When I started reading romance novels, as a very, very young person back in the 1980s, my introduction to the genre was via the medieval.

My very first romance novel, still on my shelf in rather battered and dilapidated form, was one set during the civil wars of the twelfth century, featuring Eleanor of Aquitaine in a cameo role, with lots of “By my troth!” and “By God’s wounds!”  Most of my subsequent romance reading was pre-sixteenth century: there was Jude Deveraux’s Velvet quartet (which I very cleverly managed to read backwards, from Velvet Angel all the way back to The Velvet Promise, which meant that I got to see the major plot threads in re-wind mode rather than the right way around) and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s Wolf and the Dove, and at least a dozen other Norman knight/Saxon maiden type novels of Wolf and Dove-ish ilk.

I know there was some eighteenth century that crept in there, in the form of Woodiwiss’s A Rose in Winter, a great deal of Scotland in multiple time periods– Julie Garwood’s The Bride, Elizabeth Stuart’s Heartstorm, and pretty much anything by Arnette Lamb– and, of course, Victorian Gothics featuring intrepid governesses beyond number, but I don’t recall reading a Regency qua Regency until the summer I was twelve.

When I spotted Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven in the supermarket checkout line, I had no idea that it was going to be one of those books that would change my life.

I fell in love with Almost Heaven, with Elizabeth and Ian, with McNaught’s zany side characters and signature mix of humor and pathos.  In retrospect, McNaught’s Regency world isn’t terribly Regency-ish at all, but the basic trappings were there: the ton, the gossiping society matrons, the dukes, the dowagers, and the sharp-tongued chaperones.  It was Almost Heaven that led me to Georgette Heyer, via a McNaught endorsement on the cover of a Heyer reissue, and from Heyer to the entire Zebra Regency aisle in the bookstore.  Who needed those Norman knights with their bulging thews?  (For some reason, those medieval heroes always did seem to have thew bulge issues.)  There was an entire sub-genre featuring clever men with quizzing glasses and not a spare thew in view.

I abandoned the Victoria Holt knock-off I was writing at the time and started writing a McNaught knock-off instead.  (Which no one will see.  Ever.  With the sole exception of my ninth grade classmates, who may or may not have had bits read dramatically aloud to them on the bus during a class trip.  But that was a very long time ago, so it doesn’t count.)

And that’s the very long and roundabout story of how I came to the Regency, via Judith McNaught and the Fishkill ShopRite checkout line.

I’ve moved on to other favorite authors since then, but Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven will always have a special place in my heart.

What was your first Regency romance?

“It’s for RESEARCH.”

That’s what I told my husband anyway, as he looked over my shoulder as we sat next to each other on the couch.   I had my computer open, as I always do, and paying very little attention to this latest episode of Doctor Who (I’ve seen it already, but the hubs hasn’t.  He has acquiesced to my demand that he watch the series.  Hey, I watched Lost for him.)

“That’s not research,” he says.  “That’s porn.”

“It is not!” I cry.

“It is.  It’s house porn.”

Yes, dear reader, open on my computer was a Google image search for “19^th century English country manor.”  But these aren’t manors.  These are mansions.  Dream residences.  Castles at a time when they didn’t build castles anymore.  (My theory: too drafty.)  Some background might be in order: We have recently begun day dreaming about a house, and therefore many of our computer searches of late have been floor plans and neighborhoods.  But these manor houses are a bit out of our reach.  (To be fair, I’m pretty sure they are a bit out of the average billionaire’s reach too.) Thus, I wouldn’t day dream about living there.  Of course not.  Except when I do.

“I am writing about a house party, and it is at a very specific kind of house.”  I tell him importantly.  “I was simply using visual aids.”

“You were cheating.”

“It’s not cheating, and it’s not porn.” I reply firmly.  Then, under my breath.  “Everyone does it.”

“Fine,” he says. “What does your house have too look like.  In your book,” he clarifies.

Oh.  Right.  My book.  I told him it was a very specific house, after all.

“Well it has to be ostentatious.”  I reply.  “A bit over the top.”

“You have chosen your category well then.  What about this one?”

The Manor House at Castle Combe

“That one might do,” I muse.  “I like the vines.  It has a bell tower, even – a little one.  But I think it needs to be bigger.  Plus I need some turrets.  I like turrets.

