There are starting to be some warm days mixed in here and there with those that are still too chilly to enjoy being outdoors. Spring is upon us and the end of the frigid temperatures is in sight. In Victorian times, the end of winter meant that garden parties and picnics would soon be following, [...]
Jane Austen wrote stories and poems to amuse herself and her family from a young age and eventually compiled 29 of them into three bound notebooks. These volumes provide a little glimpse into the author she would become. The “stories are full of anarchic fantasies of female power, licence, illicit behaviour, and general high spirits,” [...]
Jane Guthrie is an art director from Manhattan Beach, CA. She and many others came together to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the USA at the 2020 Rose Parade. The passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote. Jane piqued our interest through photos [...]
I was sad to see the final episode of the BBC’s charming docuseries, A Very British Romance, come to an end with its third episode. I am also a buzz with all of the fun things that I learned about the world of romance and courtship as we know it today, and how some of [...]
If you closed your eyes and imagined an outfit from history that says “fun” the poodle skirt might come to mind, right? After all, it does have large, fluffy dogs applied to the outside and is meant to swoosh perfectly to rock and roll tunes or lay perfectly when sitting at a soda fountain counter. [...]
Episode two of A Very British Romance covers love in the Victorian era and it did not disappoint! It was so full of great information and charming stories about coupling in the 19th century that I was disappointed when I realized the end credits were rolling! The docuseries’ premise is that all of the courtship [...]
Ellen is a writer, journalist, and self-proclaimed women’s history geek. Ellen was one of the 100 walkers who were part of the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 in this year’s 2020 Rose Parade on New Year’s Day. The entry celebrates the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. It was a [...]
I recently wrote a post on how women in the American frontier dressed as they settled into new lives in the West. I looked at how they adapted their clothing to accommodate their new household responsibilities, how they clung to the fashions of the day and those they were used to and considered feminine, and [...]
There are few areas of modern life that our society obsesses over more than that of romantic love, but it wasn’t always that way. PBS’s A Very British Romance takes a whimsical and academic look at the evolution of coupling and the invention of romantic rituals and customs still in use today. Episode one aired [...]