Cool 19th Century Places to Visit: The Thorne Rooms

Sometimes the coolest things are the smallest. That’s certainly true of the Thorne Rooms, a series of miniature interiors painstakingly recreated. While the rooms were constructed between 1932 and 1940, they depict lifestyles from the late 13^th century to the 1930s, in Europe, Asia, and the U.S.

The visionary behind the work is Narcissa Niblack Thorne, wife of James Ward Thorne connected to the Montgomery Ward department stores. She designed the rooms and commissioned artisans to create the various pieces to populate them. The scale is one inch equals a foot, and the details are exquisite. I recall touring the rooms held by the Art Institute of Chicago. In a tiny library of the Georgian era lay a pair of spectacles on a side table before the hearth.

Peering through the glass boxes that house the collection, one is transported to another time, another place. Many date around the late 1700s/early 1800s. A Regency hero or heroine would be right at home. I certainly feel at home. Thorne’s English Dining Room of the Georgian Period formed the basis for Sir Nicolas Rotherford’s dining room in The Courting Campaign. Margaret Munroe slept in Thorne’s Massachusetts Bedroom, c. 1801, at the Marquis deGuis’s home in the Lakes District in The Marquis’ Kiss.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds the most of these wonderful rooms (68 in all), many of which you can find online to view. The Phoenix Art Museum and the Knoxville Museum of Art also have collections.

Highly recommended. You may never look at a room description the same way again.

Photos in this post were used under a Creative Commons license and taken by Joseph Reagle. 

Quiz for Free Book: When Was That Invented?

As you probably know by now, Nick the hero of my August release, The Courting Campaign, is a natural philosopher specializing in the properties of materials.  I was amazed by what I learned when researching the state of science in 1815.  Some things were definitely discovered or invented earlier than I thought, and some things weren't known until much later! 

So here's a quiz about inventions in nineteenth century England.  I'll post the answers in the first comment. Anyone who comments after me to let us know how you did will be entered in a drawing for a free signed copy of The Courting Campaign.  If you already have it, I'll give you a choice of any of the books for which I still have copies.  Or you can have me sign it and give it away to someone you love!  Ready?  Here we go!    

1.  Which of the following was NOT invented before 1814?
a.  Submarine
b.  Plastic surgery
c.  Safety lantern for mining
d.  Hot air balloons

2.  When was the earliest it was possible for a typical Englishwoman to light a candle with a match?
a.  1815
b.  1825
c.  1830
d.  1835

3.  Although used in the Netherlands since the 1700s, the first tin can was patented in England in 1810.  How was it opened?
a.  With a can opener
b.  With a knife
c.  The top peeled back
d.  With a hammer and chisel

4.  When was the first waterproof raincoat available in England?
a.  1807
b.  1823
c.  1846
d.  1899

5.  When was the first calculator patented?
a.  1835
b.  1822
c.  1805
d.  1800

Let us know how you did!  I'll announce the winner next Friday, August 16.

Going Courting?

This week marks the launch of The Courting Campaign, which should be on the shelves of bookstores near you as well as available at many online venues. Why is that exciting? For one, it's my 25th work of Regency-set romantic fiction, a fact that humbles me. For another, it's the first book in a new series, where downstairs servants play matchmaker for upstairs aristocracy. And for a third, the reviewers seem to really enjoy it. Huntress Reviews gave it a rare five stars; RT Book Reviews, romance's premiere industry magazine, gave it four and a half stars and a Top Pick; and an online reviewer says it's my best book yet. I hope you agree!

Emma Pyrmont has no designs on handsome Sir Nicholas Rotherford--at least not for herself. As his daughter's nanny, she sees how lonely little Alice has been. With the cook's help, Emma shows the workaholic scientist just what Alice needs. But making Nicholas a better father makes Emma wish her painful past didn't mar her own marriage chances.

Ever since scandal destroyed his career, Nicholas has devoted himself to his new invention. Now his daughter's sweet, quick-witted nanny is proving an unexpected distraction. All evidence suggests that happiness is within reach--if only a man of logic can trust in the deductions of his own heart.

