What We're Researching

Jo Beverley here. For a slight twist on the regular What We're Reading blog, this month we're highlighting some of our favorite research books. Some of the ones we use a lot are a bit dry or obscure, so we've each picked one or two that we think some Wenchly readers might enjoy, including some available on line.

Pat Rice.

May I take a moment to weep silently over this question? After wearing  out my local library with interlibrary loans, I spent decades collecting  an enormous reference library, grabbing wonderful volumes anywhere I traveled. If I was in a gift shop, I headed straight for the “local books” section. I went home from conferences with entire suitcases of reference finds.

And then I moved from a house with wall-to-wall shelves in every room to a cottage with almost no walls at all. Needless to say, I had to choose the books I valued most. This is an impossible job. I’m down to one bookcase of reference material in my office. I had to keep my fashion books because on-line resources simply aren’t as comprehensive. Nancy Bradfield’s COSTUME IN DETAIL shows me how gowns were constructed. I’ve had to tape together R. Turner Wilcox’s THE MODE IN COSTUME because I’ve worn it out. It not only gives me a wide variety of illustrations, but a detailed list of fabrics, accessories, and hair styles—all on a single page or two. I’ve yet to find an internet resource as easy to use.

(Jo: you can look at some sample pages of Wilcox here.

I think I mostly saved books like that—ones I can open and flip right to the details I need. Or ones with in-depth information that online resources don’t provide. I’m blessed to have Google, but I still miss all those esoteric small town booklets and histories!

Cara Elliot.

I find myself doing a lot of research online these days . . . being a pantser, I tend to have broad concepts, and then fill in the little details as I start writing. (What sort of miltary saddle would an officer have in 1811 while fighting on the Peninsula, what kind of golf clubs would a Regency player have . . . that sort of thing, which these days can be found at the touch of the keyboard.) I tend to go off in so many arcane little explorations that my house would quickly be packed to the gills with books if I bought ones on all the quirky things that interest me. (Okay, okay, I admit that in spite of that resolve, the piles keep growing!) That said, I do love my go-to reference volume, The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson. It’s such a rich and meaty compendium of so many aspects of life in the first part of the 19th century. I always find wonderful tidbits that point me in directions to dig deeper. (Jo: There's a Kindle edition, but print copies are available second hand.)

As for reference books I wish I could own—the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary is high on the wish list. Currently it’s listed on Amazon for $995. so alas, it’s not likely to sit on my shelves any time soon! I know it’s available online from most public libraries, but I still pine to have a hard copy. For me, there’s something magical about paging—on paper and ink!—through the words and all their meanings and histories.

(Jo: have you found this through your public library? Would you rather have the print version? I confess to loving the ease of the on-line one, plus it has a historical thesaurus!)

Mary Jo Putney

I  second Cara/Andrea's recommendation of Paul Johnson's The  Birth of the Modern, which is full of wonderful details about life in  different countries at the same time.  There's great information of things like transportation and postal  deliver. Another Big Fat Research book I love is The  London Encyclopedia, edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert.  

There are amazing listings of  streets and buildings and how they've changed through time.  Do you want to know about Gunter's Tea  Shop in Berkeley  Square?  There it is, the name in fancy type to indicate that it no longer exists,  followed by details from the date of its founding to when it closed in  1956.  (I used that information in  my two more recent books, Not Quite a  Wife and Not Always a  Saint.) Lastly, not quite as elevated but very useful, is A  World of Baby Names by Teresa Norman, which sits right next to The London Encyclopedia on my desk.

Over 30,000 names are collected from  around the world, then divided by  origin and gender.  Writing a book set in  Portugal?  (Why, yes, I am.)  Go to "Portuguese Names" to find first  male names, then female.  And if you  want to know how they vary from Spanish names (why, yes, I do), just flip to the Spanish section.  This book was invaluable when I've written books set  in India, Central Asia,  Africa, and other exotic places.  I just checked and see that it's still  available in print and now in e-book as well.  A great resource for writers and people  about to have babies and anyone who is a name buff. It's all here, from Aaron to Zoe and  beyond. <G>

Anne Gracie

I have quite a lot of reference books, but there's no particular one that I use over and over. A lot of my references are just for one novel -- for instance I bought half a dozen books for Tallie's Knight, a story set on the "Grand Tour", but haven't used them since.

 

Most of the time I use a variety of books, and often original journals and diaries - some of which are available on line and others I've bought through rare bookstores. I have folders of notes I've made over the years, containing info on fashion, events, plants in season -- that kind of thing. I also have a collection of maps that I've printed off or copied at various times and I refer to them when I need to. I usually construct a bit of a map for each series, marking where various characters' country houses are, etc.

