As usual, I am still unsure about the title of the next Delamere story which is now up to 27,000 words – so just over a quarter of the way through, if it is to be a standard length. The characters are all in place, and the mystery has been set, though it is soon to lead to another, and then another until someone realises what’s going on and that someone may well be me.
I have been looking through old newspapers trying to discover if there were still any paddle steamers working on the Thames in 1893, but I haven’t had any luck so far. (Anyone? Any idea?) I discovered there were still paddle steamers for sale, but I think these were probably for scrap or refurbishing. I’ve not delved into this in much detail as yet, but here’s a piece I pulled from a London newspaper of March 1893:
Click to enlarge
The things aren’t integral to the story, but I wanted to use one for… some reason, so I went off on the distraction tour and spent a happy hour reading all kinds of advertisements and snippets. Also, in the process of writing a character’s backstory the other day, I mentioned the dance card, and went off to see if I could find an image of one to share.
Here’s a potted history of the dance card from the Newberry Library:
Popularized in Vienna in the nineteenth century, dance cards continued to be used throughout the early twentieth century. Names could be filled in just after a dance to keep as a memento, or early in the evening to ensure one had a partner planned for each dance, thus eliminating the risk of being labelled a wallflower.
Which of the characters used a dance card, you may wonder, and you will, one day, find out. I have a piece of work to do for someone else today, and then, I shall be continuing with chapter 10. Meanwhile, if you are looking for some new romance reads to start the year, I have several promos to share with you. Let’s start with this one, LGBTQIA+ Romance = the January Bookfair. Simply click the banner to check out over 45 MM romance titles.
One of the things I love about writing is the research that goes into it. how often have we heard people say, ‘Write about what you know?’ The other day, I heard someone admit that she couldn’t write a book about XYZ because she knew nothing about XYZ and had never experienced it. Well, I’ve never walked through a London sewer in 1893, but I managed to get a few pages down about the experience. How? By researching.
Researching Matters
Of course, you can write about what you don’t know. You just have to do one of two things:
Research it until you do know
Imagine it
The end result should be a mixture of the two, with the researched information truthfully reimagined.
As an example, this week, I sat down to write chapter 11 of ‘Snapshot’ (working title). In this sequence, two of my detectives meet Doctor Markland in a laboratory at the London Hospital, now the Royal London Hospital. (That was my first fact check/research. What was the hospital called in 1893?) The detectives were there to test some soil and other samples with the madcap but brilliant doctor, and I wanted things to be as authentic as possible. So, how would a chemist or pathologist test soil samples and flesh samples to discover if the soil could have decomposed a body rapidly, and how would they have done it in 1893?
And away we go…
Here’s an edited down sample from the chapter to whet your appetite:
‘Beneath the sink, you will find a small box with a Mackie’s label and a bottle of Hills and Underwood’s. Bring them forth…’
‘That be Mackie’s baking soda, be that.’
‘I know. Not to be confused with arsenic, as so often happens. There was a case last year when a man mistook one for the other with not very pleasant results.’
‘Oh? Would it make him sick, Sir?’
‘Made him dead, Mr Maddiver. This was in Lanark, so it wasn’t a great sensation, but the man was a baker which rather worried the town. I don’t suppose they bought bread from him after that.’
‘Not if he were dead, Doctor.’
‘A very good point…’
‘Your education continues,’ Markland said, waving Ned to his side, and showing him a white powder. ‘What we have here is a mixture of sodium, oxygen and hydrogen otherwise known as sodium hydroxide. Do not touch, and certainly do not do as an unfortunate boy of eleven did recently, and drink it. Poor lad. Mind you, he lived in Liverpool, so… Worse, was the man who, last October, fell into a boiling vat of the stuff.’
‘You be saying the man was two weeks dead when someone then poured caustic soda over his face?’
‘I be saying just that, me hearty,’ the doctor joked in a bad West Country accent.
Ned stared at him, for a second and said, ‘That’s not funny.’
And so on. The point is, I had no idea you could test for alkali and acid by using baking soda and vinegar, but then, unlike my brother, I am not a chemist. As for the chemical makeup of caustic soda and whether you could use it to disfigure a dead body so no-one could see the face… Apparently yes, you can.
Btw., the tragic cases Markland mentioned were cases from 1892 that I found in the national newspapers.
