Literary Links

July/August 2007

 

Good News and Announcements

Announcements--As you have been following the progress of our newsletter, you may have noticed that the calendar of events began in 1837, the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne.  We are now in year 1898, just a few years before her death in 1901.  With that date, Literary Links will also be ceasing publication.  It is with much regret that we do so, but time constraints and outside demands require it.  However, we will continue the Literary Liaisons, Ltd. web site.  And we will continue to update the research links, authors, and articles as time provides, and periodically send out announcements about book releases and special additions to the site.  So while we will not be doing regular bi-monthly updates, we will be adding interesting tidbits and links as we run across them.  Please feel free to continue sending in questions, comments and suggestions.  We hope you have enjoyed the past ten years, and will continue to use Literary Liaisons, Ltd., for your research needs.

 

Now Available!--Now from Allie Pleiter is The Perfect Blend, a Steeple Hill Love Inspired release.  And from Victoria Bylin, Midnight Marriage was released in the UK in July 2007.

 

Coming Soon!--Look for The Harlot's Daughter from Blythe Gifford in October 2007. 

 

Good News--Congratulations to Allie Pleiter, who is a finalist in the RWA RITA contest with her Inspirational romance, My So-Called Love Life.  Winners will be announced in July 2007 at the Romance Writers of America National Conference.  Good luck, Allie!  Beverly Long is a finalist in the Virginia Romance Writers HOLT Medallion contest with her paranormal Here With Me.  This book is also a finalist in the Orange County Book Buyer's Best contest, in the paranormal category.  Good luck on all fronts, Beverly!

 

New On Literary Liaisons

There are many new additions to Literary Liaisons. After reading about them below, check them out on the web site.

 

Bookstore:

 

Non-fiction:

 

Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress

Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jeremy Black

On Writing Romance by Leigh Michaels

The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham Smith

The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales Since 1800 by John Hassan

The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 by Walter E. Houghton

 

 

Feature Title:

 

The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 by Walter E. Houghton

 

 

The Video Library

 

Swept from the Sea

 

 

Researching the Romance

 

Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress

Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jeremy Black

On Writing Romance by Leigh Michaels

The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham Smith

The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales Since 1800 by John Hassan

The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 by Walter E. Houghton

 

 

Writers' Resources Online

 

British Ancestors

Indispensable Writing Resources

Lewis Carroll Home Page

Rare Book Room

Victoriana

 

Feature Article 

Victorian Amusements

by Michelle Prima

 

Now that summer is upon us, we delight in the warmer days and longer evenings. Our weekends are filled with fun activities that we can't enjoy during the winter months, such as picnics, outdoor concerts, sailing, and a day at the ball park.  But what did the Victorians do to fill their leisure time?

Diversions changed over the years and across social standings.  For example, the working classes only had weekends to enjoy, while the aristocrats could spend months at a time visiting relatives in the country.  Also, as transportation improved, access to such holiday spots as the seaside became more popular by the end of the century.

Whether one stayed in town, or visited the countryside, there were always dances, horseback riding and picnics.  Balls were more elaborate in town, and usually larger, while country dances were more relaxed and limited to those who could travel to the estate.

Riding and picnics could be enjoyed both in the City and in the country.  Just the venue changed.  City dwellers often went to Hyde Park, while in the country, guests could enjoy lakeside or hilltop views. 

Cultural entertainments were much more accessible in London.  There were the museums: The British Museum, The National Gallery, The Crystal Palace, and Madame Tussaud's Waxworks.  And the theatres: Covent Garden, The Drury Lane Theatre, The Haymarket and many more.  Men had their clubs, and women had their afternoon soirees where they read poetry or had musical entertainment.  There were also the Zoological Gardens, and by 1876, the Royal Aquarium.

Physical activities and athletic diversions were more popular in the country.  One could ride a bicycle, play croquet, play a round of golf, or go hunting.  And with the advance of railroad transportation, many people of all social levels were able to travel to the seaside. 

So yes, it is possible to entertain oneself without televisions, movie theatres, video games or computers.  Perhaps it's time to get back to the basics and enjoy the pleasures of life outdoors.

Sources:

The Ladies of London by Kristine Hughes

Victorian Delights edited by John Hadfield

For more information on Victorian Life,  see our Researching the Romance page.

 

            Michelle Prima is the owner of Literary Liaisons, Ltd  She also presents workshops on writing and organization.  Contact her for more information.

