Holly Tucker's Blog, page 103

The Romance Requirement

By Melissa Luttmann I recently came across this post by writer Anna Staniszewski about whether romance is necessary in YA novels. The site she writes for, The Enchanted Inkpot, is technically dedicated to middle grade and young adult fantasy, but I think that this debate is just as relevant to historical fiction. Looking at all [...]

Royal Sparkly Things

By Carlyn Beccia Wearing this beautiful stone could be a real conversation starter. Not just because it was once worth a small fortune, but because you would basically be wearing a gigantic hairball around your neck. The above is not some ordinary sparkly thing, but a bezoar stone. Bezoar stones are made when undigested food, [...]

Chicago's Millinery Scene

By Mary Beth Klatt The height of Chicago's millinery scene was in the 1940s. African-Americans such as Miss Minnie Coleman (left), clerk, and Miss Selma Barbour (right), managed the Cecilian Specialty Hat Shop, 454 East 47th Street, Chicago, Illinois. Many women at the time trained to be milliners, which considered a respectable career until hats [...]

World's Bestselling Perfume: The One Reason Chanel No. 5 Is Still Only Second

By Tilar J. Mazzeo Chanel No. 5 is the world's most famous perfume, and for nearly ninety years it has been one of the bestselling. In fact, it's been the bestselling scent in modern history. But perfume has been around for several millennia. And in the first of perfume, there's only one fragrance that has [...]

Out of the Horror: The Bath School Bombing and a Writer's Journey

By Arnie Bernstein On May 18, 1927 a madman forever changed a small Michigan town. That day, in horrific conflagration of dynamite and blood, Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school, killing 38 children and six adults. In an instant, what was to have been a [...]

Wild Lives, A Wilder Way of Life

By Susan Fletcher For over three centuries, up to the early 1700s, there were witch-hunts in Britain. Only in researching Corrag did I truly learn of the immense cruelty with which women – mostly elderly, out-spoken, intelligent or gifted – were treated. From pricking with pins to find 'the witch's mark', to torture, to execution by fire, water [...]

Alchemy

By Philip Carr-Gomm and Sir Richard Heygate There is something enduringly romantic about the image of the alchemist in their laboratory. It is no wonder that J.K.Rowling said "I've never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that's a different matter." Alchemy emerged into recorded history in Alexandria, in the West, and in [...]

Last Ride – Detroit, circa 1927

By Richard Bak According to Detroit historian Silas Farmer, the use of horse-drawn hearses in the city started about 1830. "Prior to their introduction, coffins were carried to the grave upon biers or bars, borne sometimes upon the shoulders, and often carried by hand," he wrote. "At the funeral of a person of wealth, the bearers were provided [...]