History – Page 9 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Bonus Review #3: ‘The Pug Who Bit Napoleon’, by Mimi Matthews

Published By: Pen & Sword History

Publication Date: 11th December 2017

Format: Paperback

I.S.B.N.: 9781526705006

Price: £14.99

Blurb

From elaborate Victorian cat funerals to a Regency era pony who took a ride in a hot air balloon, Mimi Matthews shares some of the quirkiest—and most poignant—animal tales of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Meet Fortune, the Pug who bit Napoleon on his wedding night, and Looty, the Pekingese sleeve dog who was presented to Queen Victoria after the 1860 sacking of the Summer Palace in Peking. The four-legged friends of Lord Byron, Emily Brontë, and Prince Albert also make an appearance, as do the treasured pets of Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Charles Dickens.

Less famous, but no less fascinating, are the animals that were the subject of historical lawsuits, scandals, and public curiosity. There’s Tuppy, the purloined pet donkey; Biddy, the regimental chicken; and Barnaby and Burgho, the bloodhounds hired to hunt Jack the Ripper. Wild animals also get a mention in tales that encompass everything from field mice and foxes to alligators and sharks lurking in the Thames.

Using research from eighteenth and nineteenth century books, letters, and newspapers, Mimi Matthews brings each animal’s unique history to vivid life. The details are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but the stories are never anything less than fascinating reading for animal lovers of all ages.

Continue reading “Bonus Review #3: ‘The Pug Who Bit Napoleon’, by Mimi Matthews”

Bonus Review #5: ‘Victorian Policing’, by Gaynor Haliday

Victorian Policing Published By: Pen & Sword History

Publication Date: 15th November 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781526706126

Format: Paperback

Price: £10.50

Alex at Pen and Sword emailed me last November to see if I wanted to review this book. I had a long list of books to review so I’ve finally got round to it.

Blurb

What was life like for the Victorian bobby? Gaynor Haliday became fascinated with the history of the early police forces when researching the life of her great, great grandfather; a well-regarded, long-suffering Victorian police constable in Bradford. Although a citation claimed his style of policing was merely to cuff the offender round the ear and send him home, press reports of the time painted a much grimmer picture of life on the beat in the Victorian streets.

Handwritten Watch Committee minutes, historical newspapers and police records combine to reveal an account of how and why the various police forces were set up; the recruitment, training and expectations of the men, the issues and crimes they had to deal with, and the hostility they encountered from the people whose peace they were trying to keep.

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Bonus Review #2: ‘Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race and the Gothic South’, by Karen L. Cox

Published By: University of North Carolina Press

Publication Date: 9th October 2017

I.S.B.N.: 978146963503

Price: $26.00

Format: Hardcover

Blurb

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery—known in the press as the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman”—enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed. The crime drew national coverage when it came to light that Dana and Dockery, the alleged murderers, shared their huge, decaying antebellum mansion with their goats and other livestock, which prompted journalists to call the estate “Goat Castle.” Pearls was killed by an Arkansas policeman in an unrelated incident before he could face trial. However, as was all too typical in the Jim Crow South, the white community demanded “justice,” and an innocent black woman named Emily Burns was ultimately sent to prison for the murder of Merrill. Dana and Dockery not only avoided punishment but also lived to profit from the notoriety of the murder. In telling this strange, fascinating story, Karen Cox highlights the larger ideas that made the tale so irresistible to the popular press and provides a unique lens through which to view the transformation of the plantation South into the fallen, gothic South.

Continue reading “Bonus Review #2: ‘Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race and the Gothic South’, by Karen L. Cox”

Bonus Review #4. Also, Merry Christmas, and all that.

Women and the Gallows 1797 – 1837: Unfortunate Wretches

By Naomi Clifford

Published by: Pen and Sword History

Publication Date: 2nd November 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781473863347

Price: £15.99

Format: Hardback

Blurb

131 women were hanged in England and Wales between 1797 and 1837, executed for crimes including murder, baby-killing, theft, arson, sheep-stealing and passing forged bank notes. Most of them were extremely poor and living in desperate situations. Some were mentally ill. A few were innocent. And almost all are now forgotten, their voices unheard for generations.

