Author: Cora Lee

Cora Lee is a National Bestselling author of Regency romance. She went on a twelve year expedition through the blackboard jungle as a high school math teacher before publishing Save the Last Dance for Me, the first book in the Maitland Maidens series. She then followed it up with six other novels and novellas ranging from sweet and traditional to spicy and suspenseful. When she’s not walking Rotten Row at the fashionable hour or attending the entertainments of the Season, you might find her participating in Regency Fiction Writers events, wading through her towering TBR pile, or eagerly awaiting the next Marvel movie release. If you’d like to find out more about Cora or her books you can sign up for her newsletter, or connect with her on Facebook, BlueSky, Bookbub, or Goodreads.
Regency

Eyeglasses of the Regency

Cora Lee

Written by Jacqueline Diamond, whose half-dozen traditional Regency romances, now available as ebooks, include Rita Award finalist THE FORGETFUL LADY as well as LADY IN DISGUISE and A LADY OF LETTERS. Published in the Regency Reader, July 2013.

Since people suffered from visual defects in earlier centuries just as they do now, it should be no surprise that, throughout the ages, inventors, artisans, jewelers and glassmakers put their talents to use improving our ability to see.

The earliest known use of lenses to aid vision was in ancient Egypt and Assyria, where people were depicted using magnifying stones such as polished crystals. In the first decade B.C., Roman philosopher Seneca used water-filled objects to magnify text for reading.

Reading Stone via http://thestoryofmocroscope.blogspot.hu/
Reading Stone via http://thestoryofmocroscope.blogspot.hu/

Around the year 1000 A.D., Muslim scholar Alhazen (965-1040)-known as the father of modern optics-wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject. In the late 12th century, Marco Polo claimed that eyeglasses were popular among the wealthy Chinese. The demand for spectacles grew dramatically by the end of the 15th century, thanks to the invention of the printing press and the much wider availability of reading material.

Here are some good sites about ancient glasses:
http://optical.com/eyeglasses/history-of-eyeglasses/
http://www.antiquespectacles.com/history/ages/through_the_ages.htm
http://io9.com/strange-and-wonderful-moments-in-the-history-of-eyeglas-507302709

My own myopia inspired me, for my sixth traditional Regency romance, to create a nearsighted heroine. In A Lady’s Point of View, Meg Linley–forbidden by her mother to wear eyeglasses–accidentally causes a scandal by cutting Beau Brummell at a ball. Then, sent home in disgrace, she gets into the wrong carriage and is mistaken for a governess.

In 1989, when Harlequin published the novel, I had to dig through books for a few snippets of information on eyeglasses during the Regency. Imagine my delight, when preparing the recent ebook release, at finding a treasure trove of information on the Internet.

Here’s a look at the situation that would have affected my heroine:
An English optician, Edward Scarlett (1677-1743), is credited with developing eyeglasses that rest on the nose and ears. While the exact origin of bifocals is debated, Benjamin Franklin usually gets the credit. Bifocals were found in London after the 1760s.

Spectacles with tortoise shell and silver rims and a shagreen case, c. 1770 via http://susanewington.blogspot.hu/2012_05_01_archive.html
Spectacles with tortoise shell and silver rims and a shagreen case, c. 1770 via http://susanewington.blogspot.hu/2012_05_01_archive.html

However, glasses weren’t considered fashionable by the Regency upper crust. Instead, the Beau Monde preferred the quizzing glass, a magnifying lens with a handle that the user peered through.

Quizzing glasses remained popular until the 1830s, when the lorgnette gained in popularity, especially among women. First appearing between 1795 and 1805, the lorgnette is a pair of lenses with a short handle. Also known as opera glasses, these derived their name from the French word lorgner, to ogle.

The quizzing glass was usually set with a magnifying lens, although in some cases a corrective lens was used. Goldsmiths or jewelers provided the frames, often made of gold or sterling silver, with elaborate designs. These hung from a chain attached to the handle-of varying lengths-or loop.

For charming pictures of eyewear from the Regency, I recommend these sites:
http://historicalhussies.blogspot.com/2010/08/regency-glasses-and-eyeware.html
http://candicehern.com/collections/04/eyeglass.htm

Books, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Slightly Dangerous

Cora Lee

Description (from Amazon):

“All of London is abuzz over the imminent arrival of Wulfric Bedwyn, the reclusive, cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle, at the most glittering social event of the season. Some whisper of a tragic love affair. Others say he is so aloof and passionless that not even the greatest beauty could capture his attention. But on this dazzling afternoon, one woman did catch the duke’s eye—and she was the only female in the room who wasn’t even trying. Christine Derrick is intrigued by the handsome duke…all the more so when he invites her to become his mistress.

What red-blooded woman wouldn’t enjoy a tumble in the bedsheets with a consummate lover—with no strings and no questions asked. An infuriating lady with very definite views on men, morals, and marriage, Christine confounds Wulfric at every turn. Yet even as the lone wolf of the Bedwyn clan vows to seduce her any way he can, something strange and wonderful is happening. Now for a man who thought he’d never lose his heart, nothing less than love will do.”