 

Possibly the book I use most frequently is an 18th century cookbook, Eliza Smith's Compleat Housewife, but it's more for garnish, rather than meaty research. <g> I bought it years ago, before I was a writer, as an interesting curiosity. As well as recipes it gives suggestions for dishes suitable for different months of the year, and some truly scary and hilarious "medical cures" -- like the cure for blindness that involves blowing the dried and powdered white of a hen's dung into the eye. Mine is the 1994 English edition, but there is an American edition.(Jo: Some of the book is available here.)

 

 Susan King.

My bookshelves are crammed with favorite research books and resources and I've written in time periods from 11th to 19th centuries, so the essential favorites depend on what I'm writing.  

I have an assortment of old AA guides to Britain that I've consulted for all my books. I've found these in used bookstores, and they're a great help when I'm deciding on story locations and inventing places for my characters to inhabit (and handy for actual places too, when the story needs it). I can find spots to plunk down a fictional castle, and work out travel routes as well, particularly good for medieval stories, where the resources can be difficult to find. For 19th century and Regency, there are reprints of contemporary guidebooks that are quite useful. (Jo: I use these, too, and the big road atlases are produced every year, so the previous year's edition are sold off very cheap through book clearance places on line.)

I'm also very partial to place name books, but I'm trying to limit my choices here...

I'd never give up my Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland by John Keay and Julia Keay -- I've gone there quite often for information on behalf of my Scottish historicals, and that info leads me elsewhere. The range of the other resources that are discovered in the research process, the references that become essential to individual books, that make the research so fun and exciting. Once I embark on a new topic, I never know where it's going to lead. The Keays' book has initiated many of those research journeys, so I'd drag this one to a desert island. A bit of a doorstopper to pack, though.      

Name books, as Mary Jo also points out, are absolutely essential, and I have a bookshelf crammed full of them. And my favorite name book is my very tattered copy of E.G. Withycombe's Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, which is particularly good for medieval name usage and popularity. How else would I know that Tiffany was a popular medieval name (from Theophania, or epiphany)? So it's fine for a medieval heroine, right - oh wait, common sense trumps authenticity. This is definitely one of my most essential reference books.  (Jo: This seems to be out of print, but readily available used and cheap.)  

Joanna Bourne

​June was a month of nonfiction reads. Like everybody else I've been going through my shelves of research books, thinning out the less useful ones, sorting the 'savers' more elegantly. Maybe June is the 'spring cleaning' month for books.

​One of my savers is Aristocrats by Stella Tillyard, a 1994 biography of Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox. I read large portions of this a while back, but the nature of research books is that one reads them bit by bit, mentally noting what might come in useful someday. I picked up *Aristocrats* again for an hour or two, enjoyed the lively writing, and carefully put it back on the research shelves for future use. The ​ aristocrats are the Lennox sisters — daughter of one duke, sisters of another. They were the leaders of the haut ton in Eighteenth Century Britain. This most excellent biography is drawn from the thousands of letters they exchanged. The real Eighteenth Century ton is an alien world. My favorite random quote — Caroline, writing about Sarah's impending marriage. "Happily for her she is not the least in love."

I've not yet written a story that travels into that territory, but who knows? Maybe someday I will. I offer this as a readable and reliable account of an all-too-human family in a Strange Land. ​I seem to have talked endlessly about Aristocrats.​ Let me pick a short, simple second book.

Barbara Kipfer's 14,000 Things to be Happy About, which I'm going to defend as a 'reference book' since it's a book where you open it and look things up. 14,000 things is —  no surprise here — a list of stuff to be grateful for.

Page 306 begins ...
old lavaliers
red pillboxes
bodies of water that collect on upturned mugs in the dishwasher
sweater vests
freedom
the basic Vermont meal: a piece of cheddar, a glass of cold milk, ans a
stack of common crackers
Shetland yarn

So, anyhow ... I put that one back on the research shelf too because you never know when you'll have to look this up.

Nicola Cornick

I'm in the process of trying to thin out my research library and it's a hopeless job. I can't bring myself to part with any books no matter how obscure or specialised. I've built the collection up over many years and love dipping into all the books. If I spent as much time reading them as I would like I'd never get anything else done. Plus of course the internet has such a wealth of information available that I get even more distracted!

