The Twelve Days of Christmas Conventionally on the Western Christian calendar, the twelve days begin the day after Christmas, on Boxing Day. When the tradition began, days were counted from sundown to sundown. So Christmas evening is First Night. This means that last night, January 5th, is what has been known as Twelfth Night since…
Nothing like heading home right before New Year’s to either get you excited or complete exhausted for the coming year. I’m completely exhausted, but that’s more from getting up at 4 am eastern to sneak up on the airport when my body has refused to make the switch over from pacific time. I doubt I’ll…
Christmastide Christmastide (the Christmas season from Christmas Eve or First Night through Twelfth Night and Epiphany) during the Regency Era seems to be more easily defined by the differences in traditions and what they didn’t have or do at the time rather than the specifics of what they did or didn’t. A quick survey of…
Last week, our How I Write series laid out our writer’s toolkit and resources. This week we were asked, “Which books that you’ve read this year would you put into a time capsule for 2011?” It’s funny how you can almost tell who picked the questions each week by how whimsical or practical they are….
Maggie Blackbird asked me about a month ago (sorry Maggie!) for my recommended Regency Romances. I had written up a long list and lost it to stupid swipe on my “magic mouse” that managed to erase the reply on the web page. So… I’m sure I’ve forgotten authors I absolutely adore on this list, and…
The topic of lawyers in the Regency Era often raises lot of confusion along with the privileges of peers in the British Legal system. It wasn’t until quite recently that the historical differences between what type of lawyer you were dictated where you could practice, what types of cases you could take and even if…
This week’s Regency Primer Series entry focuses on Regency Era currency and how people referred to money as opposed to what it could purchase. The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated. Denominations of Regency Era Currency The basics that were in use at the time of…
During the Regency, anyone who wanted to portray themselves as having an air of middle-class respectability employed domestic help. To our modern thinking, live-in servants seem an extravagant luxury. However, prior to the advent of electricity and indoor plumbing, the amount of manpower to maintain a modest home — keeping it lit, heated and clean…
Last week’s post How to Write While Dealing with Holiday Madness was more practical, but this week’s entry in our How I Write series, is all fancy. The questions posed was, “If you could spend a day with any one of your characters, who would it be and why? What would you do?” This question…
Before we meet the members of the Regency Era Royal Family, I should really explain what is meant by “The Regency”. In last week’s post about Regency Peerage and Precedence, and indeed the rest of the Regency Primer Series, I apologize for assuming that everyone just knows what’s meant when I say, “The Regency”. Formally,…