Other, less gruesome things I have been investigating this week include the Zoka Detective Camera Will Merrit could have bought for 12/6.
Then, there was the Nurenburg Pocket Timepiece that could be bought for 2S 6D. (Two shillings and sixpence, or half a crown, or 30 pennies, roughly £10.26 in today’s money according to a converter site.)
Just a few of the things I have been looking at as I prepare the first draft of Delamere Six. It’s all in the research!
This month’s Promo
As usual, I have a few promo pages to share with you this month, and today, I’m featuring Mayhem & Motives, Mystery, Thriller and Suspense reads available on Kindle, Unlimited, Kobo and other platforms depending on the book. There are loads of titles to browse including three of my own, and the novels are varied in time and place.
Today’s brief chat is about the London Borough of Hackney, Stoke Newington in particular, and in very specific particular, the Congregationalist Chapel on Church Street. This post is also about promoting a local service that has helped me find details about this chapel, and it’s all to do with the next Delamere book, currently called ‘Snapshot’ (working title only).
Here’s how one of my ideas soon becomes complicated.
I wanted to find a theme for the next book, and decided on photography. This led me to some interesting research which I’ll talk about another day. However, it also opened up the idea of a mystery story which then became the plot. The inciting event of the story happens, as usual, very near the beginning.
A client comes to the detective agency saying he has just had a great shock and found the body of his late father in a cemetery. So? Well, the body was in a place where the gravedigger was supposed to be digging a grave for an upcoming burial. So? The body they found has only recently been put there. So? It’s his father. Yes, but…? His father died 10 years ago and is interred in the family mausoleum 200 yards away. Ah.
Abney Park Cemetary
And so it goes on. Just for accuracy, I went to my 1888 maps of London and checked how Abney Park cemetery in Hackney looked at the time, and decided that’s where the body would be found, because I know the park fairly well. (I used to live nearby.)
My map showed me a chapel directly opposite the southern gates, and I made that the headquarters of the vicar who was arranging the forthcoming burial.
Except when I looked further into this chapel, I discovered it was a Congregationalist one, not Church of England or anything I was familiar with. So, that entailed looking into that form of Christianity, so that my ‘vicar’ character spoke the correct terminology.
My vicar soon became a minister, who later became a pastor, as I got to grips with the language of that particular kind of church.
Congregationalism (also Congregationalist churches or Congregational churches) is a Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs. [Wiki]
Anyway, the religion isn’t what this story is about, but… For the sake of authenticity, I researched as much as I could about this chapel, only to discover it was bombed in WWII and is no longer there. Could I find its history online? Well, I found some, but not enough, and I became more fascinated. Then, through a variety of search strings, and having found out all kinds of information about the area, the cemetery and so on, I discovered there was a pamphlet.
This was written in 1912 and covered the history of the chapel back to the 17th century, and including the time in which I am setting my stories, 1893. A copy of this pamphlet is held by the Hackney Borough Council Archives Offices, in, unsurprisingly, Hackney, London, and I was welcome to visit during opening hours.
Obviously, I can’t do that because it’s about 4,000 Km, a boat, two flights and far too many Euros away, and I can’t afford that, not for simple background research, so I wrote to ask if they had a digital service. Not as such, but they do have a look-up service and could make me digital copies on request for a small fee. Having worked out the cost, I wrote saying yes please, because by now I was very fascinated, and they wrote back telling me they could do two pages per shot, thus halving the fee, and I said, thank you very much, where do I pay? Payment made, and within a couple of hours, there was my digital file download with the full pamphlet in PDF pages, and how fabulous was that service?
Made more fabulous because it’s only a small team, and all this was achieved within two days.
The front of the pamphlet
So, I am singing the praises of the Hackney Archives for anyone who might ever need them. This kind of service, to my mind, goes along with things like libraries and museums, places that collect and store, thus preserve, history.
And that’s how one idea for a story can lead to fascinating in-depth research, all of which makes the story more realistic and believable.
This promo is organised by Book Mojo and they have a Readers’ Central department which gives you loads of ideas for reading in all genres. There’s also a free newsletter to sign up to, and I am featured in today’s copy, apparently.
