Obligatory synopsis from Goodreads: An almost forgotten classic though a founding text of Victorian middle-class identity, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management is a volume of insight and common sense. Written by what one might now describe as a Victorian Martha Stewart, the book offers advice on fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons, and the management of servants. To the modern reader expecting stuffy verbosity or heavy moralizing, Beeton’s book is a revelation: it explores the foods of Europe and beyond, suggesting new food stuffs and techniques, mixing […]
No, It’s Not Just the Dresses
I fell in love with Jane Austen sometime around 1996. I think the first time I read one of her books was when it was assigned my sophomore year of high school, and I’m pretty sure it was Pride and Prejudice but it may have been Sense and Sensibility. I’m just not sure anymore. In the intervening years I have consumed all six of her major novels, getting the final one read last year, and have partaken in many, but certainly not all, of the […]
One must avoid dinner parties of 14…
… because if you don’t you are putting yourself in the awkward position of ending up with the dreaded 13 guests should one need to cancel at the last moment. Just one of the many insights I’ve gleaned from Mrs. Seely. 🙂 This book is another in the list of historical reference materials and this one has the added benefit of being a reference in its own time period! The height of domestic service roughly coincides with the Gilded Age, 1880-1920. In that time a […]
A Silly Little Collection of Historical Facts
Synopsis Via Goodreads: When Tony Perrottet heard that Napoleon’s “baguette” had been stolen by his disgruntled doctor a few days after the Emperor’s death, he rushed out to New Jersey. Why? Because that’s where an eccentric American collector who had purchased Napoleon’s member at a Parisian auction now kept the actual relic in an old suitcase under his bed. The story of Napoleon’s privates triggered Perrottet’s quest to research other such exotic sagas from history, to discover the actual evidence behind the most famous age-old […]
What’s so Weird about reading all the time?
Obligatory Synopsis (via Goodreads) The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything […]
Reading about Ordinary Days, Looking for Extraordinary Times
Sometimes it’s tough to read a historical monograph and keep my own training out of the mix. I’m simultaneously a professional historian, and not. I do not hold advanced degrees in History, but I work at bringing history alive for visitors at my museum job. I spend the winter reading and researching various topics to prepare for the oncoming season of programs. This year my main research thrust is immigration and domestic servants. That led me to reading Ordinary Days, Extraordinary Times: Morristown New Jersey’s […]