Pseudonyms; or How Susan is Becoming Isabella

Susan/Isabella reporting:

Pseudonyms, or pen names, have a long history in publishing, especially for women. In the past, women writers often assumed a male name to give their books credibility with editors and readers skeptical of a female pen: Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). I can think of only one case when a woman writer with a male-sounding first name switched to one that was more feminine: Howard Allen O'Brien publishes as Anne Rice.

Sometimes women writers choose a pen name to separate themselves from their husbands and families, and sometimes, too,  a pen name works because it's shorter and easier to remember than the real name: the single-named Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette.) Modern writers often choose a second name to signal readers that they're writing a different kind of book Nora Roberts writes traditional romance/women's fiction; as J.D. Robb, she writes futuristic suspense. I'm sure you can think of more examples - once you start, it's hard to stop.

All of which is a roundabout way of explaining that this summer I'll be launching an exciting new series of historical romances under a new name: Isabella Bradford. Scheduled for release at the end of July, When You Wish Upon a Duke is the first of three books (published by Ballantine/Random House) following the romantic escapades of the irrepressible Wylder sisters – escapades that make them the talk of Georgian London, and a passionate challenge to the trio of dukes who fall in love with them. You won't have long to wait for the next book in the series, either.  When the Duchess Says Yes will be released in late September, and When the Duke Found Love in late November.

I'll be writing more here on the blog about the historical background to the books over the coming months (as well as launching an Isabella Bradford website), but in the meantime, I'll be adding Isabella's name to my posts here as well. A bit awkward, I know, but then we Geminis are accustomed to having multiple identities.

What about my historical novels written as Susan Holloway Scott? For now, I'm taking a short break from historical fiction to focus on Isabella Bradford. But don't be surprised if some historical story suddenly bubbles up from my imagination and research to become a new book.

Breakfast Links: Week of April 2, 2012

Happy Easter, happy Passover, happy spring! Served up fresh for your holiday weekend: our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, video clips, pictures, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.
• The lost Hippodrome – a mammouth 1906 NYC theater – reportedly the largest in the world.
• "Minions": the complicated privy chamber of Henry VIII.
• Account of the Wonderful Centaur, 1751.
• "Rogues, a Study of Character"- collection c1860 of glass print photos of criminals & their crimes.
• A ballroom shepherdess? Charming fancy dress costume, c1883-87.
• Inspired by a royal bride (or not): The truth about 19th c Battenburg Cake.
• The Victorians and the Blow-Up Doll Femme de Voyage.
• Shakespeare and the Lost Years.
• What a library! Uses of tiered tables in the book rooms at Wimpole Hall.
• Avert your eyes, sensitive followers: A naughty Georgian print, featuring a little light spanking.
• Oh, why not? Architectural LOLcats.
• Enjoy three lovely straw hats (1890s, 1940s, & 1950s) that are perfect for Easter Sunday.
• When books mattered: Scribner's NYC bookstore was the Apple flagship of its day, a century ago.
• 17th c advice on how to train a horse to pick up a glove, count, and piss on demand.
• First-ever appearance of Peter Rabbit, in an illustrated letter from Beatrix Potter to a young boy.
• UK's first female doctor? Strange tale of a woman called "James" Barry, who lived life as a man.
• Mark Twain's obsession with Joan of Arc.
• Louis XIV: Patron, but no saint.
• Hear Mick Jagger sing about cereal, as mentioned by Don Draper on Mad Men. (video)
• Titanic: Twenty telling images.
• Ganseys for Dummies: exploding myths surrounding historic cable knits of the British Isles.
• Victorine Meurent, Manet's famous model - and an ambitious artist herself.
• Stupendous photos of the 1960s pre-Apollo astronauts. Did Geminis have the right stuff? Hell yeah!
• Women known as "fluffies" clean the London Underground at night in 1944. (video)
• Queen Victoria's wedding dress.
• Arbors for lovers and large gatherings in early American gardens.
• Victorian women & drugs.
• Grisly "hand of glory" discovered in the wall of a thatched cottage.