One of my favourite reference books is The Prince of Pleasure and his Regency by J B Priestley, which I've referred to a lot over the years for a clear, broad-brush chronological view of the Regency period. (Jo: a very readable book, out of print but available used and cheap.) Another is Up and Down the Stairs by Jeremy Musson, which I have found an invaluable guide to the lives and roles of servants throughout history.

There are two books that have been on my wish list for a long time but are too expensive. One is "Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792-1815" by Elizabeth Sparrow and the other is "The Black Legend of Prince Rupert's Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War" by Mark Stoyle. I'm still saving up for those!

Jo Beverley

When we were moving I thinned out my books, but there are some I'd never part with. I have a set of Annual Registers for the Regency. These are books published each year with an overview of events, weather, books published etc. There's also a monthly chronicle for a snapshot of what was important that month. They are available on line now, but I like having my print copies, in part because people of the time will have handled the books just as I do.

Another I'd never give up is my A-Z of Regency London. This is exactly what it says -- a street map of London with an index at the back, so I can look up locations I find mentioned, and check that the names of places I'm making up don't conflict with real ones. I'm not sure how Richard Horwood got such detail of house shapes, back yards and alleys, but it gives me the feeling of walking the streets. You can see the stickers I used as I tracked where Hermione was walking when she went in search of the Curious Creatures in Too Dangerous for a Lady. Click on the image for a larger view.)

I've been told for years that it's out of print and that copies are horrendously expensive, but for this blog I checked. It's still available from the publisher, Harry Margery. Click on the title link above to go to their site. It's £26, so not cheap, but worth every penny in my opinion. Unfortunately the mailing cost outside of the UK is going to just about double the price.

Do any of these appeal to you?

Do you have a reference book that you'd never part with?

Is there one you lust after?

A copy of Too Dangerous for a Lady goes to one commenter.

Jo

Comments

[Janice]

I am astonished to see that my own library contains several books that our authors refer to -- mostly biographies and social history.

I have several huge old art books which I have looked at for paintings of the day. I know exactly where those are -- they're propping up the deskside TV set I just bought. These things don't seem to come with much of a stand anymore.

My favorite reads have been Priestly's Prince of Pleasure; Erickson's Our Tempestuous Day; Amanda Vickery's The Gentleman's Daughter. I have not actually plowed through all of The Birth of the Modern, but I do dip into it for specific topics.

You have brought back to mind the old TV series of The Aristocrats, which US Netflix has -- but only Disks 2 and 3 :( So I put it on my buylist from amazon.uk - if I recall correctly, the visuals were outstanding.

[ML]

I'd never part with my copy of Mrs. Hurst Dancing. The color prints are just wonderful, and I'm not sure an ebook would capture that as well.

And I'm amazed to realize that I own several of the recs, although I have the compact version of the OED. Love the magnifying glass that comes with that!

[Kantu]

I'm sure everyone has their own kind of reference books saved up somewhere. And this is why I just LOVE YOU WENCHY LADIES! It's the historical details you put into your romances, don't you know? It's not all slobbering kisses and wild sex. But there's meat and potatoes to the story. I can accept the hero not being handsome and the heroine not being a beauty. Ordinary people can be lovely and loved and charming and beautiful and handsome and dashing too.

I'll take your historical novels any day over some of the other stuff. (It shall remain unnamed.)

Kantu

[Maggie Robinson]

Oh dear. This list looks like it would be expensive to my bank account once I wake up more.

Every year I plunk down the $295 for the OED Online. It's always touch and go--do I REALLY need it? Probably not, but it's irresistible. I also have The Complete Housewife and relied on it when writing a book where the heroine was definitely an incomplete housewife.

Right now I'm immersed in Gilded New York and drooling over the jewelry. I've never walked out of the V & A without a book on fashion/costumes. And the books of English gardens and country houses have piled up.

One of my favorite inspirations is my subscription to Country Life (also horrendously expensive), but there's always something fascinating in each weekly issue that prompts me to look further.

[Lillian Marek]

Research can be addictive, and days can vanish as you wander down irrelevant but fascinating byroads. I've just been reading THE LIFE AND DEATH OF WILLIAM MOUNTFORT, a 17th century actor. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything I'm writing, but I came across a sentence saying that he was murdered by mistake and I had to find out the story.
Now what I do need to find out is how and how much a composer might be paid for a piano concerto in 1870. Google isn't being much help. I think the answer is going to have to wait until I get home and have access to a library again.

[LilMissMolly]

I frequently reference Webster's dictionary. Probably weekly, if not every couple of days.

[Jobev]

The Gentleman's Daughter is great, isn't it, Janice. And the other one. Behind Closed Doors? I got the plot trigger for An Unlikely Countess out of that one. And yes, The Aristocrats on TV was great.