 

Editor's Note
As I was researching this issue of the newsletter, I realized our ten-year anniversary came and went in May without much hoopla.  So here goes--Hip, Hip Hooray!  It's hard to believe that sixty issues later, we are still producing newsletters.  That there is still an interest in the site and its contents.  So a pat on the back for us, and to all of you who have contributed to the issues over the years.  That said, it was a very difficult decision to cease regular publication of this newsletter after three more issues.  I have taken you on a long journey--the longest reign of any English monarch so far.  From 1837 to 1898 in this issue, you have read about political events that shaped the British Monarchy, daily events that shaped society, and technological advances that we are still appreciating to this day.  As I produced each issue, I was amazed at all that happened during the time Queen Victoria reigned.  Who knew back then that we would go from railroads to automobiles and motorcycles, from the birth of Count von Zeppelin to creation of his airship, or from slavery to the ability to vote.  Victorians lived in truly amazing times.  And as we move forward, we can say the same about us.  We live in truly amazing times that can create this newsletter and send it out to all of you over a cable into cyberspace.  Thank you all for the journey. It's been a blast.  That's why I can't completely give this up.  While there will no longer be regular newsletters after January 2008, we will still update the site, contribute articles and send out announcements for upcoming books, exciting events, etc.  Please continue with us on this journey.  I promise it will continue to be a blast.

--Michelle Prima

President, Literary Liaisons, Ltd.

Q&A Column

Q:  "Hi:

What great resources!  Thank you.

I have searched far and wide for the cost of horses for the average [poor/modest] farmer in Ireland in 1899.

Would you be able to direct me to some resources?

Thank you, "

Beverly

A:   Beverly-

 
There isn't much information on the actual cost of horses during that time period.  Here is one web site about an English Horse fair, which may help. 
 
According to this and other reports, by 1899, the price of horses was declining because of the advent of railways and motor vehicles.  While a carriage horse or hunter may have cost 100 British pounds in the early part of the century, by 1899, the prices for work horses had dropped from 35 to 40 British pounds to 12 to 15 guineas per horse. 
Then, of course, there are the other expenses connected to owning a horse--shelter, food, blacksmith, harnesses, etc.  So one had to be well enough off to be able to afford and keep a horse. 
 
To learn actual costs, you may be able to find what you need in the account records of an estate.  The House Steward or another servant or employee always kept detailed records of every expense, from wages paid to food purchased.  While these records aren't usually available on line, often times you can pay a subscription price to view the records.
Here are some places to start a search:
 
Irish Estate Records
 
Irish Records--Estate Records
 
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
 
I hope this information helps!

Michelle Prima

President, Literary Liaisons, Ltd.

 

Historical Calendar of Events

1898

Births

Ernest Hemingway--American writer

Bertolt Brecht--German writer

Paul Robeson--Bass singer

 

Deaths

Lewis Carroll--Author

Gladstone--English Prime Minister

Otto Bismarck--German statesman

Aubrey Beardsley--Artist

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones--Artist
Theodor Fontane--German novelist

 

Politics 

Paul Kruger was elected President of Transvaal.

Britain obtained a lease for Port Kowloon in China.

Emile Zola was imprisoned after publishing his letter "J'accuse" to the French president.

The Empress Elizabeth of Austria was murdered by Italian anarchists.

Emperor William II of Germany visited Palestine and Syria.

"The Boxers", an anti-foreign, anti-Western organization, was formed in China.
The Supreme Court sustained an 1895 Illinois inheritance tax law April 25 in Morgan v. Illinois Trust and Savings Bank.