Mary Morgan – a teenager hanged as an example to others.
Eliza Fenning – accused of adding arsenic to the dumplings.
Mary Bateman – a ‘witch’ who duped her neighbours out of their savings.
Harriet Skelton – hanged for passing counterfeit pound notes in spite of efforts by Elizabeth Fry and the Duke of Gloucester to save her.

Naomi Clifford has unearthed the events that brought these ‘unfortunates’ to the gallows and has used contemporary newspaper accounts and documents to tell their stories.

Continue reading “Bonus Review #4. Also, Merry Christmas, and all that.”

Substitute Review #1

I had planned to review Snow by Mikayla Elliot, but I had a couple of mental health days and couldn’t cope with anything much beyond crochet. I’ve also injured my hand with excessive cross-stitch on Sunday. My writing and typing, never exceptionally tidy, is currently an absolute mess, and it hurts to type. You’ll have to excuse any messy spelling. However, I have scheduled a book review today, so a book review you shall have. In the last bundle of books Pen & Sword I received Queens Of Georgian Britain by Catherine Curzon,

Queens of Georgian Britain

Published By: Pen & Sword History

Publication Date: 9th October 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781473858527

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

Once upon a time there were four kings called George who, thanks to a quirk of fate, ruled Great Britain for over a century. Hailing from Germany, these occasionally mad, bad and infamous sovereigns presided over a land in turmoil. Yet what of the remarkable women who were crowned alongside them?

From the forgotten princess locked in a tower to an illustrious regent, a devoted consort and a notorious party girl, the queens of Georgian Britain lived lives of scandal, romance and turbulent drama. Whether dipping into politics or carousing on the shores of Italy, Caroline of Ansbach, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Caroline of Brunswick refused to fade into the background.

Queens of Georgian Britain offers a chance to step back in time and meet the women who ruled alongside the Georgian monarchs, not forgetting Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the passionate princess who never made it as far as the throne. From lonely childhoods to glittering palaces, via family feuds, smallpox, strapping soldiers and plenty of scheming, these are the queens who shaped an era.

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Bonus Review # 3: ‘The Life of Henrietta Anne’, By Melanie Clegg

Published By: Pen & Sword

Publication Date: 25th September 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781473893115

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

Henrietta Anne Stuart, youngest child of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, was born in June 1644 in the besieged city of Exeter at the very height of the English Civil War. The hostilities had separated her parents and her mother was on the run from Parliamentary forces when she gave birth with only a few attendants on hand to give her support. Within just a few days she was on her way to the coast for a moonlit escape to her native France, leaving her infant daughter in the hands of trusted supporters. A few years later Henrietta Anne would herself be whisked, disguised as a boy, out of the country and reunited with her mother in France, where she remained for the rest of her life. Henrietta’s fortunes dramatically changed for the better when her brother Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660. After being snubbed by her cousin Louis XIV, she would eventually marry his younger brother Philippe, Duc d’Orléans and quickly become one of the luminaries of the French court, although there was a dark side to her rise to power and popularity when she became embroiled in love affairs with her brother in law Louis and her husband’s former lover, the dashing Comte de Guiche, giving rise to several scandals and rumours about the true parentage of her three children. However, Henrietta Anne was much more than just a mere court butterfly, she also possessed considerable intelligence, wit and political acumen, which led to her being entrusted in 1670 with the delicate negotiations for the Secret Treaty between her brother Charles II and cousin Louis XIV, which ensured England’s support of France in their war against the Dutch.

Continue reading “Bonus Review # 3: ‘The Life of Henrietta Anne’, By Melanie Clegg”

Bonus review number two

Published By: Pen & Sword History

Publication Date: 3rd October 2017

ISBN: 9781526712264

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

Dickens and Christmas is an exploration of the 19th-century phenomenon that became the Christmas we know and love today – and of the writer who changed, forever, the ways in which it is celebrated. Charles Dickens was born in an age of great social change. He survived childhood poverty to become the most adored and influential man of his time. Throughout his life, he campaigned tirelessly for better social conditions, including by his most famous work, A Christmas Carol. He wrote this novella specifically to “strike a sledgehammer blow on behalf of the poor man’s child”, and it began the Victorians’ obsession with Christmas.

