Many schools, universities and law courts had Easter terms.  The fact that Easter was a moveable feast meant that one could not always tie the terms to the calendar nor have them be the same length every year. All schools were closed for Holy week preceding  Easter and  then most did not reopen until the Wednesday after Easter as Monday and Tuesday were holidays. Many other dates were calculated as being so many days after Easter. The names for the various terms aligned with the Church of England calendar, as did the court sessions. The eight weeks after the Feast of St. Michae ..read more

This adaptation of Persuasion was an ITV/Granada mini-series, directed and produced by Howard Baker, with a screenplay by Julian Mitchell. The cast included… Anne Firbank……………..Anne Elliot Bryan Marshall……………Captain Frederick Wentworth Basil Dignam …………….Sir Walter Elliot Valerie Gearon …………….Elizabeth Elliot Marian Spencer……………Lady Russell Georgine Anderson………Mrs. Croft Richard Vernon …………..Admiral Croft Morag Hood………………..Mary Elliot Musgrove David Savile ……………….Mr. William Elliot Mel Martin………………….Henrietta Musgrove Zhivila Roche………………Louisa Musgrove This version stayed very close to th ..read more

Those of you who know me, know something of my writing process. For example, I still compose in a wide ruled spiral notebook. I choose wide ruled because I can write such words as “timeline” in the margin without breaking my concentration on the flow of the story while still noting markers of which I must be aware. Today, I will first read what I wrote yesterday and correct spelling, add words, etc., then I move on. Yes, I very much write every day. When the story is complete, I type my first draft, which serves as another round of edits, though I admit I sometimes type “the the” in this draft ..read more

The Colonel’s Ungovernable Governess is on preorder. Do you have your copy? Rather than be forced to marry a man not of her choice, Miss Jocelyn Romfield runs away. She believes spending her life as a governess would be superior to a loveless marriage.  An arrangement has been made by his father for Colonel Edward Fitzwilliam to marry a woman related to his Aunt Catherine’s last husband, Sir Lewis de Bourgh. Yet, how is Fitzwilliam expected to court his future bride, who has proven to be elusive during each of his attempts to take her acquaintance, when the governess of his brother’s ste ..read more

In the singular form the lexicon of a particular subject is all the terms associated with it. The lexicon of a person or group is all the words they commonly use. As a plural noun, a lexicon is an alphabetical list of the words in a language or the words associated with a particular subject. To distinguish lexicon from a dictionary, it is an alphabetical list of the words in a language or the words associated with a particular subject. These examples are a mix of what one might hear upon the lips of the aristocracy, as well as examples of Cant used upon London’s streets and those terms used by ..read more

Although I am aware that people of the Regency did not know much about the need for sterilization of a wound, I still often write Darcy, who I consider to be an intelligent and forward-looking man, as seeing a need for clean care of a wound. I consider him a thinking man — a man who read every science article available. So, though there were few who practiced what would later become standard care of a wound, I present Darcy with a curious mind. Curse me or forgive me. It is up to you, dear reader, but know I am likely to do something similar in another book. In “The Colonel’s Ungovernable Gove ..read more

The above is an example of the school terms found in one of author Suzi Love’s books, but I wished to share it as a marker of when the children during Jane Austen’s England would have returned to school, and what each term meant, for in my latest Austen-inspired tale, The Colonel’s Ungovernable Governess, much of the action in compacted between the Easter Term and the Michael Term and there are three children, two of them young boys whose schooling plays a part of in the plot line. My British readers will wonder why I bother, while I hope my American readers will be able to make more sense of ..read more

In my latest Austen-inspired release, Mr. Darcy asks for a magnifier and tweezers to have assurances that one of the character’s wound is clean from debris of clothing. Now, before any of you start to criticize me for making Darcy’s personality practical, a bit of an intellectual, and dependable, forget it. I shan’t listen, and you shall be wasting your breath. I have always written Darcy (and even Elizabeth upon more than one occasion) as being a bit ahead of his times, but when it comes to magnifiers and tweezers, the gentleman from Derbyshire was not. The Optimax website tells us, “Ancient ..read more

When I am writing a Jane Austen variation, I often write Colonel Fitzwilliam’s elder brother, as suffering from hemophilia. In that manner, the colonel can eventually become the earl. I have done so in several of my tales, but I, generally, do not describe his brother’s symptoms enough for my readers to recognize the disease. In The Colonel’s Ungovernable Governess, I do. Most of us have heard hemophilia called the Royal Disease. The Hemophilia Federation of America provides us this bit of history of the disease: 1000 The first description of an inherited bleeding disorder is referenced in the ..read more

In the singular form the lexicon of a particular subject is all the terms associated with it. The lexicon of a person or group is all the words they commonly use. As a plural noun, a lexicon is an alphabetical list of the words in a language or the words associated with a particular subject. To distinguish lexicon from a dictionary, it is an alphabetical list of the words in a language or the words associated with a particular subject. These examples are a mix of what one might hear upon the lips of the aristocracy, as well as examples of Cant used upon London’s streets and those terms used by ..read more