Want more? Here's a short excerpt of when Emma and Nick first meet:

Out in his laboratory, Sir Nicholas Rotherford placed another damp cloth over the glowing wool and stepped back to cover his nose with the sleeve of his brown wool coat. Carbon always turned acrid. He knew that. He'd figured it out when he was eight and had burned his first piece of toast over the fire. He should have considered that fact before treating the wool and attempting to set it ablaze.

Now the smoke filled the space, and he could no longer even see the locks of black hair that tended to fall into his face when he bent over his work. His nose was stinging with the smell, and he shuddered to think what was happening inside his paisley waistcoat, where his lungs must be laboring.

But he had work to do, and nattering on about his health wasn't going to get it done.

Behind him, he heard footsteps on the marble floor he'd had installed in the old laundry outbuilding when he'd made it into his laboratory. No doubt his sister-in-law Charlotte had come to berate him again for missing some function at the Grange. She couldn't seem to understand that his work was more important than observing the social niceties.

Of course, it was possible she'd noticed the smoke pouring from the building and had come to investigate.

"It's all right," he called. "I have it under control."

"I'm certain the good Lord will be glad to hear that when you report to Him an hour from now in heaven," a bright female voice replied. "But if you prefer to continue carrying on this work here on earth, I suggest you breathe some fresh air. Now."

Nick turned. The smoke still billowed around him, made more visible by the light from the open doorway. He could just make out a slender female form and . . .a halo?

He blinked, and the figure put out a hand. "Come along. You've frightened the staff quite enough."

It was a kind tone, a gentle gesture, but he could tell she would brook no argument, and he was moving before he thought better of it.

Once outside, he felt supple fingers latching onto his arm and drawing him farther from the door. The air cleared, and he sucked in a breath as he stopped on the grass closer to the Grange.

It was sunny. He could see the house, the planted oak forests on either side, the sweep of fields that led down the dale toward the other houses that speckled the space. Odd. He was certain it had been pouring rain when he'd set out for the laboratory that morning, the mists obscuring the peaks behind the buildings.

How long had he been working?

"Take a deep breath," his rescuer said.

The advice seemed sound, so he did as she bid. The clean air sharpened his mind, cleared his senses. Somewhere nearby he thought he smelled lavender.

"Better?" she asked.

"Better," he agreed. His gaze traveled over her, from her sturdy black boots to her muddy brown eyes. She appeared to be shorter than he was, perhaps a little less than five and a half feet. What he'd taken as a halo was her pale blond hair, wound in a coronet braid around a face symmetrical enough to be pleasing. Her brown wool dress with its long sleeves and high neck hardly looked like heavenly apparel.

But then how could he be certain? He'd been avoiding thoughts of heaven and its Master for several months now.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She dipped a curtsey, but her pink lips compressed as if she found the question vexing. "Emma Pyrmont." When he continued to wait for clarification, she added, "Your daughter's nanny."
------
Be sure to come back Friday for a chance to win a free copy. If you simply cannot wait, here are links to some of the sales sites online:

Love Inspired
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
An Independent Bookseller Near You
The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

Live from Atlanta, Sort Of

Hello, my dears, from sunny, thunder storm-prone Atlanta!  Marissa and I have been running between workshops, meetings with agents and editors, and workshop panels, and we wanted to share some of the highlights with you.

First off, the hotel is amazing!  Dozens of floors and glass elevators that zip from top to bottom.  Marissa and I are agreed that it looks a bit like a spinal column. 

Some of the publishers found a new way to use those elevators--poster space!  I am told these are called elevator wraps.  And I was absolutely thrilled to see one you might find familiar.

And here is someone else who might look familiar.  Marissa's book Courtship and Curses was a finalist for the best young adult book of 2012 for the Booksellers Best Award.  She very kindly let me tag along to the awards ceremony.  Doesn't she clean up good?

There are more than a few of our sister romance authors who are looking good here the last few days.  We attended the evening soiree of the Beau Monde chapter, those awesome ladies who write Regency-set romances.  They also know how to have our kind of a good time--great food, great friends, and English country dancing.  One of the most lovely dancers was Vanessa Riley, who as you can tell looks as if she's a young lady debuting in London society.  In a way, she is.  Her first  book, Madeline's Protector, an inspirational Regency romance, was out in April.  Congratulations, Vanessa!