June 13--Congress imposed the first U.S. federal tax on legacies in a War Revenue Act that also provided for excise duties and taxes on tea, tobacco, liquor, and amusements.
March 7--The Supreme Court established the right of the courts to decide the reasonableness of U.S. railroad rates.
Gifford Pinchot was appointed chief forester in the U.S. Department of Agriculture after three years of managing Vanderbilt forests in the Great Smokies.
Louisiana adopted a new constitution with a "grandfather clause" restricting permanent voting registration to whites and those blacks whose fathers and grandfathers were qualified to vote as of January 1, 1867. Race riots and lynchings ensued the South.
Whites battled Indians in Minnesota.
Virden, Illinois coal mine operators attempted to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers, provoking violence.  Fourteen miners are killed and 25 wounded in the October 12 Mt. Olive massacre that brought demands for a union.
The U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor February 15 in an explosion that kills 258 sailors and two officers, precipitating the Spanish-American War that would last for 112 days.
A joint resolution of Congress April 19 recognized Cuban independence.
Congress passed a Volunteer Army Act April 22, thuc beginning the "Rough Riders."
Leading U.S. intellectuals met at Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 15 and formed an Anti-Imperialist League to oppose annexation of the Philippines.
A joint resolution proposing annexation of the Hawaiian Islands was introduced in the House May 4.  President McKinley signed the measure July 7, giving Hawaiian sugar planters free access to U.S. markets.
The Battle of Omdurman September 2 gave Gen. Kitchener a decisive victory over the khalifa of the Sudan Abdullah el Taashi. Using Maxim machine guns, the British killed 11,000 dervishes, wounded 16,000, and took 4,000 prisoner, sustaining only 48 casualties.
France claimed the left bank of the Nile, Ethiopia the right bank.  London demanded that the French evacuate the territory that Britain claimed for Egypt by right of conquest.  The French try to get Russian support but fail, and Paris ordered the evacuation of Fashoda November 3.
New York City became Greater New York January 1 under terms of an 1896 law uniting Kings County (Brooklyn), Richmond County (Staten Island), Bronx County, Long Island City, Newtown (Queens County), and Manhattan to create a metropolis of just under 3.5 million inhabitants.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled March 28 that a child born of Chinese parents in the United States is a citizen and cannot be denied re-entrance to the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Laws of 1880 and 1892.


The Arts

Fiction:

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Evelyn Innes by George Moore

Non-fiction:

Reflections and Memoirs by Otto Bismarck

Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War by Finley Peter Dunne

Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton

Poetry:

"Wessex Poems" by Thomas Hardy

"The Ballad of the Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde

Music:

Pelléas and Mélisande orchestral suite by Gabriel Fauré 6/21 at the Prince of Wales' Theatre, London

Popular Songs:

"The Rosary" by Ethelbert Nevin, lyrics by Robert Cameron Rogers

"When You Were Sweet Sixteen" by James Thornton

Theater:

The Fortune Teller premiered at Wallack's Theater in New York on September 26.  Music by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Harry B. Smith.

The Dream of a Spring Morning by Gabriele D'Annunzio premiered January 1 at Rome's Teatro Valle

Trelawney of the "Wells" by Arthur Wing Pinero premiered May 27 at the St. James Theatre in London.

 

Daily Life

The New York Times dropped its price from 3¢ to 1¢ and circulation tripled to 75,000 within a year.

Sunset magazine began publication at Los Angeles to promote business for the Southern Pacific by attracting tourists, settlers, and developers to the West.

The Mackintosh School of Art opened in Glasgow.

Northeastern University was founded at Boston.

The Palmer School of Chiropractic was founded at Davenport, Iowa, by Canadian-American magnetic healer Daniel David Palmer.

Russian actor-producer Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavski (K. S. Alekseev) founded the Moscow Art Theater.
New York's Condict building designed by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan was completed at 65 Bleecker Street for Silas Alden Condict. The radical structure would later be called the Bayard building.
Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza was graced with an 80-foot-high arch designed by architect John Duncan to commemorate Union Army forces in the Civil War.
Chicago's Gage building on South Michigan Avenue was completed by Holabird and Roche.
Claridge's Hotel opened in London's Brook Street. It was rebuilt on a site occupied by an earlier hotel that operated under the name Claridge's for half a century.
The Paris Ritz opened in a 17th-century townhouse in the Place Vendôme. César Ritz had found that the duc de Lauzun's property was for sale, and suggested the name "Grand Marnier" to London liqueur maker Marnier La Postolle for La Postolle's orange-flavored cordial.  La Postolle gave him funds to buy the townhouse, and Ritz opened the new hotel with 170 guest rooms.
More U.S. troops in the Spanish-American War died from eating contaminated meat than from battle wounds. The deaths raised a public outcry for reform of the meat-packing industry.
Illinois Steel of Chicago and Lorrain Steel acquired Minnesota Mining with backing from J.P. Morgan & Co.
Republic Steel was created by a merger of Ohio and Pennsylvania firms.
John W. Gates became president of American Steel & Wire, which had a virtual monopoly in barbed wire.
Canada's Klondike yielded more than $10 million worth of gold, a quantity it would sustain through 1904.
Union Carbide was founded by Chicago entrepreneurs to manufacture calcium carbide for producing acetylene gas for streetlights and home lighting.
Paris jeweler Alfred Cartier took his sons Louis, Jacques, and Pierre into the business and opened a new shop at 13 rue de la Paix. Louis would become Cartier's creative genius.
New York's Bronx Zoo opened November 8 under the auspices of the 3-year-old New York Zoological Society.
Atlantic City's Steel Pier opened with amusement park attractions.
Louis Vuitton branded his initials on the canvas luggage he has created, hoping to discourage imitators. His trunks and cases would be introduced in the United States in 1902.
Sugar prices soared following the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.
Campbell's soups appeared for the first time with red and white labels whose colors have been suggested by Cornell football uniforms.
Sanitas corn flakes were introduced by Sanitas Nut Food Co., set up at Battle Creek, Mich., by J. H. Kellogg with his brother Will Keith. The world's first corn flakes quickly turned rancid on grocers' shelves and had little acceptance in a market oriented toward wheat cereals.
National Biscuit Co. was formed by a consolidation of New York Biscuit, American Biscuit and Manufacturing, United States Baking, and United States Biscuit. Adolphus W. Green headed the new company, whose 114 bakeries comprised 90 percent of all major U.S. commercial bakeries.
Uneeda Biscuits were created by National Biscuit's A. W. Green who sought to establish a brand name that will surmount the anonymity of the cracker barrel seen in every grocery shop.
Pepsi-Cola was introduced by New Bern, N.C., pharmacist Caleb Bradham who has been mixing fountain drinks since 1893 and developed a cola drink formula.
Annual British tea consumption averaged 10 pounds per capita, up from two pounds in 1797.

Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was widely advertised as "The Greatest Medical Discovery Since the Dawn of History". The compound of black cohosh, liferoot plant, fenugreek seeds, and other herbs in a 21 percent alcohol solution promises to remedy female complaints.
Heroin was introduced under that brand name as a cough suppressant derived from opium by the 48-year-old German chemical-pharmaceutical firm Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedrich Bayer und Co.
China had serious famine as the northern provinces suffered drought, while in Shandong province the Huanghe River flooded.

Bubonic plague would kill an estimated 3 million people in China and India in the next decade.
Gideons International had its beginnings at Boscobel, Wis., where traveling salesmen John H. Nicholson and Sam Hill shared a room at the Central Hotel and decided to form an association of Christian businessmen (excluding those in the liquor trade) and professional men to "put the Word of God into the hands of the unconverted."
Canadian-American yachtsman Joshua Slocum brought his homemade 37-foot sloop Spray into Newport, R.I., June 27 after completing the first one-man circumnavigation of the world. He used only a compass, sextant, and "dollar clock" as navigational instruments in his 3-year voyage.
Reginald Doherty won in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper in women's singles.  Malcolm D. Whitman won in U.S. men's singles, Juliette Atkinson in women's singles.
The touchdown in U.S. college football received a value of 5 points, up from the 4 established in 1884, and athletic directors gave the goal after touchdown a value of 1 point, down from 2 in 1884.
Goodyear Tire and Rubber was founded at Akron, Ohio, by Frank Augustus Sieberling, who would make it the leading U.S. tire maker.


Technology

Ramsay discovered the inert atmospheric gases xenon, crypton and neon.

Japanese bacteriologist Shiga discovered the dysentery bacillus.

Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium.

German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin built his first airship.

Photographs were first taken using artificial light.
 The Graflex camera patented by U.S. inventor William F. Folmer, was the world's first high-speed multiple-split focal plane camera.

The Telegraphone patented by Danish electrical engineer Valdemar Paulsen, was the world's first magnetic wire recording device.
Mechanical refrigeration got a boost from Swedish inventor Carl von Linde who perfected a machine that liquefies air.
A pilot plant to produce viscose rayon yarn that can be woven and dyed opened at Kew, Surrey, England. English inventor C. H. Stearn patented a viscose filament produced by treating wood pulp with caustic soda.
Timken Roller Bearing Axle Co. was founded by German-American carriage maker Henry Timken, who opened a St. Louis carriage works in 1855, patented a special type of carriage spring in 1877, and had just patented a tapered roller bearing that will make his company the leader in its field.

The Paris Metro opened.

The Indian motorcycle, introduced by the new Hendee Manufacturing Co. of Springfield, Mass., improved on earlier motorcycles. Motorcycle pioneer George Mallory Hendee, would begin mass production in 1902, and his company would be renamed Indian Motorcycle in 1923.
U.S. motorcar production reached 1,000, up from 100 last year.
The Opel motorcar was introduced by German bicycle maker Adam Opel at Rüsselsheim

 


 

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