Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Happy Birthday to Us, for the Ninth Time


Believe it or not, NineteenTeen is turning nine this month! Woo hoo!

  • cue confetti and noisemakers
  • light candles on cake
  • crank up volume on Victrola
Doing anything for nine straight years, especially maintaining a blog, means pretty much one thing—we do it because we’re wicked history geeks and are having fun trying to convert all of our readers to the joys of history geekery. So to celebrate our ninth birthday, Regina and I are going to take a trip down memory lane and recall some of our favorite posts. They may not be the most viewed, but they’re the ones on topics that most fascinated us for whatever reason, or from which we learned the most as we researched and wrote them, or simply had the most fun with.

And you know what? Picking just five (well sort of) was hard. There are so many others I would have liked to include—the stories of Queen Victoria’s and Princess Charlotte’s turbulent teen years still fascinates me, and I had great fun writing the series about my trip to England last year. I expect there are others that I would probably look at and say, “Oh, yeah—that one was so much fun!” except that between Regina and me there are now close to nine hundred posts in our archives. That’s a lot of posts.

So here you are, in no particular order...


Aside from having fun with the post’s clickbait-style title, I like this post a great deal because it was fascinating to put together the ads and the fashion prints I’d been studying.

Poodle Skirts and Pet Rocks

I had way too much fun thinking this one up—it all sounds so plausible...I mean, can't you just see a teen-aged Queen Victoria having a spitting contest with Lord Melbourne?
 

I just adore this woman and all her contradictions. I could have added a dozen more anecdotes of her life--some hilarious and some touching (like her habit of occasionally sneaking down to her kitchen to play cards with her cook and kitchen maids.)


Duty Calls, Part 1 and Part 2   

For me these are two of the more important posts I’ve written because they shine a light on the very real cultural differences between the 19th century and the 21st, and inform how I create characters for my stories.

You Want to Dance with Me? I Want it in Writing

 Mostly because I like showing my pretties. ☺

Now, what about you? Have we posted on a topic that has fascinated you or taught you something that you didn’t know? And is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to know more about?

Excuse me. I’m going to go eat some celery and try not to think about cake...

5 comments:

Leandra Wallace said...

Happy 9th Bday!! And just eat some cake w/green icing... ;)

Marissa Doyle said...

Ooh, good idea, Leandra--thank you!! :)

QNPoohBear said...

Happy 9th birthday NineteenTeen! I love learning from you ladies. Keep up the good work! I love the sheer blouse post. The underarm hair removers must have been a very recent trend. The 1900s magazines don't advertise sheer blouses or underarm hair remover! They do advertise removable shields for sailor style blouses and extra-large sizes for those ladies with ample bosoms. The ladies could replace the shields as necessary throughout the day as they perspired. I also love the post on Mrs. Fish. She's now one of my favorite Gilded Age people. I wish I could still visit her house. I've been to Tessie's Rosecliff and Alva's Marble House. At least they didn't tear it down.

Marissa Doyle said...

Thank you, QNPoohBear!! I'm pretty sure they still sell dress shields, for when you don't want to get perspiration on finicky fabrics. And yes, isn't Mrs. Fish amazing?

Lynn Lovegreen said...

Happy birthday, and thanks for all the fun, interesting posts!!!