[Jobev]

ML, another great one. Mrs. Hurst Dancing. I feel so lucky to have stumbled across books like that at times. Otherwise I might never have known.

But I still prefer to access the OED through my library. :)

[Jobev]

Thanks, Kantu.

[Jobev]

Maggie, have you checked to see if your local library gives you access to the OED? The V&A is amazing, isn't it?

[Jobev]

Absolutely, Lillian, on the lost on byroads. I have no idea about composer payments. I hope you find out!

[Jobev]

A good dictionary is a treasure, for sure.

[Karin]

I don't have a lot of reference books, but I do have one small book that belonged to my father that I'll never part with, the "Atlas of Medieval and Modern History". It's got maps(modern representations, not reproductions of old maps) starting in the 1st century A.D. For instance, you can see how the British Isles were divvied up circa 1200 A.D., or the Ottoman Empire in the 1400's, or Europe during Napoleon's campaigns. As a child I enjoyed looking at all the kingdoms and duchies and empires that have now vanished. I do love maps! And I love the dedication quote from John Smith's History of Virginia: "For as Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certain habitation."

[Jobev]

That sounds like a great book, Karin. As a child I loved to look through historical books with pictures. It probably started my love of history.

[Glenda]

I've got a couple bookshelves filled with various history books I collected during college - including The Birth of The Modern. It's been ages, but I used it quite a lot for both History and English Lit papers. I'm going to have to pull it down and look through it for fun. :-)

[Anne Gracie]

Karin, I have several historical atlases and I love them. I will often browse through them for no reason other than curiosity.

[Jobev]

That's the way it is with the best books, Glenda. They're there waiting for us, and then they suck us in and times flies by!

[Sue W. McCormick]

As I have mentioned before, when we married my husband and I merged libraries. It has taken us more than forty years to rid outlives of duplicates and to organize our holdings. We have more than 5 bookcases of pure reference materials: how-to books for stitchery and various art techniques, cookbooks, history of mathematics, logic texts, more modern computer how-to and theory and so on. We consult all of them from time to time. We are doing some weeding out, but we're both reluctant to part with any of these.

The only ones regularly consulted are the 1965 printing of the Merriam-Webster desktop dictionary (for more modern words I go online) and and a three-volume, compact version of the OED (complete with magnifying glass so you can read it.) We also have a newer "Complete Dictionary" but we can't reach it right now.

[Gail Eastwood]

Jo, I'm glad to see the A-Z of Regency London on your list --it's one of my favs as well! Such detailed maps neighborhood by neighborhood let you "walk" the streets via imagination and put one's characters there. And I love that the key includes a mile-scale so you can judge distances. Good to know the book is still available!

[Nancy Mayer]

I have most of the books mentioned but probably have used a 11842 Debrett as much as any. I also have a whole set of the Laws of England plus another book case full of books on various aspects of law and marriage. When I moved to a condo from a 2 story 5 bedroom house, I gave way over a hundred boxes of fiction. I kept some fiction but mostly kept the non fiction. 2 rooms and the linen closet hold reference books while one room has fiction.
I have no more room for books yet I still buy books.

[Mary Jane]

Over the past several months, I have been yanked out of the story in 3 novels by authors (including a Wench!) who were unclear about sidesaddle riding. From "clapped heels to the horse" to "boots in stirrups", my reaction is to put down the book and not take it up again. May I suggest Charles Chenevix-Trench: A History of Horsemanship which has an excellent chapter on the development of the sidesaddle. If I remember correctly, it was a Peninsular War veteran and amputee who re-designed the sidesaddle so that women were more secure - of course, that also meant that they could not get free if the horse fell. I am particularly aware because we have a local group of horsewomen who continue to ride sidesaddle.

In the course of my own research for a course and book chapter on the history of dogs and man, I came across William Dobson's "Kunopedia", published 1814, which was advice to a young man training his first upland game dog (Pointer or Spaniel). I particularly remember this bit of advice (paraphrasing) - At some point when you are in the field, your dog will refuse to come back to you. You will be tempted to shout and chase him - DO NOT. Sit down and mentally calculate the difference in velocity between four legs and two. When you have finished this problem, your dog will be sitting at your side." A delightful book and the most expensive I have ever bought! (and his advice works, though it once took 4 hours in below freezing temps!)