This new book, written by one of his direct descendants, explores not only Dickens’s most famous work, but also his all-too-often overlooked other Christmas novellas. It takes the readers through the seasonal short stories he wrote, for both adults and children, includes much-loved festive excerpts from his novels, uses contemporary newspaper clippings, and looks at Christmas writings by Dickens’ contemporaries. To give an even more personal insight, readers can discover how the Dickens family itself celebrated Christmas, through the eyes of Dickens’s unfinished autobiography, family letters, and his children’s memoirs.

In Victorian Britain, the celebration of Christmas lasted for 12 days, ending on 6 January, or Twelfth Night. Through Dickens and Christmas, readers will come to know what it would have been like to celebrate Christmas in 1812, the year in which Dickens was born. They will journey through the Christmases Dickens enjoyed as a child and a young adult, through to the ways in which he and his family celebrated the festive season at the height of his fame. It also explores the ways in which his works have gone on to influence how the festive season is celebrated around the globe.

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Review: ‘Dark Days of Georgian Britain’, by James Hobson

Published by: Pen and Sword Books

Publication Date: 15th November 2017

ISBN: 9781526702548

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

In Dark Days of Georgian Britain, James Hobson challenges the long established view of high society during the Regency, and instead details an account of a society in change.

Often upheld as a period of elegance with many achievements in the fine arts and architecture, the Regency era also encompassed a time of great social, political and economic upheaval. In this insightful social history the emphasis is on the life of the every-man, on the lives of the poor and the challenges they faced.

Using a wide range of sources, Hobson shares the stories of real people. He explores corruption in government and elections; “bread or blood” rioting, the political discontent felt and the revolutionaries involved. He explores attitudes to adultery and marriage, and the moral panic about homosexuality. Grave robbery is exposed, along with the sharp pinch of food scarcity, prison and punishment. It is not a gentle portrayal akin to Jane Austen’s England, this is a society where the popular hatred of the Prince Regent was widespread and where laws and new capitalist attitudes oppressed the poor. With Hobson’s illustrative account, it is time to rethink the Regency.

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Review: ‘Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason’, By Joseph P. Eckhardt

Publication Date: June 1, 2015

Published By: Woodstock Arts

ISBN: 9760967926889

Format: Hardback (I received a PDF copy)

Price: £30.50 (Amazon.co.uk)

Blurb

Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason, by noted silent film historian Joseph P. Eckhardt, is by turns a rollicking dual biography and a sweet love story. Wilna Hervey—a six-foot-three-inch, three-hundred-pound heiress—won the role of “The Powerful Katrinka” in the Toonerville Trolley comedies of the early nineteen-twenties through her impressive size. Her evocation of Katrinka was so successful that it became a permanent part of her identity.

Wilna’s movie work brought her something else that would long endure—a partner for life. While filming on location in the Philadelphia suburbs, Wilna Hervey met Nan Mason, the surprisingly tall daughter of her Toonerville co-star, Dan Mason. Wilna and Nan became close friends and ultimately life partners.

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Review: ‘Death, Disease, and Dissection: The Life of a Surgeon-Apothecary 1750 – 1850’, by Suzie Grogan

Published by: Pen and Sword

Publication Date: 30th October 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781473823532

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

Blurb

Imagine performing surgery on a patient without anaesthetic, administering medicine that could kill or cure. Welcome to the world of the surgeon-apothecary…During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries significant changes occurred in medicine. New treatments were developed and medical training improved. Yet, with doctors’ fees out of the reach of ordinary people, most relied on the advice of their local apothecary, among them, the poet John Keats, who worked at Guys Hospital in London. These men were the general practitioners of their time, making up pills and potions for everything from toothache to childbirth. Death, Disease and Dissection examines the vital role these men played their training, the role they played within their communities, the treatments they offered, both quack and reputable against the shocking sights and sounds in hospitals and operating theatres of the time. Suzie Grogan transports readers through 100 years of medical history, exploring the impact of illness and death and bringing the experiences of the surgeon apothecary vividly to life.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Death, Disease, and Dissection: The Life of a Surgeon-Apothecary 1750 – 1850’, by Suzie Grogan”