This is one of my favorite books of all time! Like The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, Slightly Dangerous at first appears to be like any other Regency romance. The beauty in this story, though, is its leading man, Wulfric Bedwyn. He is every inch the cold, formidable duke in public (and sometimes with his siblings). But throughout the previous five books, the reader gets tiny peeks at the man under all that ice. You see his loneliness and isolation, the way he adores his family even when he can’t (or won’t) tell them. You discover little pieces of his soul.

I fell in love. And then, so did he 🙂

http://www.amazon.com/Slightly-Dangerous-Balogh-Mary-ebook/dp/B000FC1PBG/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1371758779&sr=8-1

Slightly Dangerous

Fashion

Regency Fashion: Men’s Breeches, Pantaloons, and Trousers

Cora Lee

Vic's avatarJane Austen's World

One of the benefits of gathering images for Pinterest is that one’s awareness of the minute differences in fashions from year to year improves. Daily exposure to thousands of fashion images from the Georgian era have taught me to notice the nuances of style and line. These images are one-sided, since very few articles of clothing from the lower classes survive. With rare exceptions, most museum quality fashions were made for the wealthy, and one must keep in mind when studying these images that fashions for the upper classes were vastly different from those of the working poor or laboring classes. Men’s trousers are a perfect example of class distinction.

By the turn of the 19th century, breeches, pantaloons and trousers worn by all men were sewn with a flap in front called a fall front. This flap was universally held in place by two or three buttons at the…

View original post 677 more words

Books, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Richard Armitage Reads Georgette Heyer

Cora Lee

Hold on to your e-readers and mp3 players, ladies! Our Friday Favorite this week is Richard Armitage. He’s best known for his portrayal of John Thornton in North and South, Lucas North in MI-5 (Spooks across the Atlantic), and most recently as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit movies.

Richard Armitage

But in the last few years he’s also gotten into audiobook narration, including three of Georgette Heyer’s novels: The Convenient Marriage, Venetia, and Sylvester.

Audio clips:

Interview for The Convenient Marriage, where Richard talks about the difference between doing audiobooks and screen acting, and his love of music. (June 2010)

Interview for Venetia, where he talks about how he got started with audiobooks, and his reading habits. (March 2010)

Excerpt from Georgette Heyer’s Venetia, complete with separate voices for each character.

You can find these clips and other audio at Richard Armitage Central. But make sure you come up for air once in a while 😉

Fashion

HNS Costume Pageant: Party Like It’s 1599

Cora Lee

…or in my case, like it’s 1813 🙂

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I must make a confession to you this week: I would have been a miserable failure amongst the ton. I’m practically the definition of bluestocking, for one thing. I also have brown hair and freckles (skillfully covered by good powder in my profile pic). I’m descended from a long line of laborers, tradesmen, and those who work for a living.

And I have very little fashion sense.

I make a good effort in the classroom, because if I look foolish or frumpy my teenaged students will focus on my clothing instead of the lesson. I’m careful not to look ragged when I go out in public, too—mostly because I live in the same area as my students, but it’s also good practice for when I’m a huge, famous author 🙂

These last months, though, I’ve been focusing on Regency fashion. The Historical Novel Society is having their annual conference this coming weekend (which I’m attending), and one of their events is a costume pageant (which I absolutely had to participate in). But how does one put together a 200-year-old outfit in a tiny little town?

A lot of people dig up an old pattern, and put needle and thread to fabric. But my sewing skills are limited to reattaching buttons, so I hit the internet looking for costume shops. I found Matti’s Millinery and Costumes, a store run by a pair of ladies who do costume work for theater groups and reenactors. The have medieval and renaissance wear, Victorian and Edwardian pieces, and a big old section of Regency gear.

After some careful consideration, I settled on a beautiful copper-colored satin evening gown, with an embroidered net overdress (pictured in it’s entirety above, bodice detail below). It’s got the empire waist typical of the Regency, the long flowing skirt (no panniers or bustle to mar the smooth line—or make moving difficult). It’s not the white or pastel that a young miss would wear (because, let’s face it, at my age in that time period, I’d be firmly on the shelf).

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Then, just as now, a lady’s ensemble wasn’t complete without a handbag, and the wonderful ladies at Matti’s made one for me out of material left over from the gown. It’s large enough to hold all my 21st Century things (camera, business cards, lip balm, medication, etc), but totally period appropriate.

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I even hunted down a pair of gloves that weren’t made of stretchy nylon, or intended for wear by girls going to prom. I didn’t want white gloves, either—while rather ubiquitous, everything about my dress is shades of copper and tan, and I think white would have looked out of place. But I found this lovely pair of beige evening gloves from the early 1960s on e-bay. They arrived in rather appalling condition, but cleaned up nicely.

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I’m not wearing period appropriate shoes (my black flats from Payless will have to do this time), nor am I wearing silk stockings (not in Florida in late June). So the only thing left is to figure out what to do with my hair. And here I’m stuck. My hair is too long (and frizzy in the humidity) to leave down, but it’s too short for an elaborate updo (see my profile picture). And I’ll have to be able to do it myself (eek!).

Suggestions?