What Next, Young Bluestockings?

What a lovely discussion this week in the first ever meeting of the Young Bluestockings Book Club! Bethany set the mood appropriately. Yes, indeed, my dear, a book club is exactly the place to natter on about your favorite books. I’m so glad you, and Rachel, and QnPoohBear, and Sylvia, and ChaChaneen, and Tricia did just that! Heavens, Amy admitted she hadn’t read the book yet, but that didn’t stop her from posting! I hope the rest of you (I can hear you breathing!) feel more comfortable joining us next time.

And what about next time, you ask? Marissa and I are pleased to announce that when the Young Bluestockings next meet, on April 23, we will be discussing Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer. As a plague wracks London, Mary can only pray for a way to escape. But after her gang's leader is killed, she dons his clothing, trading in the name Mary for Jack, and takes to the high seas aboard HMS Dolphin. What follows is a rollicking adventure, complete with pirates, sea battles, and romance.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice a similarity between Mary and Kim, the heroine of Mairelon the Magician. Like Kim, Mary knew there were benefits from pretending to be a boy in the early nineteenth century. Why?

A girl’s life was fairly constrained. We’ve talked about some of the outstanding examples of women, such as Caroline Herschel, Eleanor Coade, and Mary Anning, who rose above what was expected. But the lives of most young ladies were sketched on a much smaller canvas. Mairelon the Magician outlines several choices:

You could be work behind the scenes, doing your part to help your family advance in wealth or station. For a lower class young lady, this might mean working the land or helping in the family’s shop. For an aristocratic young lady, it generally meant marrying well, being a good hostess to help her husband’s political career, and avoiding scandal (hey, two out of three isn’t bad, Lady Granleigh).


You could be charming and sweet and swoon at the least sight of trouble so the young men felt appropriately manly. This was supposed to guarantee you a good husband who would treat you in the style to which you would like be become accustomed (although I’m not sure you made the best choice, Miss Marianne Thornley).



You could be savvy and dashing, look the fellows in the eye, and make your own way in the world. Note that you generally needed money or some form of income to do this (and income often meant taking money for favors to gentlemen). Even if you were an heiress, a young lady living this way was often thought to be somewhat scandalous (I’m looking at you, Rene D’Uber).

Or you could pretend you weren’t a girl and the rules for girls didn’t apply to you, like Kim and Jacky. I’ll talk more about a real nineteenth century young lady who thought the rules didn’t apply to her next week when we continue our series on nineteenth century heroines.

I’d like to think I’d be more like Rene D’Uber, with a flair and a mind (and inherited, not earned-the-hard-way money) of my own. But I suspect I’d be more likely to fall into Marianne Thornley’s camp. I’m terribly good at batting my lashes, and I tend to go weak at the knees at the first sign of chivalry.

What about you?

The Young Bluestockings Book Club reads Mairelon the Magician

Welcome! I hope you were all able to find a copy of our first selection, Mairelon the Magician by Patricia C. Wrede!

This is our first meeting, so we’re trying to figure out what will work best…this time around, I’m going to post some thoughts and talking points that I hope will spur conversation…please feel free to react to those and/or to post your own thoughts. Because this is a teen history blog, my comments are going to focus mostly on the historical aspects of the story…but you are certainly welcome to discuss any aspect of the book you wish. It’s a snowy day here so I’ll be sticking close to the computer today to help keep the conversation flowing well, but comments can continue all week!

So—here we go!

There’s magic in the streets of London,
there’s sorcery in the village lanes;
there’s a plot that has all of Society talking
in an England that never was,
but should have been….

That’s on the back cover of my copy, and in my opinion gives the perfect introduction to the story in Mairelon the Magician. I obviously love stories that combine magic and history. But what I love even more is when the history part is well done. Regina and I haven’t much discussed the underclasses in 19th century society because our books have featured aristocratic characters. MtM explores the underside of society with Kim, an orphaned street-kid doing her best to pass herself off as a boy in order to escape being forced into prostitution. She’s nearly 17, however, and it’s getting harder to keep up the masquerade. She’s a top-notch lock-pick and an accomplished pick-pocket, but a life of crime isn’t what she wants either…so her life is fast approaching a turning point.

It turns in an entirely unexpected direction when she is taken in by Mairelon, a street magician whose wagon she’s been hired to search for a mysterious silver bowl…and so we are launched into a lively, funny combination of mystery and fantasy, with a strong dollop of Georgette Heyer comedy leavening the whole.

Wrede makes good use of the colorful slang of the London poor, weaving it into Kim’s speech in a way that readers unfamiliar with it can still guess at the meanings (if there are any words you aren’t sure about, ask…and if you want to learn more about the language, check out The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue a portion of which can be viewed for free on Google Books.)

I'm also giving points for Wrede's depiction of travel. There's a lot of it in the story, done both on foot and by carriage--and Wrede makes it clear that getting anywhere takes a while, that horses have to be rested and not abused (note that on their way out of London, Kim and Mairelon and Hutch walk alongside their wagon for most of the trip in order to spare their horses). Yes, this indeed happened--even on stage coaches, where passengers would be asked to get out and walk on steep or deeply muddy roads, to prevent overstraining the horses.

I also deeply enjoy how magic is woven into this Regency setting: magic is an acknowledged, accepted part of the world, there's a Royal College of Wizards, and Mairelon, a.k.a. Richard Merrill, is one of several wizards engaged in spying on the French in the British fight against Napoleon (more recently Susannah Clarke has used a similar theme--magic in the Napoleonic Wars--to hilarious and wonderful effect in one of my favorite books, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) I think the combination of magic and the 19th century works so well because to us, the 19th century really is another world, and having magic operate there is easier to imagine than, say, magic in the post-world war era. What do you think?

But what I think I love most about this book is the homage it pays to Georgette Heyer's sparkling Regency novels. Lady Granleigh, Marianne, Freddy and his friends could all have stepped out of one of her books; Renee D'Auber sounds delightfully like Leonie in These Old Shades, and the final chaotic (but beautifully orchestrated) showdown in the Sons of the New Dawn's lodge could stand beside the equally chaotic but perfect ending in The Grand Sophy.

So--good historical detail, a finely crafted mystery with enough clues salted in to make it solveable by a careful reader but not too obvious, and plenty of sheer fun. That's what I think. What about you? What worked for you in this story? Did the 19th century world in MtM draw you in? Would you recommend this book to others, and why?

New for the New Year: Announcing the Young Bluestockings Book Club!

Happy 2010 to you all! We hope this new year will be a happy, healthy, and historical one for all of you!

In keeping with new beginnings, Regina and I thought this would be a great time to kick off a new venture we've been contemplating for a while now (galvanized by a suggestion from ChaChaneen back in September): a book club! So today we would like to introduce the Young Bluestockings Book Club!

HOW: Because we're new at this, we're going to stick to holding it here on the blog, posting our thoughts on the chosen book to open the discussion; however, if we find there's interest, we may add on or switch to a chat format.

WHEN: We're contemplating doing this bi-monthly, unless you decide you want to do it more often...we'll see how it goes after the first meeting or two. Since we're announcing today, we've decided the first meeting will happen on Tuesday, February 16, which will give you plenty of time to find and read our assigned book.

WHAT: In keeping with NineteenTeen's theme, we will try to focus on books related to 19th century teens and teen life. That actually gives us a reasonably broad field from which to choose: expect to see everything from Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer to recent YA fiction...and perhaps even some non-fiction as well. We'd like to compile a list to work with, so please send us your suggestions for possible book club books: anyone who sends us a title we decide to add to the list will get one of our NineteenTeen fans as a thank-you.

To start with, we're going for pure fun with Patricia C. Wrede's delightful YA historical fantasy, Mairelon the Magician, which is set in an alternate Regency England where magic is an accepted fact of life. It seems to recently have gone out of print, but is still widely available on the internet at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, half.com, abebooks, or alibris, or at your local library.

So please join us on February 16 to discuss Mairelon the Magician, and don't forget to send in your suggestions for other books we could discuss!