“Riiiiight,” the husband answers.  “For your fictional characters.  You could make it fictionally bigger, you know.”  He scrolls down a bit, and points to another one.  “What about this one.  Turrets abound.”

The Hunting Tower at Chatsworth House

“Turrets abound, yes.  In fact, I think it’s made up entirely of turrets.”  A shoot him a look.  He knows this look.  “And what about bigger? I don’t even think that’s a full-fledged house.”

“What about that one?  It’s perfect – grand, ostentatious, I think those things on the corner count as turrets, and it even looks familiar.  I could see you – er, I mean, your characters – living there.”

Highclere Castle

“Of course it’s familiar.  It’s Highclere Castle.”  Off his blank look, “It’s Downton Abbey.”

Downton Abbey, it has to be said, he watched voluntarily.  I think he has a thing for Mrs. Patmore, the cook.

What about you dear reader?  Have you ever been caught daydreaming – er, I mean researching – about certain houses?  Which ones?  Post pics below!

In college I spent hours browsing: bookstores, CD stores, clothing, food markets. If there was a place to wander and browse, I was there. As a result, I stumbled on influences I might have never found otherwise. The way things looked grabbed me. From Carole Maso’s The American Woman in the Chinese Hat to Milla Jovovich’s album The Divine Comedy, I picked things up that caught my eye.

The American Woman in the Chinese Hat by Carole Maso

These days, most of my shopping is done online. After a couple years of wildly searching the net for anything of interest, (Apologies to Lady B for all this talk of Modern Things Crazy Authoresses Discuss) I very rarely browse anymore. I have an idea of what I want and any search I do is extremely narrow. Naturally this limits the chance for pushing the boundaries of my experience.

Which is one of the reasons I love driving up north to San Francisco every few months. My husband and I realized on our most recent trip, that we spend a good portion of our time wandering around bookstores and finding books we would never have found if they weren’t in a physically easy to browse situation. And better yet, bookstores such as City Lights in North Beach and Moe’s in Berkeley aren’t limited as much to the big bookstore chain focus on new releases. (Not that there are many big bookstores around anymore anyway.)

This last weekend I walked away with Joseph Kanon’s Istanbul Passage, which only released in 2012 but likely would have never shown up in my Amazon recommends lists. I’m loving it!

How about you? How do you discover new books outside your usual realm?

Warning: This Saturday’s salon is brought to you by shameless
a) self-quotation
and
b) objectification

You’ve been forewarned. Read on if you’d like to be forearmed.

My new novella comes out next Tuesday – it’s called Beauty and the Blacksmith. Now, I always give each heroine I write a little piece of me. Sometimes it’s awkwardness around cute boys (Minerva, in A Week to be Wicked). Sometimes it’s a love of old books and the way they smell (Pauline, in Any Duchess Will Do). When it came to Diana Highwood, I gave her one of my most deeply personal qualities: an obsession with forearms.

From the first page of BATB:

Goodness. Just look at it. Thick as my ankle.

Diana Highwood took her glove and worked it like a fan, chasing the flush from her throat. She was a gentlewoman, born and raised in genteel comfort, if not opulent luxury. From an early age, she’d been marked as the hope of the family. Destined, her mother vowed, to catch a nobleman’s eye.

But here, in the smithy with Aaron Dawes, all her delicate breeding disintegrated.

How could she help staring? The man had wrists as thick as her ankle.

As always, he wore his sleeves rolled to the elbow, exposing forearms roped with muscle. He pumped the bellows, commanding the flames to dance.

But on reflection, I realize it really goes back further than that. My obsession with forearms was established in my very first book, Goddess of the Hunt. It’s pretty much all over for Lucy once she sees Jeremy with rolled up sleeves:

Clearly the sight of a well-muscled forearm incited a woman to utter depravity. How else to explain the invention of cuffs?

Okay, so maybe ALL my heroines are obsessed with forearms. Can you blame them? Let’s test this with a little visual feast of forearms. For, you know, science. Or something.

Matt Bomer’s thought bubble: Gosh, I have no idea how my forearms got this smoking hot.

I’m thinking Chris Hemsworth has been lifting more than bottles with those forearms.

Joe Mangianello is the boss of forearms.

Aww. Does Jason Momoa have a boo-boo on his forearm? Who wants to kiss it better?

You can’t say I didn’t forearm you.