I’ve started again on the Delamere Files book five, ‘A Case of Make Believe.’ Now, things are running much more smoothly. Before, I had Jack heading off to Paris and being out of the picture, leaving Will to work alone, and that simply was not working. The two of them need to be together for the tension and humour to work, so now, Jimmy’s off to Paris leaving Jack in charge, and on the day a new case comes in too.
It’s a case of a disappearance gone wrong. A magician performing at the Egyptian Hall, made his young assistant disappear, but unfortunately, the boy never came back. Where he went, and how and why he vanished becomes the mystery Jack and Will must solve. The boy’s older brother comes to them from the Cheap Street Mission (because he is/was a rent boy and is reforming), and the case may well involve some underground work at a brothel, on the Whitechapel streets, and in among the mesmerists and magicians of the Egyptian Hall. I say ‘may well involve’ because I’m not yet clear exactly where the investigation will take them. I know it has already taken me on a journey into the world of Maskelyne & Cooke at the Egyptian hall, Piccadilly, in 1893 – or as close to that date as I can find material. For example, here is the inside of a programme from 1872.
And here’s a poster (not sure of the date).
The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, was an exhibition hall built in the ancient Egyptian style in 1812, to the designs of Peter Frederick Robinson. The Hall was a considerable success, with exhibitions of artwork and of Napoleonic era relics. The hall was later used for popular entertainments and lectures, and developed an association with magic and spiritualism, becoming known as “England’s Home of Mystery.” In 1905, the building was demolished to make way for flats and offices. [Wiki]
I have found a book by George A. Jenness called ‘Maskelyne & Cooke’ which is, as far as I can see, the only book solely about them and the hall, and contains as much information as I could hope to find, down to the colour of the curtains. As for the stage tricks and the magic, I managed to find another well-out-of-print book titled, ‘Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography.’ Although this was published in 1897 (my story is set in 1893), the way the illusions were done would have been the same. I now know how they made people vanish, managed to decapitate people without cutting off their heads, and how fairies appeared on stage – among many other things.
In ‘A Case of Make Believe’ the magic trick that goes wrong is the ‘trunk trick’ where someone is locked in a trunk by the audience, and after a moment, the trunk is opened to reveal it empty. The assistant is then supposed to come back in a reversal of the trick which is managed by way of a… Ah ha! That’s a secret, for now, at least.
I am also using newspapers of the day so I can be as accurate as possible. In one early chapter, Will tuts about the weather report in the newspaper, not at the weather, which was bitter and frosty, but at the way the report was written. I’ve set the opening of the story proper (after the ‘prelude’) on January 10th 1893, which is a date that may ring bells with readers who have started at ‘Deviant Desire’ and worked their way forward. (January 10th is a special day for one of the main characters.)
Here’s the weather over New Year 1893.
And here’s where the Egyptian Hall used to stand. I took this off Google Earth yesterday. Good to see it’s still called Egyptian House. It’s just about opposite the Burlington Arcade if you want to take a look.
So, background work continues as I bang out draft one and delve into the mysterious world of illusions and all things magical. Which is a good way of introducing you to another promo:
Riveting Reads is a collection of mysteries, weirdness, horror, magical and all things spooky and dark, and there are many new titles and authors for you to discover there, with all books being in Kindle Unlimited and for sale. Click the banner to see the full collection.
Sometimes when I can’t think of anything to write, I need to go looking for inspiration. Today, being in the state of not knowing what to write here, I went looking for inspiration in the British Newspaper Archives. I thought I’d have a look and see what was in the newspapers this day in 1892.
Page one
The London Evening Standard, as with many newspapers, leads with births, adverts and listings, as many front pages did in those days. Their top-left advertisement was for a funeral service, and that was followed by the birth of a daughter to Mr J A G Bengough of Gloucestershire. It’s not until page two that you get to the tightly packed columns of text and political news.
Page two
There were no headlines, as such, and every single letter and number had to be placed in the printing frame by hand, and backwards. It still amazes me that newspapers looked like this and were put together by hand.
Also on this day in 1892, a Wednesday, you could have had the choice of newspapers. In London, where I am looking, I have the Standard, the Morning Post, The Sportsman, Globe, Pall Mall Gazette, St James’ Gazette, Islington Gazette, Sporting Life, the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, the Public Ledger and Weekly Advertiser, and the Commercial Gazette, among others. That last one had an image on its front page, so I went to examine it in more detail. It was this:
An advertisement for the Zeeland Steamship Company, running between England and the continent twice daily by paddle steamer. However, because I lived in the house my character Larkin Chase lives in in the Delamere Files series, I opted to look at the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, to see what was happening in my ‘hood’ 132 years ago today.
