I love stories about authors, and have read several (A Wilder Rose, A Country Road, A Tree, Shame the Devil, Mrs. Poe, Twain’s End, The World Within, The Other Alcott, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, Love Disguised, Nobody’s Secret, Loving Will Shakespeare, Miss Emily, The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare, A Jane Austen Daydream, Mrs. Hemingway). Below are more… Read more »
I’m pleased to welcome Leslie Carroll with an article related to her non-fiction book, Royal Pains: A Rogues’ Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds. ROYAL PAINS NOT IN THE BOOK Royal Pains: A Rogues’ Gallery of Brats, Brutes and Bad Seeds Arleigh and I had fun discussing the subject of my guest post and she decided she’d like me… Read more »
When you think of Romeo and Juliet, what first comes to mind: Shakespeare’s play, the 1968 film adaptation or one of the many beautiful paintings featuring the lovers? Or, perhaps, you recall sitting in high school English, Drama or Literature trying to decipher the archaic language while pretending to find the hidden meaning of it all. Before reading O, Juliet,… Read more »
In celebration of Mother’s Day, I have selected three mothers from literature I have read, each decidedly different from the other. We have an exemplary step-mother of ten, a well-intentioned, but delusional doting mother of five, and a grandmother bent on scheming and revenge. The latter may not be what’s expected of a holiday post, but let’s be honest: in… Read more »
There are three “Princes in the Tower” novels that have intrigued me over the years: To the Tower Born by Robin Maxwell, Figures in Silk and Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett. All three make use of a background character’s view of events, some fictional–such as Bennett’s Isabel Lambert and Maxwell’s Nell Caxton–and others who were indeed on… Read more »
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is best known as the author of the classic novel Frankenstein, but as I discovered in the author notes of Pale Rose of England, she also wrote The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, a novelized version of his life. Shelley is said to have truly believed Warbeck to be the lost prince and even molded her characters to… Read more »
Emma Hamilton, celebrated mistress of British Naval hero, Horatio Nelson, is only a minor character in A Royal Likeness by Christine Trent, but made a positive impression on this reader. I could tell there were interesting reasons behind the differing opinions of the lady by characters in the book, and an intriguing untold story of her life. After speaking with… Read more »
Just days after the announcement that confirmed Richard III’s remains were found, I received this correspondence (purchased from a document seller on eBay) between Eleanor Hibbert (Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Ellalice Tate, Anna Percival) and a reader from the University of Illinois English Department on Jane Shore, and along with her a… Read more »
“Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?” – Edouard Manet Edouard Manet is sometimes grouped in with the Impressionists of the late nineteenth century art movement, however he was more of a forerunner. Being a decade older than Claude Monet and his contemporaries, Manet’s style did… Read more »
Today is the 20th anniversary of Eleanor Hibbert’s passing on January 18, 1993 and in honor of her memory I have taken on her first suspense novel, published in 1960 under the pseudonym Victoria Holt—Mistress of Mellyn. While I have previously read The Queen’s Confession and My Enemy, the Queen, both biographical historical novels have the exact same quality and… Read more »