Website alert: Thanks to this post at The History Blog, I arrived this morning at the Cornell University Library’s digitization of P. J. Mode’s Persuasive Map Collection. The image reproduced here could be an emblem for my sense of wonder at discovering this rich resource for Picturing Worlds through maps. For some reason, I'm having trouble with links, but if you click on the image it will take you to the Cornell page or you can enter the Cornell site via the History Blog. Either way, it's worth it—explore! Read More
Picturing a World
Celestial measures
March 14, 2017
Website alert: I’m working on a story set in an imaginary late-medieval or early-modern university, where my central character is introduced to scientific ways of looking at the sky. This image delighted me, and the entire Manuscript Art website has absorbed all my Read More
Mousehole Cat
December 23, 2016
One of my Christmas Eve Eve rituals is to read The Mousehole Cat. To my delight I have just found a YouTube video on The Making of The Mousehole Cat Book with interviews of author Antonia Barber, illustrator Nicola Bayley, Read More
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Hallowe’en 2016
October 31, 2016
Today’s image comes via It’s About Time, but could equally have come from Liberty Puzzles. As the 2016 election spirals down, I regret not having ordered one for distraction!
For a wealth of holiday postcards from the New York Public Library, click here.
And I’ve just discovered a book that bears looking into, American Holiday Postcards, 1905–1915. Addendum: For a helpful review, click here. Read More
For a wealth of holiday postcards from the New York Public Library, click here.
And I’ve just discovered a book that bears looking into, American Holiday Postcards, 1905–1915. Addendum: For a helpful review, click here. Read More
Stenographer or reporter?
September 19, 2016
Mattie Palmer, the heroine of ANONYMITY, my work-in-progress, is a “stenographer” or secretary in a publishing firm. Before going to New York around 1900, she had been a reporter in Cincinnati.
So far, I haven’t been able to find the short story, “A Girl Who Became a Reporter,” for which this is an illustration; Read More
So far, I haven’t been able to find the short story, “A Girl Who Became a Reporter,” for which this is an illustration; Read More
Gestural line in a magazine illustration
August 19, 2016
Website tip: A post, Eye Candy for Today: James Montgomery Flagg ink illustration, is worth looking at for the picture and comments by artist and blogger Charley Parker. The period is right for my current heroine Mattie, and I’m sure Jeanette would agree with Parker’s comments on the effectiveness of Flagg’s gestural lines in the men’s faces. Read More
Woman in a boat
May 21, 2016
As I confess from time to time, I am working on a novel set in an imaginary high fantasy world that draws on my medieval training. My heroine has a sailboat, which she sails single-handed. Neither she nor it looks like this, and yet it cheered me immensely this afternoon to stumble across the image. Writers, whatever feeds the imagination! Read More
Clara Miller Burd
May 16, 2016
Always on the lookout for women artists who were working during the time period of my new novel, ANONMITY, I was pleased this morning to stumble across Clara Miller Burd (1873–1933). She was born in New York City, studied art there and in Paris, and Read More
Kay Nielsen
February 11, 2016
Having recently bought the gorgeous 2015 Taschen reprint of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, I was much interested to come across an on-line version of the original. It confirms Read More
What an issue!
January 30, 2016
Blog tip: A post at The Golden Age mounts highlights from The Century Magazine, October 1904. They include illustrations from an installment of Jack London’s novel, The Sea-Wolf, Maxfield Parrish’s illustrations of Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Their Gardens, and advertisements for Rookwood Pottery, a Locomobile, and Chickering pianos. Mattie Palmer would have read it. It'a available at Google Books—if only I could make the link work! Read More