of teahouses in the 1860s, furthered the feminist movement in providing gathering places for unescorted women. High tea developed as an evening meal among poor and middle-class families, who still had their main meal at midday, and included somewhat more substantial fare than the afternoon tea of the aristocracy. In our house it could include sardines, boiled eggs, sticks of celery, sandwiches, scones, and something my mother called Scotch pancakes (a sort of griddle cake).

Any more tea myths or facts? Favorite teas? I'll have a nice cup of Assam now...

Janet

All I Want for Christmas...

I’m taking it easy today, fighting a stupid virus, drinking lots of tea (the hot kind, of course), trying not to feel too jealous of everyone who’s already seen the new P&P movie, and generally trying to think happy thoughts.

Which include Christmas. Now as far as I can tell, Regency folk did not hang stockings up for Father Christmas to fill. I think that tradition became more popular in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, though I’d be happy to be corrected by anyone more versed in the history of Christmas!

What I’m thinking about today is what I want in my own stocking. My husband and I always exchange wish lists, from which we choose a few items (thus keeping a tiny element of surprise). My tastes are fairly simple: books and chocolate, maybe the occasional music CD or video and/or artsy costume jewelry (I always lose the real stuff).

The Jane Austen action figurine from The Writer's Store is tempting—maybe she would inspire me during dry spells in my own writing?

More videos would be great. I still don’t have a copy of the Firth/Ehle P&P, which I’d love to own, though a three-volume set could be pricey.

Mostly, however, I want books!

I love writing references, so I’m definitely asking for some of those. I borrowed THE WRITER’S JOURNEY, by Christopher Vogler, from a friend and like it so much I want my own copy, for instance.

I still haven’t read all of Laura Kinsale’s books, so some of her backlist titles are on my list. Ditto for Judith Ivory.

I’ve also met several authors at conferences and decided they were such cool people that I must read some of their books. I’m a bit embarrassed to confess this, but I haven’t ready anything by either Anne Stuart or Susan Wiggs. Does anyone have favorites to suggest by either of those authors? Any other new authors to recommend?

So what does everyone else have on their wish lists?

Wishing everyone health and happiness and everything they deserve. (We’ve all been good, right?)

Elena :)
LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, a Romantic Times Top Pick!
www.elenagreene.com

How much does accuracy matter?

How much does historical accuracy matter to you?

I ranted a bit on the subject yesterday...but now I'm calmer, and I'd like to know what everyone else thinks.


At the Austen movie exhibition at the Museum of Costume in Bath, they argued about the EMMA costume shown here, "Gwyneth Paltrow's green and white dress, with its large, chocolate bow on the bodice, has none of the subtlety of the fabrics that other designers have used... In a way, the pattern looks more like a textile design from the 1970's... This is just what Hollywood requires: simple dresses, simple messages." So: does this dress bother you? Is it too anachronistic, or do you like the way it captures Emma's "princess" role in her community? How accurate do you think fabric and cut need to be? Is having an accurate outline enough?


Or how about hair, and bonnets? Does it bother you that Emma goes outside throughout the movie with the hairstyle shown above, and no hat or bonnet? Or how about Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Bennet, who skips a bonnet, and also has her hair down? Is that too ahistorical for you?


How about Greer Garson, in the 1940 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE movie? It is commonly said that in this film, they gave the men Regency styles, and the women the styles of a decade or two later....but doesn't this dress also look very 20th century? Does it bother you that the women aren't wearing dresses that are remotely Regency? And does Garson's non-period hair bother you?



Here we have two shots of Embeth Davidtz playing Mary Crawford in the recent movie of MANSFIELD PARK. This, in my opinion, is the most anachronistic dress of all, but it does convey Mary Crawford's slinkiness, and sophistication. Does this dress drive you bats? (I wish I could also find a photo of Miss Bingley's sleeveless dress -- I don't believe one exists on the internet! But here's her other dress, which is less wrong, but still odd.)


How about accuracy in books? When Heyer talks about the Little Season during the Regency, though it didn't yet exist, does that annoy you? When another author's hero runs away at eighteen and purchases a commission in the navy, do you shout at the book? When Sir William is also Sir Barton, and Lord Brighton is also Lord George, do you throw the book against the wall? Or are all of these annoyances minor to you (if indeed you notice them at all)?

What kind of inaccuracies bother you most? Easily checked facts, such as title, distances between towns, how fast a carriage could go? Or the mindset of the times? Or the rules of society?