Friday Videos: Queen Elizabeth II & the Royal Maundy Service

Susan reporting:

We're offering two videos this week, featuring the same royal ceremony fifty years apart. Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the three days celebrating Easter, and commemorates the events of the Last Supper. In an ancient tradition that dates back at least to the time of King Edward I, the reigning English monarch offers alms, called the Royal Maundy, to a symbolic number of elderly, deserving citizens (one man and one woman for each year of the sovereign's age); the sum of the alms is also the same amount in pence. The sovereign gives each recipient two small leather purses, one red, one white, which are carried in the ceremony by Yeomen of the Guards. In the red purses are modern currency for the purchase of food and clothing. In the white purses are the silver Maundy coins. (For more about Maundy Money, see this post by the Royal Mint.)

The Royal Maundy Service in 1952, shown in the video above, was the first official appearance by Elizabeth as the new queen, only a few weeks after her father's death in February. Because of her youth - she was only twenty-six at the time - the Royal Maundy that she distributed consisted of silver coins totaling twenty-six pence, given to the twenty-six deserving men and women. She was the first English queen to participate in the ceremony since her namesake Elizabeth I, four hundred years earlier.

Sixty years later, the Queen is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, and when she attended the Royal Maundy Service at York Minster this week, the number of the recipients and the coins were substantially more: eighty-six male and eighty-six female recipients received coins valued at eighty-six pence. Below is video from the service, which took place yesterday, April 5, 2012.


If you receive this post by email and are seeing only a blank or black box above, please go directly to this link to view the videos.

An Easter Custom: Lifting

Loretta reports:

An interesting Easter custom, courtesy William Hone, The Every-Day Book, or, The Guide to the Year, Vol. 1., (originally published in 1825)
~~~
Mr. Ellis inserts, in his edition of Mr. Brand's "Popular Antiquities," a letter from Mr. Thomas Loggan of Basinghall-street, from whence the following extract is made : Mr. Loggan says, " I was sitting alone last Easter Tuesday, at breakfast, at the Talbot in Shrewsbury, when I was surprised by the entrance of all the female servants of the house handing in an arm-chair, lined with white, and decorated with ribbons and favours of different colours.  I asked them what they wanted, their answer was, they came to heave me; it was the custom of the place on that morning, and they hoped I would take a seat in their chair.  It was impossible not to comply with a request very modestly made, and to a set of nymphs in their best apparel, and several of them under twenty.  I wished to see all the ceremony, and seated myself accordingly.  The group then lifted me from the ground, turned the chair about, and I had the felicity of a salute from each.  I told them, I supposed their was a fee due upon the occasion, and was answered in the affirmative; and, having satisfied the damsels in this respect, they withdrew to heave others.  At this time, I had never heard of such a custom; but on inquiry, I found that on Easter Monday, between nine and twelve, the men heave the women in the same manner as on the Tuesday, between the same hours, the women heave the men.”
...
The late Mr. Lyson read to the Society of Antiquaries an extract from a roll in his custody, as keeper of the records in the tower of London, which contains a payment to certain ladies and maids of honour for taking king Edward I. in his bed at Easter; from whence it has been presumed that he was lifted on the authority of that custom, which is said to have prevailed among all ranks throughout the kingdom. The usage is a vulgar commemoration of the resurrection which the festival of Easter celebrates.

The Liberated Lives of Hortense & Marie Mancini

Susan reporting:

Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin (1646-1699) is one of my favorite historical women. I've written about her here and here for this blog, and she's also cut a bold figure in several of my historical novels, including The French Mistress and The King's Favorite.

Born a niece of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin, Hortense was a beautiful, flamboyant woman unhappily married off to a fanatical madman. Granted, she would have challenged most husbands: she rode, shot, gambled, swam, read and wrote, fought with swords, dressed in men's clothes, kept a menagerie of pets, and took lovers with abandon, including the English King Charles II.

But in 17th c society, women were considered their husband's property, with few rights of their own, and Hortense rebelled. She fled her husband, as did her equally unhappily married sister Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna (1639-1715) - who had herself been an early love of the French King Louis XIV- and together the two women embarked on a wild journey across Europe. Keeping one step ahead of their husbands, they travelled scandalously on their own from one royal court to another. Best of all, Hortense wrote her memoirs, whose frankness and feminist philosophy made them an instant sensation. How can you not like a woman like that?

My only regret regarding Hortense and Marie was that, stunningly, neither lady had a first-rate biography. Now they do: The Kings' Mistresses by noted scholar Elizabeth C. Goldsmith. Bringing together the remarkable lives of Hortense and Marie Mancini against the tumultuous world of Baroque Europe, this dual biography is rich with period detail and thoughtful research. It's historical biography at its best - the intertwined story of two women who refused to be ruled by either husbands or kings, and dared instead to create their own destiny.

Above: Hortense Mancini, by Benedetto Gennari the Younger, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes.


In accordance with the FTC, I received this book from the publisher for review - though I would definitely have bought it on my own, too!

Fashions for April 1821

Loretta reports:

I especially love the little puffs on the shoulders of the carriage dress.

From the Lady’s Monthly Museum for April 1821.

