Accidents & Offenses

An elopement from Horsham took place a few days ago:–Miss T–, on a matrimonial excursion with a gallant son of mars, a Mr. G—e. the young lady dropped a note at the chamber door of her mother, which informed her that her daughter would be a wife ere they should have the happiness of meeting again.

Pour a cup of tea and read the rest of the paper (footnotes included):
The London Weekly

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I wrote the first two writing girl books while I was in graduate school, studying early 19^th century British literature. One class in particular was absolutely invaluable to my research: The Economy of Print Media. Basically, we studied the cheap, “trashy”, real stuff that people were actually reading: periodicals, railway novels, and, of course, newspapers.

For this class I did a semester-long research project on 1820’s newspapers. At the end of the term, I handed in a fictional version of a typical issue of a 1820’s newspaper. For it I combined true articles and my  own made up stories. You can read this issue of  The London Weekly.  (it’s heavily footnoted, as one cannot get through grad school without them).

For the articles, I swear by the British Periodicals online database and the c19-19^th century index of periodicals. Both are probably only available via colleges and universities. But if you can get access to them, go for it!

Here are some books that I found invaluable as I was working on this research project and the Writing Girl novels. The links go to google books, if available, so your further reading is free!

• Scandal! A Scurrilous History of Gossip: Exactly as it sounds. Delightful.

• Victorian Print Media: A collection of essays and first person stories from 19th     century publishing.

• The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period: I could not have graduated from grad school without this amazing work about who read what and under what circumstances and more.

• London: The Biography: Everything you ever needed to know about  London and much, much, much more.

• Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers. For the title alone, I had to get it.

• Fleet Street: 500 Years Of The Press

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Google books: It’s very useful for finding old, out of print books (that are free!). Also, you can search for keywords, etc, in the text to see if it’s worth reading or even worth buying.

The Colindale Newspaper Library: This is a trek—an hour outside of London, you need a pass, you must check your baggage, and you must be quiet. But it’s awesome. I read actual newspapers from the early 1800’s. They come in giant bound volumes to flip carefully through. It’s just an amazing feeling to touch and smell and read those 200+ year-old papers.

Museums: Especially one’s with gift shops. I LOVE the Regency rooms at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Amazon: All sorts of good, unusual books delivered.

Colonial Williamsburg: Recreate the days of yore experience! CW is a quaint, fascinating and fun experience. I don’t know of any other place where you can immerse yourself in another world like that. It’s something about the lack of electricity, I think (except for the cash registers in the cute little shops!).

The best experience of all, for me as a writer, was dinner with my family in the tavern at CW. Though it was still a bit light outside, it was rather dark inside. We dined by candlelight. Someone played an old fiddle. We ordered meat pies with venison, and other game meats–an authentic colonial recipe. Footsteps sound different on those old floors.

You could so just imagine a hero and heroine discretely dining in a dark corner, listening to the music, looking out at the last of daylight …

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Mehitable Loud

Araminta Strange

Millicent Strange

Lord Redleigh

and…Mitchell Twitchell

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Why you should buy a Groom of One’s Own by Maya Rodale from Tony Haile on Vimeo.

©2010 Maya Rodale Blog. All Rights Reserved.