Again, a front page of advertisements for church events, schools, doctors, breweries, and many other businesses, because although only a few pages long, the H & K Gazette needed income from advertising to survive. House and shop sales cover page two, some theatre news, and then, finally, some local news. A woman didn’t like the people at the Cock pub in Mare Street and smashed their plate glass windows. Damage estimated at £25.00, the culprit was committed for trial. Then, there’s a strange thing where, it seems, the Salvation Army was using the plight of London’s match girls to sell their own matches. Their advert/piece states that if we all used Salvation Army matches, the ‘poor match girls in East London would be saved from much suffering, anguish, disfigurement and often death.’ I mean, talk about layering it on a bit thick, not to mention being hypocritical.
Later on, there is some cricket information which would have pleased Doctor Markland, a whole column dedicated to the Conservative and Liberal Unionist electors, and then some interesting deaths. A 71-year-old sleepwalker fell from a window (suspicious), and at 10.20 in the morning, a middle-aged man expired while pushing his heavy barrow through Stoke Newington, poor chap. Doctor Markland would have had a field day with the next short story. It concerns a man who, while watching a cricket match, was struck on the head by the ball and later died. There will be an inquest.
The last page of the publication takes us back to advertisements and notices. So, when people ask me where I get my ideas from, very often, they come from browsing through these old newspapers of the past. If you are interested, the British Newspaper Archive can be found here.
Don’t forget the Historical Novel promotion is still running, highlighting various books and periods, and all are available on KU. Click the pic to uncover all the covers.
You know how I research words as best I can so that I don’t put anachronistic words into the mouths of my 19th-century characters? Well, I’ve been doing it again. If you’ve read this blog over the years you will know I sometimes talk about words I can’t use because they weren’t in general usage in 1888 to 1892 when my series are set, words like okay, paperwork, acerbic, or even acidic. If I’m not sure, I go and look the word up in a dictionary or use the online one which tells me when the word was first found in printed material. That’s usually a reasonably accurate indication of when the word was also spoken, but there are things to bear in mind. A) words are often spoken for a while before they are accepted into a dictionary, so the date shown is probably slightly earlier, and B) this online dictionary has a bent towards when the word was first used in America, and the date might be slightly different for Britain.
Anyway…
I was writing a chapter for ‘Where There’s a Will,’ and one of the clues involved the publisher’s logo on the spine of a book. Logo…? Off I go to look it up, and sure enough, it was hardly used until the 1950s. I can’t use logo, but these things must have had other names, so I turned to a friend of mine who knows about such things and this is how the email exchange went.
‘What was a publisher’s logo called before the word logo came about, any idea?’ I asked, and clarified with, ‘The Penguin symbol on penguin books, for example, is there a better or older word for one of those things, other than logo? I think they were called logograms or logotypes, and logo is an abbreviation – just wondered if you knew of any other word for them.’
My books don’t have a logo
This was his reply.
Interesting question, to which I don’t actually know the answer.
I know the word logotype has a specific history in printing. It was something printers used to save time when making up common words. Typesetting was all about making up text from individual letters cast in metal or made of wood. Some bright spark hit on the idea that for certain common words it would be quicker to cast the whole word as one piece of metal or wood. For example, in newspaper printing, the word that made up the paper’s title on the front page could be cast as one big block of text. And these word blocks were called logotypes.
But the modern concept of the logo symbol really goes back to heraldry and beyond. People had their crests and devices, and shops and inns had their signs.
So my guess would be that in the 19th century, people would refer to signs, devices, crests, symbols, marks, and that kind of thing. Goldsmiths and silversmiths had marks which were stamped on their wares. With the advent of industrial-scale advertising, you get companies like Coco Cola designing their name in a specific font that would have been cast as logotypes for printing purposes. The Coca-Cola logo is a word and therefore originated as an authentic logotype.