We all know Lady B has a thing for a well-turned male leg.  Do you have a favorite body part you like to ogle … drool over … search obsessively on tumblr … admire?

If you’ve read more than about one Regency-era romance, chances are you’ve come across a special license. You see there was this pesky law by which marriages couldn’t take place in England without the banns being published in the resident parishes of both bride and bridegroom three Sundays in a row. In addition, marriages had to take place in church and before noon. This is damnably inconvenient for the writer who wants her couple wed quickly and who doesn’t want the trouble of sending them all the way to Scotland where the laws were less restrictive

Doctors Commons in the early 19th century

Luckily for our desperate heroes (isn’t it always the hero who’s in a hurry?), there was a way out. You could apply to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head cleric of the Church of England, for a Special License which allowed a marriage to take place anywhere and at any hour without a waiting period. This useful document was obtained from the Archbishop’s London offices at Doctors Commons in the City of London.

A few years ago I became frustrated by the fact that I didn’t know what a special license looked like. I couldn’t find a picture on line, or even the text. So during a trip to London I went to the source. Doctors Commons was demolished during the 19th century but the Archbishop has a nice little London pad at Lambeth Palace, just across the River Thames from Westminster.

I imagined a printed form in which the names were inserted, but I was wrong about that. The Lambeth Palace Library possessed no “blank” licenses, only a few dozen completed ones for marriages that had been performed in the Palace chapel.

Lambeth Palace

A license was handwritten on parchment approximately 18 inches wide by 12 inches high, quite an impressive document. All the couple of dozen I saw (dated between 1754 and 1806) looked much the same. In a couple of instances the names of the parties were written in different handwriting from the text (which was boilerplate, scarcely varying by a word) as though a clerk had prepared a blank license when he had nothing better to do. More often the document had been written all at once, not something that could be dashed off in ten minutes.

A license was signed by the “Register” and finished with the Archbishop’s seal, hanging from a ribbon or string  looped through holes in the parchment.

The men are described as either widower or bachelor, the women as widow or spinster. In the case of a spinster, the name of her father is given, for a widow, her late husband’s. For the man the father is recorded if he’s a peer or someone else notable. As you can see by the list of titles for the bridegroom in the following license, they seemed to like to make the whole business seem important.

Here is the text of a typical license, that for the 1806 marriage of Prince Bariatinsky to Lord Sherborne’s daughter. There is absolutely no punctuation and, yes, the word “Honorable” is spelled in what we would call the American way.

Charles by Divine Providence Archbishop of Canterbury Primate of all England and Metropolitan by Authority of Parliament lawfully empowered for the purposes herein written To our beloved in Christ John Prince Bariatinsky of Russia privy counselor to the Emperor of Russia Chamberlain and Knight of the Military Order of St. George and also Knight of Malta now of Sackville Street London a Bachelor and the Honorable [sic] Frances Mary Dutton of Sherborne in the County of Gloucester a Spinster daughter of the Right Honorable James Dutton Baron Sherborne Wheareas As it is alleged ye have proposed to proceed to the solemnization of a true pure and lawful Marriage Earnestly desiring the same to be solemnized with all the speed that may be that since your reasonable desires may the more readily take due effect We for certain causes as thereunto especially moving do so far as in us lies and the Laws of this Nation allow by these presents Graciously give and grant our License and Faculty as well to you the parties contracting as to all Christian People willing to be present at the solemnization of the said Marriage to Celebrate and Solemnize such Marriage between you the said contracting parties at any time and in any church or chapel or other meet and convenient place by any Bishop of this Realm or by the Rector Vicar Curate or Chaplain of such Church or Chapel or by any other Minister in Holy Orders of the Church of England Provided there be no lawful Let or Impediment to hinder the said Marriage Given under the seal of our office of Faculties at Doctors Commons this twenty first day of April in the year of Our Lord One Thousand eight hundred and six and in the second year of Our Translation.

I wish I had a picture, but I had no smart phone back then. Also, the library was very strict with scary Anglican librarians who were polite but firm.  They only let me look at one document at a time and I was too intimidated to ask for a photocopy.

 Since a special license allowed a marriage to take place at any time or in any place, where would you like to see our Regency couple tie the knot?

Greetings from the Indian Ocean!

