W&M Contributors

Tales of the Blockade Runners

by KarenAbbott January 23, 2013

by Karen Abbott In April 1861, as soon as President Lincoln declared a blockade of 3,500 miles of coastline in an attempt to cut off the Confederacy’s overseas trade, savvy Southerners found ways to evade it. England, which remained neutral, allowed agents to buy at will, and a blockade-running business flourished abroad. Low, sleek ships [...]

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Greek Myths You Never Heard Of

by tracybarrett January 20, 2013

by Tracy Barrett (W&M Contributor) Nonfiction was my first love in writing for younger readers. I had published seven nonfiction books—mostly American history and biography—before my first novel came out, and since then I’ve published three more. A vase in the Getty Villa in Malibu was the inspiration for my current project. It shows a [...]

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Did Twain use the F-word?

by CarolineLawrence January 15, 2013

by Caroline Lawrence “In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain, A Biography “You do not want to be a dirt-worshipping heathen from this f—–g point forward. Pardon my French.” Al Swearengen, HBO’s Deadwood For the past five years I’ve been immersed in the letters and newspaper [...]

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Mastermind of a Ten-Year-Old – How does one explain the child prodigy Mozart?

by stephaniecowell December 30, 2012

by Stephanie Cowell At the age of ten he was catching flies, making up silly songs for his music teacher father, performing before kings, stealing his older sister’s diary, and composing symphonies. He was expert on violin and piano. What made the boy Mozart such a phenomenal prodigy as well as such a human kid? [...]

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12 Days: Christmas… a Roman Holiday?

by CarolineLawrence December 12, 2012

by Caroline Lawrence (Wonders & Marvels contributor) When I was researching my sixth Roman Mystery, set during the mid-winter festival called the Saturnalia, I was amazed by how many ancient Roman customs have survived, embedded in our Christmas celebrations. Here are twelve! 1. Five day vacation. In the first century AD the Romans set aside [...]

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12 Days of Books: Twelve

by tracybarrett December 10, 2012

by Tracy Barrett (W&M contributor) Twelve days of Christmas. Twelve months in a year. Twelve inches in a foot. Twelve hours on a clock and 12 x 2 hours in a day. Twelve apostles. Twelve gates to the city. Twelve animals in the Chinese horoscope. Twelve Sanskrit names of God. Twelve disciples of Mohammed and [...]

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12 Days of Books – Memories of Monet

by stephaniecowell December 9, 2012

By Stephanie Cowell (W&M Regular Contributor) I’m giving away a copy of CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET. The novel grew from my childhood; both my parents were artists. The easel, the drawing tale, the precious brushes and pens and curled tubes of oil paint were a natural part of my life. One day [...]

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SALIERI and MOZART…who were they really? And how did Peter Shaffer write AMADEUS?

by stephaniecowell November 30, 2012

by Stephanie Cowell I have read a huge amount about Mozart: his letters, biographies, etc. I own cds of all the music he ever wrote and I wrote a novel called MARRYING MOZART (Viking Penguin) about the young Mozart and the four young musical Weber sisters, one of whom he married (eventually). But the shadow [...]

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Gadgets and Gimmicks of the Civil War

by KarenAbbott November 23, 2012

During the first few weeks of April 1861, even before the smoke of Fort Sumter had faded, the greatest assemblage of hucksters in the nation’s young history began hawking an eclectic variety of wares. The mid-19th century, with its rapid proliferation of daily newspapers and the penny press, marked the first time people recognized the [...]

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Does my bottom look big …? Bizarre Roman Beauty

by CarolineLawrence November 15, 2012

by Caroline Lawrence Magnusne culus meus in hac videtur? ‘Does my bottom look big in this?’ A first century Roman woman would have asked this question hoping for the answer maximē! (You bet!) Ideals of female beauty have always varied throughout the centuries, from the well-padded women of Rubens’ time to the androgynous flappers of [...]

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Dinner at Oxford with the World’s Greatest Elizabethan Scholar

by stephaniecowell October 30, 2012

by Stephanie Cowell He came up the stairs of the community room in Jesus College Oxford one July afternoon asking for me by name for we had been corresponding for a time. He was Dr. A.L. Rowse, then in his mid-eighties and generally acknowledged to be the greatest Elizabethan scholar in the world. He was [...]

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A Botanist, a Butcher and a Body: Encountering an Eighteenth-Century Vrykolakas

by Lisa Smith October 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor From 1700-1702, French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort journeyed through the Greek islands and Constantinople. The following tale is his account of a Greek revenant (vrykolakas) on the island of Mykonos (A Voyage into the Levant, vol. 1, 1718). The story begins with the unsolved murder of a local “ill-natur’d and [...]

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Dialog in Historical Fiction

by tracybarrett September 20, 2012

Last month, I presented a session on “The Ten Commandments of Writing Historical Fiction” at the Summer Conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. (Many thanks to the readers of this blog who gave me suggestions for a tenth commandment—“nine commandments” doesn’t have the right ring to it!) The session was very [...]

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WARNING: TOXIC! The Deadly Dead

by Lindsey Fitzharris September 2, 2012

By Lindsey Fitzharris (W&M Contributor) When a person thinks of anatomical specimens from the past, he or she may think of disembodied remains floating in glass jars filled with alcohol. The Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons in London is full of such specimens—unborn foetuses suspended in time as if still incubating in [...]

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Medieval Women as Physicians

by tracybarrett August 20, 2012

by Tracy Barrett Since at least Classical times,[i] European women have generally been in charge of their family’s health. In Medieval romances and lais, women are often portrayed as healers, not only in their homes but also in the community. Nursing the sick fell within the purview of the charitable work that nuns (and monks) [...]

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