[Anne Hoile]

I am not a writer, but usually I go to Kings & Queens ny Richardf Cavendish & Pip Leahy to get an historical perspective of the story I am reading. If the story is in Scotland, I go to A Concise History Scotland by Fitzroy MacLean. If the story is Victorian, then it's my grandmother's book, Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey. For fun, there's Restoration London by Liza Picard. I will start looking for A-Z of Regency London immediately.

[A. Marina Fournier]

A kindred soul, Lillian! Research IS highly addictive, even online. Amazing what fine details I've discovered about a legion of topics by going from link to link just in Wikipedia!

[A. Marina Fournier]

That Atlas sounds amazingly fun, and I adore maps as well. The "map pockets" in my cars before smart phones with GPS were STUFFED with maps, and were the main reason for joining AAA. The map programs don't seem to be very good for wandering in a browsing mode the way physical maps do, but they can be enlarged beyond anything an ordinary map book would do.

[A. Marina Fournier]

In my case, the history books were primarily Tudor era and acquired after college, while I was working at a rare-book research Library centered around Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam. In the SCA, my persona was Tudor.

I am fond of French poetry of the era, and have a volume in Old French as well, with modern French on the recto side. I can sort of understand Occitan, but can't speak or write in it. Made Deborah Harkness's books easier for me.

I also picked up, while in the SCA, a love of medieval and Renaissance song & music. I am quite fond of countertenors and non-polyphonic music, similar to Gregorian Chant. Have any of you ever heard Pigorian Chant, perpetrated by Sandra Boynton? Laughed myself sick.

[A. Marina Fournier]

Our son was at least four before I attacked the duplicates in our library. Some were shed, where others were Mine, His, and lending. I have quite a lot of cookbooks and gardening/plant books. I think I can probably shed some of the crafting books I have, as I don't seem to miss them.

[A. Marina Fournier]

I envy those books you mention, and I echo that last sentence.

[A. Marina Fournier]

Jo asks, as an exercise for the reader:
Do you have a reference book that you'd never part with?
Mary Luke's books on the Tudors.
The woman in fashion by Doris Langley-Levy Moore For the fashion plates and the models
My Petit Larousse--a gift from my French teacher
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, *2nd* edn. Mentioned in Jospehine Tey's Daughter of Time.

Is there one you lust after?
One? Only ONE? A couple of them mentioned in this article, and a goodsized copy of •The Book of Kells and of the •Tres Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry. A good copy of Edward Johnson's Writing & Illuminating & Lettering.
•A reproduction of an Aldine Press book.
Not quite reference, but a copy or fascimile of the •Alice books by Lewis Carroll, *illustrated by him*. Saw this in an exhibit once, and didn't take the publication info.
•Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
by Guy Deutscher

Not in most of the periods in which Wenches write, but still...

[Jobev]

Pigorian Chant sounds fascinating, Marina. I'll have to check it out. I sang plainchant at my convent boarding school and love it.

[Jobev]

Sue, when we had to weed, I put stickers on books when I used them. After a year or so I could spot the ones not used. Didn't always get rid of them, but it was a first indication.

[Jobev]

Yes on the scale, Gail. London was quite small in the Regency, even though a million people lived there. Seven miles wide, IIRC, and four deep? People could and did walk from one end to the other in any direction.

[Jobev]

Closet libraries. Yes. Been there! Amazing what spaces we can find for our books if we're imaginative. What about ceiling shelves let down on pulleys? Think it'd be a go?

[Jobev]

Thanks for the reference, Mary Jane. I'm not sure why an amputee would devise a better sidesaddle unless he planned to use it, which is intriguing. Or was his wound incidental. As I understand it the Regency sidesaddle was tricky because of the lack of the leaping horn, though I gather a few daredevils managed remarkable riding back then.

When you said "boots in stirrups" are you referring to two boots? There's one in a stirrup, isn't there?

Love the dog story!

[Jobev]

It's lovely to have some basic overviews, isn't it, Anne. I have a Kings and Queens of England book that has all the essential details in simple form. OTOH I have a book on the children of George III which is full of interesting stuff but the author went for a narrative style that makes details hard to find.

[Jobev]

Marina, you have excellent lust-taste!

Granted your dream, would you want the medieval books or the pages to display on the wall? I'm imagining a sliding system so there's a new page every day.

[Karin]

Oh my, Fitzroy MacLean! Anything he wrote has got to be entertaining.

[Sue W. McCormick]

Stickers are a GREAT idea. We're still weeding, I am going to adapt that idea TODAY!

[MuseofIre]

For those who crave the OED, I got mine (the compact edition with magnifying glass mentioned above) as a premium for joining the Book of the Month club many years ago. It may still be available.