From my shelves
But I don’t think the word logotype would have been in common use outside of printing circles in the 19th century, and ordinary people would have referred to anything that was a symbolic representation of a trade, product, organisation, person, as a crest, or a device, or a sign, or a mark, as appropriate. Possibly symbol. You don’t really get the catch-all word “logo” until major advertising takes off in the early 20th century. And as you say, it was probably the abbreviated form of logotype getting into popular use, because these symbols would have been cast as a single block for printing.
I think these days they differentiate between logotype, still basically a word block, and logogram, which is a symbol. The Penguin would be a logogram. Since the company was founded in the 1930s the word used for the symbol would have been logo or logogram.
Well, I found it interesting. I also had to find another way to describe what my character was seeing, because even the self-educated genius, Will Merrit, would not have used the word logogram.
Just a quick hello today, as I have got behind on jobs and chapters this week. I did manage to get some research done, though, and did a lot of reading which, in the end, wasn’t that helpful. I was trying to find out about wills and bequeathments, so I turned to a friend who is a genealogist for advice. My imaginary will was written in about 1862, and I was trying to find an example of a will from that time so I could copy the wording. I have seen some from my family of the past, but they were 18th-century ones, and I thought there would be a difference. Turned out, I was right. Here’s what my friend wrote back:
The key thing is that in 1858 everything changed. Up until then, wills were written for and proved in the various church courts, so they were both kind of religious documents (the testament) and a disposal of worldly goods (the will). So they were a mix of the religious and the legal, and proved in the court of the Archbishop, or bishop, Dean and chapter, or archdeacon, as appropriate.
In 1858, all that changed and the wills were written for, and proved in, the High Court of Justice, in the newly established probate division. So they ceased to be religious documents and became purely legal ones. You no longer get all that stuff about believing in the merits of Christ as Saviour and believing in the Resurrection. And usually, out goes all the stuff about being decently buried in a good Christian manner. Although you still often get some instructions to executors about the burial where the will-maker had some definite preferences. Extravagant brick-lined graves, for example.
I don’t think I have any from around the 1880s, though I will have a look. The only way to get wills from the post-1858 period is to apply to the High Court Probate Division with the index details and pay a fee. They are not available on Ancestry unless an Ancestry member has gone through the application process then scanned the document and kindly made it available, although there are copyright issues when people do that, and it’s not really allowed.
Later, he sent me a link to a PDF file online. It’s a collection of Wills from the 19th century. Although I only found one dated after 1858, it was enough. I have now written my late character’s will-reading scene, and it will make for fun reading, I assure you. I’ll be back on Wednesday with another update on ‘Where There’s a Will.’
Meanwhile, don’t forget this promo is still running until the end of the month.
Happy New Year! I am back to blogging, and kicking off 2023 with an update on what I have been doing.
In the film, ‘Throw Momma from the Train’, Billy Crystal’s character says,
‘A writer writes. Always.’
Well, I say,
‘A writer not only writes but he also researches’,
and that is what I was doing during my Christmas and New Year break.
Athens – a Location for ‘The Larkspur Legacy’
In the next, and final, Larkspur Mystery, some of the characters find themselves in Athens, Greece, and I found myself there only last week. Neil and I went with our logical family, Jenine, and our youngest godson, Harry. (Our elder godson, at 19, opted to stay at home and spend his free time from college with some friends.)
Living on Symi, any journey must start with a ferry, and after walking down to the harbour in the early morning, we took the one-hour crossing to Rhodes. From there, it was a bus to the airport, a 40-minute flight to Athens, and a pre-booked taxi to the area of Thissio and our rented apartment. The next three-and-a-half days were filled with walking, eating, and seeing the sights/sites. Some of those we visited are pictured on the blog today, and one of them will feature in ‘The Larkspur Legacy.’ Even though it’s only for one or two chapters, Athens plays a part, but it is not Athens as we see it now, but as it was in 1991.
The Acropolis
One day on our trip, we took a guided walk around parts of the city with a knowledgeable guide, and I asked him what he knew about the city in 1891. From this, I gleaned some information I’d not found in my research, and he took us to the outside of the home of Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who discovered the location of the ancient city of Troy*, among other things. I never knew he was in Athens in 1891, but sadly, he won’t feature in the book because it wouldn’t be relevant.
*[Wiki says: Schliemann was a German adventurer and con man who took sole credit for the discovery, even though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank