Katherine Keenum

This detail of an advertising poster published in Cleveland, Ohio, appears in The Papered Wall, ed. by Lesley Hoskins, and illustrates the choices offered a buyer at the turn of the last century. I love seeing the woman customer out shopping for her "house beautiful," the expression on the salesman's face, and, of course, the patterns being offered at the time. Another example of not-great art that can be immensely helpful to the historical novelist.

My website is hosted by the Author's Guild, which this month revamped its design templates, the better to fit cellphones and other screens. To celebrate the new, I'm posting a glimpse of the past. For a writer of historical fiction, a magazine cover from the year about which she is writing, which itself illustrates an earlier period, seems about right. Besides, I love textiles.

The flower markets and sellers of Paris pop up now and again in Where the Light Falls; but what really makes me want to include a post about one today is my recent discovery of a beautifully illustrated blog that features clips of the sounds if Paris. In a story  Read More 

After his fencing less, Edward finds himself in the vicinity of Les Halles, the great covered food market of central Paris. Outside its steel-and-glass structure, street vendors gathered in the open air as Gilbert depicts them here and as they still gather in the tree-shaded squares of smaller towns in France on market days.

NB: an inquisitive dog on the loose in the lower right-hand corner and two more cheerfully settled behind a stand. Read More 

Before I saw Béraud’s Promenade, featured in the last post, I had seen Hassam’s Florist, which illustrates the custom of being accompanied by a uniformed maid when out and about in Paris (very handy for having someone to carry purchases as well as to announce respectability). Countess Marie Bashkirtseff and other privileged students at the Académie Julian were escorted to class by a maid. For Jeanette and other foreign students, however, such close chaperonage was unnecessary. The streets of Paris were safe and American girls were notable to Europeans for their independence. Read More