Author Topic: Research and Other Resources For Historical Novels - Books and Fact Checking Sources - England  (Read 351 times)

Offline The Fantastical

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Hello! Having failed a number of times to find out some small and mostly likely unimportant but interesting bit of historical fact, I know how hard it can be to A. know if what you read is right and B. Find out anything at all.


So here are some books to look up:


Food in England by Dorothy Hartley :

Her love of the infinite variety of English cooking and her knowledge of British culture and history show why our food should never be considered dull or limited. There are unusual dishes such as the Cornish Onion and Apple Pie, and even recipes for fungi, from common field mushrooms to puffballs. She describes some delicious puddings, cakes and breads, including an exotic violet flower ice cream, an eighteenth century coconut bread and Yorkshire teacakes. The finely-executed line drawings that accompany many of the recipes are more than just beautiful; they inform the cook about different varieties and techniques of food-handling.

Water in England by Dorothy Hartley :

Details the history of water in England. Not sure about what else as it is very hard to find discription of it.

The Land of England: English Country Customs Through the Ages by Dorothy Hartley :

Deatils custums other country side habits.

Lost Country Life: How English country folk lived, worked, threshed, thatched, rolled fleece, milled corn, brewed mead... by Dorothy Hartley :

This beautiful and heartfelt encyclopedia of rural life in the middle ages gets its special charm because the author, as a little girl, knew shepherds and laborers who lived in a way hardly changed through the centuries. She shares that land, now lost forever, where man was the measure of all things.Using as a framework a 16th-century calendar of advice for farmers, she takes us month by month through the country-dweller's year, and opens up the customs and traditions of a vanished rural life.

Medieval Costume and How to Recreate It by Dorothy Hartley :
Clear-cut and accurate in its guidance, this volume depicts medieval clothes and accessories not as inanimate museum exhibits but as items of vital interest and well worth recreating.
Unlike conventional costume histories, which tend to classify their contents by era, this volume portrays the clothing of the twelfth through 15th centuries according to the wearer's social class.
Here are the garments of royalty, clerics, doctors, merchants, musicians, knights, artisans, farmers, and laborers — all magnificently illustrated with images from tapestries and illuminated manuscripts as well as in drawings and diagrams. Helpful advice covers choosing fabrics; placement of seams; draping and folding garments; how to walk, dance, and climb stairs in the cumbersome unfamiliarity of flowing attire; and even the best methods of storage.


Mediaeval Costume and Life - A Review of Their Social Aspects Arranged Under Various Classes and Workers - With Instructions for Making Numerous Types of Dress by Dorothy Hartley :


It is all in the title really.


The Country Mans England by Dorothy Hartley :

This book records English country life at a time when farming and rural occupations were closely entwined, dependant on each other for their economic survival.

Life and Work of the People of England - A Pictorial Record from Contemporary Sources - The Seventeenth Century by Dorothy Hartley :
The object of this series is to give a view of the Social life of each century through the eyes of the people who lived in it. We have tried to select records suitable for general and school use, which has meant examining some thousands of MSS., prints, drawings and reference books, and only by careful selection and examination could the results be condensed into an inexpensive series. A general introduction outlines the characteristics of the century, and a series of notes gives points of detail.


Lost World by Dorothy Hartley :

Hartley was commissioned by the Daily Sketch newspaper to write articles describing the English countryside, old English crafts and customs, country foods and country ways (with the odd excursion to Wales, Scotland and Ireand). She did her research in the British Museum (she had by then written several books of social history) and on the ground, travelling around the country on her sturdy bicycle, staying with her subjects or under hedges. These articles were to form her knowledge-bank which she used in several books that came out during the 1930s and beyond (particularly Heres England, 1935), but they have never been seen as they were first written. We offer a selection, with a foreword by Lucy Worsley (who is presenting the BBC TV documentary on Hartley to be transmitted this autumn) and introduced by the writer Adrian Bailey (who befriended Dorothy Hartley in her later life). The 60 articles are illustrated with some of Hartleys own snapshots which she kept as notes for future reference. The subjects range widely on matters as various as thatching, clog-making, eels, the country chemist, marram grass, sand shoes, crabs, sheep shearing, spring-cleaning, country kitchens, ploughing, weather lore, and elevenses.

« Last Edit: Tuesday 19, 2017, 10: pm by The Fantastical »
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