Research and Writing

Love Potion Number IX

by CarolineLawrence September 15, 2012

by Caroline Lawrence In the steamy hot room of the Roman baths, a muscular gladiator sighs as a slave scrapes the sweat, oil and dirt from his skin. The slave uses a strigil, a curved metal tool that performs the same task as the modern loofah. The strigil – or stlengis (στλεγγίς) as it’s called [...]

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A Modern Exercise in Making an Old Herbal Remedy

by Lisa Smith July 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith Earlier this month, I attended the newly revived Fairlop Fair, lured by the promise of dogs in silly costumes, bearded ladies, and Georgian medicine. My companions were leery of attending a medical herbalist’s workshop on eighteenth-century remedies, but the ominous clouds decided us: the workshop was undercover. I have studied early modern recipes for [...]

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I Need Your Help—And a Giveaway!

by tracybarrett June 20, 2012

In August I’m giving a talk at the SCBWI Summer Conference entitled “The Ten Commandments of [Writing] Historical Fiction [forYoung Readers].” Here’s a sample: Thou shalt not repeat falsehoods. Don’t say that Columbus took his voyage west to prove that the world was round; don’t say that spices were used in the Middle Ages to [...]

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Collaborative Research in the Humanities

by Christopher Long June 16, 2012

Let me begin with a kind of provocation: however critical we humanists are of the ideals of authorial authority and genius, our practices of scholarship and the ways they gain legitimacy in the academy continue, even in this digital age, to be rooted in those outmoded 19th century ideals. Edgar Allan Poe gives voice to [...]

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The Remains of the Day

by BethDunn April 9, 2012

If I had the chance to choose one item to remain after my death, one artefact that would encapsulate my entire life and all its choices and decisions, I seriously doubt that I would choose anything that I either gave or received as a gift at my wedding. Believe me, nothing from that day would [...]

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The peril of torphuts

by tracybarrett March 20, 2012

by Tracy Barrett, W&M contributor Ah, the joys of research. You find exactly the detail you need to round out a character’s personality, or an artifact that will enable your plot to develop in the way that you want. Or you stumble upon something that you hadn’t been looking for, but which takes you in [...]

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Who buys used postcards anyhow?

by Lisa Smith March 14, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor The ‘archival jolt’ happened in the strangest of places, a Brighton fleamarket. Idly rummaging through the detritus of people’s lives in search of treasure, I found a large box filled with used postcards, and I wondered who on earth would purchase such a useless thing. Of course, the snoop in me [...]

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Medieval Metafiction

by tracybarrett February 20, 2012

by Tracy Barrett, W&M contributor In 1924, the linguist Luigi Schiapparelli discovered some lines in the margin of a religious text, scribbled in a Veronese hand in the late eighth or early ninth century, probably to test the scribe’s newly cut pen. They read: Se pareba boves He led oxen alba pratalia araba he plowed [...]

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Impotence in the Archives: or, a Research Trip Failed

by Lisa Smith January 23, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor A year ago I went to Paris on a week-long research trip. My goal was to look at eighteenth-century impotence trials, part of the Série Z at the Archives Nationales. I planned to compare them with English impotence trials that I had already examined. There were the standard research problems, [...]

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Captain Kirk to the bridge, please

by tracybarrett January 20, 2012

by Tracy Barrett, W&M contributor On Star Trek (and by this, children, I mean the real Star Trek—the one captained by James T. Kirk, and with cheesy special effects and constant violation of the Prime Directive), a lot of strange things happen (I’m referring to the strange things that the producers intended to happen, [...]

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Muffin Man

by BethDunn January 9, 2012

By Beth Dunn Was George Handel and a buttered muffin inadvertently responsible for the creation of the British Museum? Well, probably not. But honestly? I wouldn’t rule it out, either. So you know the British Museum. First public secular museum, established in 1753 when Sir Hans Sloane passed away and left his absurdly large and varied [...]

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My thousand historical research books

by stephaniecowell January 6, 2012

by Stephanie Cowell I have been accumulating research books or, when they are very rare, consulting them since I first began to write historical novels. In the late 1980s when I began we still had many used book shops in New York City with wood shelves too high to reach but by ladder, shelves often [...]

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Emotional truth

by tracybarrett December 21, 2011

By Tracy Barrett, W & M Contributor One factor that draws many people to historical fiction—and Civil War reenactments, the Society for Medieval Anachronism, Renaissance Faires, etc.—is curiosity about how it felt to live at a different time. I share this curiosity; I love to be so immersed in a former time that I’m startled [...]

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A Bout of Dickensian Anxiety

by BethDunn December 12, 2011

By Beth Dunn At first glance, the tale of Charles Dickens’ rise to fame and fortune would seem to be one of unhalting advances towards the pinnacle of success that he had achieved by the end of his life. But even the mighty Boz suffered from serious doubts about his skills as a novelist, and [...]

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Monday Check-In

by Holly Tucker December 5, 2011

By Holly Tucker (W&M Editor) So, how’d everyone do on their goals this week? My goal for the week was to work through some of the structural issues that I was having with this next book. I’m happy to report that the issues are resolved–and I’m feeling very good about how things are looking. What [...]

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