It’s Saturday, which means it’s writer’s inspiration day. So as I lounge under the canopy that Captain Frye constructed for me and Penny on the quarterdeck and we sail ever westward, stopping at ports to trade pearls here and there for barrels of exotic spices and bricks of tea, I am reminded of the inspirations for my novel In the Arms of a Marquess (which SHAMELESS PROMOTION ALERT is now on sale at Amazon for $2.99 on Kindle). Authors are never supposed to tell you their favorite novels they’ve written (I have no idea why), and I’m actually not sure I have one out of my own. But I do have a very soft spot in my heart for Ben and Tavy’s love story, which was in my heart and head for many, many years before I finally wrote it. So today, since our ship is in the region, I give you three of the inspirations for that book:

Brave Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book) confronting his foe, Nagaina.

The heroine of Marquess, Octavia Pierce, goes by the nickname Tavy. Not a coincidence.

And…

The first epic historical novel I ever read, upon which I imprinted like a duckling chick.

And…

Bollywood star Arjun Rampal, because if noblemen had worn sunglasses and white t-shirts in the early nineteenth-century…

In the novella I’m currently writing on board ship, there also just so happens to be the faintest whiff of the British Empire at sea, which is central to the story in In the Arms of a Marquess. (More news on that novella to come!)

And now for your Penny and Captain Frye update:

There has been progress … of the intimate sort! From a distance I witnessed a starlit stroll on the deck at midnight during which two silhouettes briefly became one, followed by the silhouette in skirts running away. I have no idea why Penny is such a ninny. But they’re back to casting each other longing, slightly confused glances across deck. We shall see… We shall see…

That’s all I can fit on the page this time, lovelies. I wish you well and will see you soon. Until then, happy romance and adventure!

~ Katharine

Do you ever rediscover books you haven’t read for years and take new inspiration from them?

For me, this week, it was the first two books of Iris Johansen’s Wind Dancer trilogy. These are books I adored in my teens. In proper, sweeping epic 80s fashion, the first book takes place in the fractured Italy of 1503, in the waning years of the Borgia papacy; the second during the bloodiest phase of the French Revolution. There are some… interesting… sexual politics involved (we’re talking Old Skool romance here), but what really impressed me about these books after all this time was their daring. These are no drawing room novels. They encompass battlefields, sea journeys, sieges, warring city states, corrupt tribunals, upheavals on a grand scale.

What I love even more? How they interweave with history along the way. “The Wind Dancer” involves a fictional statue in a fictional city state, but Cesare Borgia, who plays a more than cameo role, is real enough, as is the disarray of the beleaguered and fragmented Italian city states– not to mention tongue in cheek references to meeting a Messer Machiavelli. Likewise, the fictional cast of “Storm Winds” is firmly anchored in the real people and events of a revolution rapidly deteriorating into the Terror, with all its factionalism, crosses and double crosses.

These books reminded me of the joy of using fiction as a window onto history, not just one period of history, but a grand sweep of dramatic events. There’s something to be said for books that tackle tumultuous events that fearlessly….

What are your favorite rediscovered books?

Greetings from the Caribbean!

I’m here in the sand and sun in the spanking new Republic of Haiti. I’ve got a glass of rum in my hand and my hat off and the tropical breeze is ruffling the page I write this letter on. I’m trying to get a little sun in my hair as I write, but Penny keeps pushing the hat back on me, the dear girl. But she’s stealing so many surreptitious glances at Captain Frye that her efforts at saving my complexion are kind of half-hearted. (For the record: she’d be sunburned by now if our positions were reversed.)

We’re docked for the sennight at Môle Saint-Nicolas, known in the eighteenth century as the Gibraltar of the Antilles. It’s a really impressive spot: a port on a strait between Cuba and Haiti through which ships must pass in order to sail to Central America. The peninsula is marvelously fortified, and right beyond it is a huge crescent bay in which you could hide an entire fleet (if you had a fleet to hide, which of course Britain did in this era, including the HMS Victory, former command of the hero of the first book in my new Prince Catchers series, I Married the Duke, Luc Westfall, whom you lovelies helped create!)

Dramatically beautiful Môle Saint-Nicolas, Haiti.

