Cuthbert Collingwood was born on 26 September 1748 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the eldest son of a respectable but poor tradesman. His personal merits would help take him from these modest beginning to the position of Vice-Admiral of the Red and eventually to raise him to the peerage as 1st Baron Collingwood. Hoping for a… Read more Admiral Lord Collingwood
One of the most interesting things about the Regency Era, to me, if how universally loathed the Prince Regent was, and how much he set the fashion for the Glittering Throng nonetheless. One of the things the future George IV brought into style was going to Brighton for a bit of time by (and in)… Read more Brighton, By George!
One of the best things about the Georgian Era was the 1807 Act suppressing the slave trade. King George III, die-hard conservative Tory and intermittently insane though he may have been, agreed with the majority of the Tories and Whigs that the slave trade was a disgusting affront to God and Humanity and Decency and… Read more Huzzah for the HMS Pickle!
On 10 April 1815 the Indonesian volcano Tambora (literally) blew its top in the only confirmed VEI-7 eruption since the Lake Taupo’s eruption circa AD 180. The volcano’s initial blast could be heard as far away as Sumatra, which was more than 1200 miles distant from ground zero. Approximately 11,000 people were killed by the… Read more Mt. Tambora Makes an Earth-Shattering Kaboom
The future King Louis VXII was born on 27 March 1785, the second son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette, and named Louis-Charles. When his older brother, Louis Joseph, died of tuberculosis on 4 June 1789 when he was only seven years old, the four year old Louis Charles became the… Read more The Tragic Death of King Louis XVII and the Effect on Jane Austen’s Work
(I have a guest post up in the form of a video chat over on Just Jane 1813! Be sure to stop by!) On 27 February 1812 the famous poet Lord Byron gave his first speech in a debate of the House of Lords, and it was a doozy. It caused all sorts of social… Read more Mad, Bad, and Devoted to Human Rights
Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France was born 19 December 1778, the eldest child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the only member of her immediate family to survive the bloodbath of the French Revolution. She was a well-loved child, adored by both her doting parents. Marie Antoinette reportedly cooed to her newborn baby, whom everyone… Read more Marie Therese of France
One of the best things about the Yuletide in Britain is the opportunity to take your children to see a Christmas panto. We don’t have them in America, because attending a panto became a “Christmas Tradition” in Britain in the Regency era, when all things British were being spurned by Americans with jingoistic fever. Frankly,… Read more A Christmas Panto
William Cowper, one of the Georgian era’s most loved poets, was born on 26 November 1731 (Old Style date was 15 November), in Hertfordshire, the son of a vicar. Although his fame has declined over the decades, his name and works remain familiar for any fan of Jane Austen. Another vicar’s child like Cowper, Austen… Read more William Cowper, Beloved of Jane Austen
For millennia, Western medicine was in thrall to the humoral theory of ancient Greece. It wasn’t until the scientific revolution of the Victorian era that germs were understood to cause illness, but even then medical ideas about a woman’s body had more in common with those espoused by Helenic doctors than modern ones. Germs there… Read more Green Sickness and the Cultural Construction of Women’s Health