Category Archives: History

Books Women's history

Nothing new about misplaced apostrophes

January 23, 2007 – 12:03 am

Arriving today from the irrestistible reaches of eBay’s antiquarian section is a humble little volume one of Mrs Jameson’s Memoir’s of the Early Italian Painters. I can’t blame the printer, but the later bookbinder definitely had problems with the concept of the apostrophe, much like today’s greengrocers.

Written inside in beautifully clear copperplate is:

Louisa Clarke,
the gift of her Aunt,
December 1851


I wonder who she was…

Mrs Jameson is one of my eBay favourites – she’s nearly always very cheap, which suggests she sold an awful lot of books.

She had a full if not always easy life – surely calling out for a modern biography, but I didn’t think there is one.

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Blogging/IT History

Simple explanations are often the best

January 21, 2007 – 11:22 am

Just found out about a new carnival, of anthropology, called the Four Stone Heath, the latest on the delightfully named Aardvarcheology. I was particularly taken by the link about out-of-place artefacts post – and particularly its account of the “Baghdad battery”, from the 3rd century BC – ’tis amazing what the human imagination can come up with. (Actually a pot for storing papyrus…)

Hat-tip to Sharon on Early Modern Notes, who incidentally is looking for hosts for the history carnival – particularly female hosts to get some gender balance. Now I know there are women’s history bloggers who visit here who would be ideal (you DON’T have to be a professional historian! – I’m not and I’ve hosted it twice – although you can be of course…) You know who you are – please volunteer (or I might just send Sharon a list of suggestions!)

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Feminism Women's history

Marriage: who needs it?

January 20, 2007 – 12:12 pm

Interesting that trends in the West (latest report out from Australia suggests that the next official figure will put the number of married women at 45% of the total) are being followed by China – where the age of marriage is rising significantly.

Chinese women have been delaying wedlock over the past decade and the average age for a woman to marry is now 24, a research report has found.
Since 1990, Chinese women have married between at 21.9 to 22.8 years old and the age was 22.6 in 2000, says a report published by China Youth and Children Research Center, an institution for helping the government set youth policies.

A cause for celebration – more free women in the world…

And in case you think that is extreme, landing in my inbox this morning is an account of how it used to be, from France in 1772:

The complainant [Marie-Françoise Bertaud, linen merchant in Paris, who is seeking a legal formal separation]… in marrying sir Gagneur, had no other intention that to run her business with her husband as they had agreed. Sir Gagneur, far from performing as he had promised his wife in helping her run her business, a month after their marriage left her and went to live with a girl nicknamed the Hungarian, who was in sir Restier’s troupe of tumblers, at the St-Germain fair.
One evening it got into sir Gagneur’s head to bring his concubine home to sup there; the complainant, his wife, opposed this, not wanting to admit this concubine to her table; the sir Gagneur mistreated his wife in hitting her and then drawing his sword against her…

It goes on with an astonishing familiar tale – hubbie comes and goes, mostly goes, to the Hungarian and a succession of other women (the tally is four illegitimate children with different women, frequently beats and threatens his wife, she tries again and again to make the marriage work.
(From the excellent Sundries.)

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Theatre Women's history

Sarah Kane, a great

January 19, 2007 – 2:16 pm

I’ve been contemplating the tragically short career of the playwright Sarah Kane, which I’ve just reviewed over on My London Your London. A great talent cut short.

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History

Who’d have thought it?

January 18, 2007 – 4:40 pm

Archaeologists getting along with metal detectorists – the new treasure law and the portable antiquities scheme, whose blog you’ll find among my regular reading, really have worked out. (As well to point out the success stories in the news occasionally…)

A beautiful little bronze dog, dating from the 4th century and still shiny from years of being stroked, was found by Alan Rowe, a children’s books illustrator, who relaxes by taking his metal detector out into the fields near his home on the Isle of Wight.
The dog is valued at about £500. But it tells Frank Basford, an archaeologist who records finds on the island, that a superstitious Roman – with good reason, as the empire started to crumble around him – crossed that field, carrying an amulet probably bought at a shrine to the god Nodens, where the faithful believed the lick of temple dogs would cure their ailments and protect them. The field was surveyed but no evidence was found of a shrine or building: the dog probably just fell out of a pocket with a hole.

Did Roman clothes really have pockets, BTW? I thought they didn’t – but I think we can attribute that one to the reporter.

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Blogging/IT History

A Chinese blogger’s victory?

January 18, 2007 – 4:33 pm

It might be a small thing really, but it is democracy in action: Starbucks is set to be banned from the Forbidden City after a huge web campaign.

The trigger was a blog entry posted on Monday by Rui Chenggang, a TV anchorman, who called for a web campaign against the outlet that, he wrote in his blog, “tramples over over Chinese culture”.
According to local media, half a million people have signed his online petition and dozens of newspapers have carried prominent stories about the controversy.

It has been there, utterly incongruous in the midst of an otherwise nearly perfectly preserved historic site, for 16 years – I remember doing a double-take when I saw it there in the early 1990s.

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