Later in the 19^th century, some years after Lady B’s time [it's hard to imagine, I know!], Haiti was a globally strategic location for another reason. Every place else in the Caribbean except Haiti and the Dominican Republic were European colonies. Now, once everybody started using steamships [fools, all of them! didn't they know how wonderful tall ships were?!], vessels passing from North America to trade in Central America needed coal stations for refueling. So the U.S. started looking for spots to do that everywhere on the route, and they chose Môle Saint-Nicolas. The U.S. tried to pressure Haiti into leasing it to them, going so far as to send the great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglas to negotiate terms.

Frederick Douglas, escapee from slavery and subsequent famous American abolitionist

The Haitians were amenable; they were savvy businessmen like everybody else on the high seas back then. But just to be sure, the U.S. demanded that Haiti promise not to lease any other part of their island to any other country.

Well, the Haitians didn’t like that. Not one little bit. Some years back, the slaves of the French colony Saint-Domingue had risen up in arms, and in the only successful slave revolt in history those revolutionaries created a nation. So, you see, the descendents of those folks weren’t too keen on letting another nation dictate what they could or couldn’t do with even a square foot of their land. It violated their sovereign rights.

So the U.S. sent over a handful of big old warships to sit in the harbor and put a bit of pressure on the Haitians to agree to their terms.

But the Haitian ambassador in Washington had been carefully analyzing the situation. He sent the Foreign Minister on the island a secret message telling him not to worry about the warships, that the Americans were bluffing. The Foreign Minister turned down the U.S. offer, and the warships turned around and disappeared. It came to be known famously as the only time in history that one man’s signature had defeated an entire navy.

Surf’s up!

The U.S. was still desperate for a coal stopover on the way to Central America, though. So it invaded Cuba instead, snatched up Guantanamo Bay, and secured it with a perpetual lease. We’ve had it ever since.

And there you have it, a little inspiring history about my first stop on my journey around the world!

Oh, if you’re wondering how I know this nifty history, I have beside me on my beach blanket two great reads. Paul Clammer is an English adventure-travel guide writer and his brand new Bradt Travel Guide: Haiti is the first travel guide written about this nation in twenty-five years. The other book [commence bragging] is my own handsome and brilliant husband’s Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, which just so happens to have been on the top of the New York Times Book Review’s recommended paperbacks list last Sunday.

Inspired by Haitian history (tho, it’s true, the priest part was all my idea)

Years ago my dh wrote another book on Haiti, specifically about the Revolution, which of course was especially inspiring to me. Who knows, maybe this great nation will find its way into my Prince Catchers series. We shall see!

Okay, wait just a second. Penny is now at the water’s edge lifting her petticoats to dip her feet into the waves. And I think I just spied Captain Frye ogling her ankles.

This is getting interesting . . .

See you all on my next stop. Happy sailing, lovelies!

What little known tidbit of history do you especially love to tell? 

The fighting arm of Jack Dempsey, The Manassa Mauler, who held the World Heavyweight Championship from 1919-1926.

I’m currently working on the third Rules of Scoundrels novel, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.

The book is Temple’s story — Temple, the broad-shouldered, broken-nosed bare-knuckle boxer who handles security at the casino. Oh, and who is known across London as the Killer Duke. Needless to say, Temple’s like no other hero I’ve ever written — extraordinarily physical and filled with emotion that he can barely hold on to, which makes for a rather unpredictable hero.

As I’ve been writing about a fighter, I’ve been doing a lot of research on fighting in the 1830s and in general. I’ve learned some wild things–some of which will end up in this book and some of which will likely never see the light of day: The way fighters used beeswax to stop their teeth from cutting their cheeks; the way they wrapped their knuckles in long strips of linen in precise, perfect patterns; the fact that true bare-knuckle matches lasted 80-100 rounds and that boxing gloves were actually designed to pack heavier punch and make fights more quick and brutal–not to to protect fighters as you might imagine.

I’ve been reading books and watching movies and thinking about fighting a lot as I craft Temple and his story. Movies like Snatch and Knuckle (the Irish travelers have kept bare-knuckle boxing alive and held most closely to its original origins) have been a huge inspiration, and I must confess I’ve watched this clip from the first Sherlock Holmes movie more than I’d like to admit:

Colum McCann writes in his introduction to At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing:

“Writers love boxing, even if they can’t box. And maybe writers love boxing especially because they can’t box. The language is all cinema and violence….what you have with a fight is what you have with writing, and they each become metaphors for each other: the ring, the page; the punch, the word.”

It’s true, of course.

When I came at Temple’s story, I knew I would have to learn about fighting…I just didn’t know I would learn to love it so much.

