The Elizabethans loved news — the stranger, the better. London presses cranked out pamphlets carried by chapmen to every village, to be read out loud beside the hearth in the local public house. Everyone loved reports of marvelous fish washed up in Cornwall or the bizarre tribes encountered in the New World.… Read More »Poets and spies: intelligence work in the sixteenth century by Anna Castle
Sumptuary laws are way for the upper classes to restrict the symbols of their wealth and power. In rigidly stratified societies, knowing a person’s social status is essential; sumptuary laws allow this vital fact to be determined at a glance. And persons aspiring to be taken for greater than they… Read More »Honored in the breach: sumptuary laws by Anna Castle
First, find a patron; the bigger, the better. A powerful patron might reward you with a handsome gift, possibly money, maybe even room and board in a country manor during the plague season. He or she — women, like Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, were also important patrons of… Read More »How to get published in Elizabethan England by Anna Castle
Get any group of historical novelists together and you’ll hear discussions of research. We read and read and read about the era we plan to write about. We try to sort out the real from the assumed, the misinformed, and the unconcerned writings that have gone before. (Shakespeare, for example,… Read More »What Do Readers of Historicals Want? by Peg Herring
Looking over a local library’s event schedule yesterday, I came across the name of an author I hadn’t thought about for years—make that decades. He must be ancient, and if he’s still out there promoting, he’s earned an audience. I might just go and thank him for the memories. As a teenager,… Read More »History for Teenagers-A Dangerous Proposition by Peg Herring