Breakfast Links: Week of January 24, 2011

Now that we've joined Twitter, we're discovering dozens of interesting blogs and sites, news stories and announcements, that delight us as Nerdy History Girls. We're sure you'd enjoy them as well – here's a selection of our favorites from the past week.

• Mr. Darcy: How Colin Firth's triumph has fuelled Jane Austen fever http://t.co/uy7XHD8

• Death attacks! The Nightingale monument at Westminster Abbey: http://bit.ly/hbCskq

• Rare books with beautiful fore-edge paintings. Esp. like all the ice skaters. http://bit.ly/fApHtK

• Some we like, some...not so much. Royal wedding dresses from Queen Victoria to 2010. http://tinyurl.com/6a67k5q

• Pretty little ring: Souvenir from the wedding of Queen Victoria in 1840 http://twitpic.com/3t1j3n

• A heart-breaking letter from a condemned father to his son: Charles I to the future Charles II: http://bit.ly/bsVmqM

• Excellent online exhibition from British Library: Ephemera: adverts & posters from Victorian Life. http://ow.ly/3HKZk

• Society and Scandal in Edwardian England http://bit.ly/hpeext

• A day for doomed lovers. Rare love letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne up for sale: http://bit.ly/hJR54j

• Exciting rediscovery: locket commemorating affair between Lady Hamilton & Lord Nelson: http://bit.ly/hvQp6A

• An 1844 photograph of Waterloo hero the Duke of Wellington http://twitpic.com/3t96gr

• Francis Wheatley's lovely "Cries of London" pictures show street vendors of 1785: http://bit.ly/eAgSfp

• Wonder if these will ever come back in fashion? Spectacular ruffs, 16-17th c.: http://bit.ly/hUlYy6

• Crimson silk, gold lamé, silver leather & diamanté.Great bespoke shoes from the 1920s:http://ow.ly/3Ha85

• Napoleon congratulates Josephine on her (perhaps imaginary?) pregnancy http://on.fb.me/gWDxcW

• Useful for bewildered Americans: How to address a duke: http://bit.ly/idY3pd

• More about Victorian-Edwardian gas lighting, so new-fangled in the PBS show “Downton Abbey”: http://bit.ly/fl7mAQ

• A glimpse inside this private club - and it's gorgeous: the Athenaeum, London - http://bit.ly/fARC3j
• Accents and Dialects of the UK at the British Library. Hear the differences!   http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/