~~~

THE

MIRROR OF FASHION

FOR APRIL, 1821.

CARRIAGE DRESS.

Pelisse of levantine of a bright mashmallow-blossom color, finished round the border with points folded back, from the material being placed over the lining; each point is terminated by a rich tassel à la ballon. The mancherons at the shoulders are formed of distinct puffs. A cravat scarf shawl, of pink raw silk, is generally worn with this pelisse, and a black bonnet, with oval puffings à I'Espagne on the brim, and points at the edge to correspond with the trimming on the pelisse: a rich plume of curled feathers is placed in front, with one feather depending over the right shoulder. Single Spanish ruff of lace, of a Vandycke pattern. Half-boots, of mashmallow-blossom, kid.

EVENING DRESS.

Round dress, of pearl-colored gossamer satin, trimmed with a broad ornamental border of embossed crape, or satin à l’antique. The stomacher is composed of fine lace of a novel form, and is pointed at the bottom of the waist in front. High tucker of fine broad lace. The hair arranged partly in the Greek and partly in the Parisian style, confined by a velvet bandeau across the forehead, where it is slightly separated, and crowned by a superb-diadem of apple-blossoms. Necklace and ear-rings of large oriental pearls. White satin slippers, white kid gloves, and white fan of figured tulle.

We have . . . been favored with the above elegant dresses by Miss Pierpoint, inventress of the Corset à la Grecque, 9, Henrietta-street, Covent-Garden.

Fashion that Made an Abolitionist Statement, c 1790

Susan reporting:

The fashion-conscious gentleman of 1800 that we recently saw here (and in detail below) was wearing one of the more popular and useful male accessories of his era: dangling seals, also called fobs or toys. Suspended by ribbons or a chain, the seals were a decorative evolution of a practical item. Before envelopes, letters were folded sheets sealed with wax. The letter-writer would personalize his missive by pressing an intaglio seal into the hot wax, marking it with a symbol or design meaningful to him: a monogram, family crest, cipher, or classical motif.

While a seal could be cast metal, more elaborate ones became a kind of jewelry, with carved stones set into precious or plated metals. Look closely at many portraits and drawings of gentlemen from the late 18th-early 19th c, and you'll see them, usually worn at the waist in a small cluster. But the fashion wasn't restricted to gentlemen. Ladies, too, wore seals, hanging from their waist as part of a chatelaine. (Here's a splendid one c 1740, complete with a watch as well as seals.)

But the seal, above left, is more than mere ornament. (This photo shows the seal about twice actual size, and mounted on a display post.)  To quote from the accompanying placard: "The engraved carnelian stone of this example depicts a half-kneeling African male, bound at the wrists and ankles by iron chains, beneath the motto "AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER." The design was first adopted in England in 1787 by the Quaker-led Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Within a few years, the "slave medallion" design achieved wide circulation in print, metal, and ceramics and was adopted by anti-slavery movements in France and the United States. With each use, the owner of this seal expressed his or her abolitionist sympathies."

Abolition was a complicated and volatile issue for Americans and Englishmen alike, involving questions of politics, morality, religion, racism, regionalism, and economics. Wearing a seal with this symbol – instantly recognizable at the time – would have made a subtle yet undeniable statement that had nothing to do with the whims of fashion.

Top: Seal, probably made in London; 1790-1810. Carnelian, gilt brass. Collection of Winterthur Museum.
Below: Detail, A man of fashion in 1700: A fashionable man in 1800, drawn etched & published by Dighton, Charg. Cross, London, 1800. Copyright Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.