Katherine Keenum

Absence of evidence is famously not evidence of absence. Just because next to no medieval underwear for women has physically survived and few documents refer to it clearly doesn’t mean that medieval women didn’t wear any.

The fantasy I’m working on is set in a world that, by and  Read More 

Website tip:Artists have always studied other artists’ work by copying it. I found this lovely 1595 drawing by Federico Zuccaro of his brother Taddeo Zuccaro sketching frescoes by Raphael via the always interesting Lines and Colors.

Writers, what written equivalent can we come up? An author in the voice of Virginia Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare tells a story about William poaching from Christopher Marlowe? A screenwriter’s pitch for the story of how his successful show runner sister dreamed up a series based on Nancy Drew? Read More 

In a fantasy story I’m working on, I sometimes put the narrator’s comments into parentheses. Neil Gaiman has said that, as a child, he fell in love with C. S. Lewis’s use of parentheses for chatty asides, which made him aware that  Read More 

Blog tip: This morning’s GurneyJourney post on Meissonier’s Sergeant sets me musing on the parallels between novels about novelists and pictures of artists at work. If I come up with anything worth writing down, you’ll see it here!

Meanwhile, what  Read More 

Website tip: Writer Polly Shulman sent me a link to a fascinating article about a sculptor's model, Audrey Munson, who posed for statues in New York City in the early 20th C. Polly asked, "Might Mattie have known her?" Sets me thinking! How I hope so! Read More 

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 

I write first drafts of my fiction longhand in an old Morris chair that has been in the family for ages, but I never thought of it as the narrator. Running over a set of early 20th C images from children’s publications, I came across this one. Naturally, the chair caught my eye. Puzzled by the wording, I did an internet search and  Read More 

Blog tip:As a follow-up to my post yesterday, look what appeared this morning at It’s About Time—not only a tablecloth with folds, but an apron as well!

Three things about this picture of a dinner party by Jules Alexandre Grun interest me (besides the artist’s being a younger contemporary of Jeanette). The first is the illumination from the lamps on the table. Gas? oil? candles? I’m always trying to imagine how

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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