Unsure of how to wear regurgitated lace? Well, Cranford’s Mrs Forrester has the answer. In Chapter 8 of Elizabeth Gaskell’s celebrated novel, Mrs Forrester advises us on how to retrieve a prized piece of lace from the belly of your pet. “Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must never be starched or ironed. Some people wash…
Category: Quotation of the Week
Quotation of the Week: Impressions of Ireland
This week’s quotation is provided by Sydney Owenson/Lady Morgan’s The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale (1806). Fed up with his son Horatio’s feckless behaviour, The Earl of M dispatches him to Connaught where he hopes he will focus on his legal studies. Upon his arrival in Dublin, Horatio writes a letter to a friend to share his initial impressions of Ireland… “…I feel the…
“On Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride”
In Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), a book often heralded as one of the first historical novels, Edward Waverley pays a visit to the Baron of Bradwardine at Tully-Veolan. While there, the Baron’s daughter, Rose Bradwardine sings a haunting ballad about “a projecting peak of an impending crag” that had acquired the strange name of ‘Saint Swithin’s Chair.’ Saint…
The Art of Beauty: To rouge or not to rouge
Throughout our corpus of nineteenth-century novels, there are numerous references to the transformative power of cosmetics. As well as striving to survive the noxious levels of lead and arsenic in your potions and pastes, you are also tasked with achieving socially acceptable levels of rouging. According to Madam Lola Montez’s 1858 book The Art of Beauty or…
“A man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose”
This week’s quotation is provided by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet (1887). In chapter 2, the world’s most famous detective warns Dr. Watson of the dangers of filling one’s brain-attic with too much lumber … “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to…
Quotation of the Week: A selfish, cold-hearted Sybarite
Miss Alicia Audley is distinctly unimpressed with her cousin Robert’s sudden interest in her enigmatic new step-mother and isn’t afraid to say so: “…pray amuse yourself in your own way; loll in an easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees; spoil my lady’s window-curtains with your cigars and annoy everybody in the house…
A tip for sobering up
In Great Expectations Pip, Joe and Mr Wopsle visit a tavern, where a few drinks are consumed. Joe’s sobering-up methods are somewhat unconventional but perhaps worth a try? Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. #wotlarx
The Sea of Books 