Posts Categorized: 19th century
Call me strange, but I love to do research. It’s like a scavenger hunt: one source leads you to another, which leads you to…a dead end. Then you have to pick a different trail to follow. Like you other researching folks out there, I have a ton of bookmarks and tags, but only directly…
Please join me over at historical fiction writer Marcia Richards’ blog, where I will be guest posting about: Christmas Traditions in late-19th/early 20th century U.S. Women’s Colleges See you there! Kathy Be the first to like. Like Unlike
How far back do we need to go to find the first detective novel? There are lots of examples of early stories from cultures around the world. My post on Judge Dee, for example, discusses how Van Gulik based his work on fictional stories from the Ming Dynasty about magistrate Gong An. But in terms of…
Ever wonder how the police came into existence? Of course, it differs with each country, so I’ll focus on England, my area of concentration in grad school. In England, the year 1829 was key. The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 Sir Robert Peel, Home Secretary in the British Cabinet and a Tory, brought about…
How did the phrase “The Butler Did It” come to be such a cliched convention in mystery stories? Did the butler – or another servant in the household of a wealthy murder victim – really “do it”? And in enough mystery novels to deserve the cliche? Any of you mystery readers remember a time…
Welcome to Flashback Friday, where we continue our glance back at Thanksgivings past. Last week, we talked about football, and President McKinley’s Thanksgiving proclamation. If you missed it, click here for that post. Today, we’re talking turkey. Here’s a November 25, 1880 New York Times article, which details the abundance for sale – enough to make…
Welcome to Flashback Friday! Since today is the first Friday in November, it seemed a good time to take a look at our country’s holiday. Some of you might be asking: “Thanksgiving? What Thanksgiving?” – because the stores jumped right from the Halloween decorations to Christmas decorations on November 1st. Be the first to like.…
Since winter is just around the corner, I thought you’d enjoy a little nugget of Victorian winter recreation. The Central Park “lakes” were connected to the city’s water system, and in the winter the depth of the lake was lowered so that the water would freeze better. Ice skating was an enormously popular pastime,when the…