–

Is there a sport that really speaks to you, either as a spectator or a player? 

Don’t tell Lady B, but I’ve been cheating on the Ballroom with other time periods.

I zoomed way ahead of our timeline to spend some time in World War I England and 1920s Kenya for The Ashford Affair (coming out April 9th!) before coming back to 1805 for a bit for my latest Pink book.

Right now, I’m hanging out smack in the middle of those, in 1849 London, dipping into both high culture and low, looking into how people entertained themselves in London in the mid-19th century. You can tell a lot about a society by its leisure activities.

The book I’m currently writing (working title: The Victorian Book) revolves around the early days of the Preraphaelite movement so my first stop, on the high culture junket, was the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1849, where the Preraphaelites launched their revolutionary new style. John Everett Millais exhibited his Lorenzo and Isabella (above) and William Holman Hunt showed his epic painting Rienzi, about the Roman folk hero.

(Dante Gabriel Rossetti was not represented there. He had infuriated his Preraph buddies by breaking ranks and showing his Girlhood of Mary Virgin, shown below, at the Free Exhibition in Hyde Park instead.)

What really fascinated me, though, was just how madly popular this exhibition was. The Queen got first crack, on the Thursday, followed by the Private View on the Friday, attended by anyone who was anyone in London Society– one of “the” events of the Season. Once the private showings were done, the exhibition officially opened the first Monday in May.

To give you an idea of the popularity of this show, you’d have to compare it to opening day of Skyfall or a new Harry Potter movie: in 1849, over a six week span, over 100,000 people attended the exhibition, paying their admission fee, and, if they had the tin, another shilling for the exhibition catalog, which listed all the paintings, their hanging spots, and, in many cases, explanations and snippets of poetry.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of the 1849 exhibition catalog, the exact same one my heroine would have held in her (gloved) hands. Here’s what it looked like:

Just to give you an idea of how crowded the Exhbition would be, here’s a picture of the 1883 Private View, below. Just picture the ladies in there wearing the far wider skirts of 1849, and you’ll have an idea of how jammed– and warm!– it would have been in there in 1849!

Although I’m looking at a later period, Lady B would also have been acquainted with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It began in the 1760s, and, as the Royal Academy literature puts it: “At that time an art show was still a novelty in England and this densely packed, higgledy-piggledy parade was among the great spectacles of Georgian and Regency London.” Over 60,000 attended the first exhibition in 1769 and the numbers went up from there, with record crowds in the early 1820s. The odds are high that Lady B and her lorgnette would have paid a call to the Exhibition at its then home, Somerset House.

The exhibition did some moving around. My early Victorian heroine would have seen the show in its later location in a wing of the National Gallery; the show settled in its current home at Burlington House in 1867.

But I also promised you some low culture, didn’t I?

Just a few streets away from the Royal Academy exhibition, you could find a form of entertainment called a “penny gaff”– a cheap, theatrical performance in the back room of a pub, aimed at servants and errand boys. According to contemporary accounts, there was generally little more than a platform and a piano, with a pit for the cheap seats and a rough gallery of benches above, where, interestingly, the men and the women were segregated by sex, women on one side and men on the other– a surprising delicacy for an entertainment that was reputed to be vulgar in the extreme, with bawdy jokes, dance routines, and short, theatrical sketches focusing on topics like “Highwaymen We Have Known and Loved” (okay, I made up that title, but, yes, famous highwaymen were a popular topic) and particularly sensational murders.

The heyday of the penny gaff was from the 1830s to 70s, but you find some interesting echoes of earlier time periods. While the murderers might be more current, the highwaymen tended to be eighteenth century figures, like the notorious Jack Sheppard. Then there’s my personal favorite: in an account of a gaff from 1851, the viewer reports that the highlight of the program was a sketch featuring the routing of Napoleon!

As you can imagine, the critics took a dim view of these entertainments, calling them sodden gin dens and an incitement to crime and loose morals with their glamorization of villainy.

One of the things I found most fascinating about these penny gaffs? The primary viewership reputedly consisted of (lower class) women under the age of twenty. And this at an era where, among the middle class, the whole idea of women as sheltered little flowers was really getting going….

It provides an intriguing contrast, doesn’t it?

Of the two events, which would you rather attend: the Royal Academy Exhibition or the penny gaff?