Not sure we'll have time for another post this week, my dears.  But come back Tuesday to talk about the movie Emma with the ever-fabulous and entertaining Cara King.  See you then!

Young Scientists: Humphry Davy, Laughing Himself into History

I have a thing for scientists and men with logical minds. I tend to prefer Spock over Kirk, Sherlock Holmes over Iron Man. The hero in my August release, The Courting Campaign, is a natural philosopher, what we would call a scientist today.  And in researching his background, I found that young, handsome scientists were not that uncommon in early nineteenth century England. 

Consider Humphry Davy, for instance.  Born in Cornwall into a woodcarver’s family, Davy did extremely well in school and even considered becoming a poet before developing a fascination for experiments.  That fascination nearly saw him blowing up his home several times as he was growing up.  An old family friend apprenticed him to a surgeon, but that connection led him to a variety of learned gentlemen who furthered his interests in chemistry.  One of these gentlemen, a Dr. Thomas Beddoes, was sufficiently impressed with young Davy that he offered him a position as his assistant at the Pneumatic Institution, a research facility for the study of the medical properties of gasses.  Davy started working there, overseeing experiments, when he was twenty.

It was there that Davy became acquainted with nitrous oxide or laughing gas.  He was convinced it could be efficacious for something, but many times he and his friends simply inhaled it for fun.  It was said the large chamber constructed for his experiments was really built for such inhalation parties.  On the other hand, he also conducted a number of experiments on galvanism, generating electric current through chemistry.  That also ended up also having a nice sideline as a parlor trick.

Between patrons of the institution and trips to London, his circle of influential friends continued to grow and soon included the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey.  Various friends brought him to the attention of the Royal Institution, that exalted haven of scientists.  He was soon assistant lecturer in chemistry there, where he also directed the chemistry laboratory and helped edit the Institute’s journal.

Perhaps it was the poet in him, perhaps it was the fact that he was kind on the eyes, but his lectures proved extremely popular, with scientists and the public alike. At times he packed 500 people, many of them women, in the lecture hall. He was full lecturer by the time he was 23 and knighted when he was 34.  Here's a satirical look at one such experiment, and it's rather rude results.  Davy is the energetic fellow with all the curls, pumping at the bellows. 

 

 

Shortly after his knighthood, he quit his position, married a widow of some means, and embarked on a Grand Tour, starting in France, where he was awarded a medal by Napoleon for his work in chemistry.  They then travelled to Florence, Rome, Naples, Milan, Munich, and Innsbruck before the return of Napoleon from Elba forced them back to England. 

More studies followed, including the invention of a lamp to aid coal miners (and a cameo appearance helping my hero in The Courting Campaign).  Davy is credited with discovering a number of elements, including sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, boron, barium, and chlorine as well as pioneering electro-chemistry.  For his body of work, he was ultimately granted a baronetcy, the highest honor given a natural philosopher at that time.   He eventually returned to Switzerland and died there of heart disease.  His last gift to the world was a book compiling his thoughts on science and philosophy, in which he spoke quite poetically and with touches of wry humor.

You might say he laughed all the way to the end. 

Pretty, Pretty Pictures

I will admit to being a words person. It’s a good trait for a writer.  But sometimes, pictures truly are worth 1,000 words, or more!  The last few weeks, I’ve been treated to a number of very fine pictures, and I thought I’d share them with you.

First off, 2013 marks 15 years in publishing for me.  My first book, The Unflappable Miss Fairchild, was published in March 1998.  And my August book, The Courting Campaign, marks my 25th work of published fiction.  So, I decided to celebrate by commissioning a new banner for my website.  This is courtesy of Glass Slipper WebDesigns:

 

Earlier this year, I also worked with Iconic Shadows to develop the cover for A Dangerous Dalliance, the book that originally introduced the four girls from my young adult book, La Petite Four.  Here’s what the designer came up with for the first book in the Lady Emily Capers.  I’m hoping I can put up more stories about the girls later this year and early next, depending on publishing schedules.

But I’ve been promising myself a cover by a famous artist for some time, so I splurged on a revision to the cover for Perfection, one of my single title historical romances available in e-book.  This is from the Killion Group:

 

Now, I can't just leave you with my pretty pictures.  If you'd like to see a selection of interesting pictures from the early nineteenth century in England, try this group from Wikipedia. 

May you have a picture perfect Memorial Day weekend, wherever you are!

Translating the People in My Head

No, I’m not planning to write in another language.  I’m simply delighted that once again the artists at Love Inspired were able to take the characters in my head and translate them into a viable cover for my August book, The Courting Campaign.  This book starts a new series for me, where the staff from four estates in Derbyshire play matchmaker for their masters. 

When I start writing a book, I generally have an idea in my head as to how the main characters look.  But my head can get a little cluttered with the many characters hanging around, so I often go looking for a picture of a real-life person who’s a good approximation.  (Example of the cluttered brain?  A dear lady came up to me in church the other day and said, with a big grin, “Don’t ya know, don’t ya know, don’t ya know.”  I stared at her rather stupidly for a moment, until I remembered I had a character named Stanley Arlington with a distressing habit of using that phrase in my book Perfection.  Guess what she’d been reading.) 

So I was rather pleased with what the grand artists for Love Inspired came up with for the cover for The Courting Campaign.  And I love the back cover copy:

 

Emma Pyrmont has no designs on handsome Sir Nicholas Rotherford--at least not for herself.  As his daughter’s nanny, she sees how lonely little Alice has been.  With the cook’s help, Emma shows the workaholic scientist just what Alice needs.  But making Nicholas a better father makes Emma wish her painful past didn’t mar her own marriage chances.

Ever since scandal destroyed his career, Nicholas has devoted himself to his new invention.  Now his daughter’s sweet, quick-witted nanny is proving an unexpected distraction.  All evidence suggests that happiness is within reach--if only a man of logic can trust in the deductions of his own heart.

The young lady in my head for The Courting Campaign’s heroine, Emma Pyrmont, is an actress who has starred in two movies loosely based on Victorian society.   And she took The Vow never to be one of those Mean Girls.  My hero Sir Nicholas Rotherford, on the other hand, may be a widower with a young daughter in the book, but he is closer to Mr. Spock than Dr. Spock in real life, and he is also associated with another group of Heroes. 

Anyone want to guess who they were based on?

The Consequences of Using Nine Pins All the Time

All right, I admit it. I like the game of Nine Pins, what some of us call Table Skittles. My brother and I had a set when we were young, and we loved the sound of those wooden pins hitting the block. The game dates back to the 1700s, when what was an outdoor or pub game similar to lawn bowling was miniaturized for parlor play. So it’s no surprise that when I need someone to play a parlor game in the book I’m writing, Nine Pins is usually top of my mind. Vaughn and Samantha play a round or two in The Rake’s Redemption, and my widowed hero and his daughter will play a round in my August 2013 book, The Courting Campaign.

But in the book I’m currently writing, which won’t be out until December, I have a whole bunch of people ranging from 20 years of age up to 60 stuck at a country house party with rainy weather outside and feeling a bit at loose ends.  Nine Pins simply wasn’t going to work either logistically or from an interest factor.  So what should I have them do?

We’ve talked about using an electric shock as a party game, but I couldn’t see my fifty-year old marchioness unbending for such a display.  There were rhyming games, but one of my younger gentlemen was much too likely to get carried away, and then bluestocking in the group would have to take him to task. 

The game, however, that I thought would cause the most laughter, and the most havoc between the hero (the poor fellow who tumbled into the Blue John cavern) and heroine, was Consequences.

In Consequences, players take turns answering a series of questions, one question per player, and each player has no knowledge of what the others have written.  Questions involved the name and characteristic of a lady, the name and characteristic of a gentleman, how they met, what they wore, what they said, and what the consequences were.  You can imagine the results:

Wobbly Bill met skinny Alice at an ice cream parlor.  He was wearing a footman’s livery, and she was wearing an ostrich plumed hat.  He said “I have an itch under my right elbow,” and she said, “Does this outfit make me look fat?” The consequences were that they both called before the magistrate.

Ahem.

Now, I wasn’t sure how to keep previous words from you in a blog post, but I thought perhaps we might play, if you’re willing, and see how very silly we can get.  So, I’ll start:  “Pock-marked Charles met . . .”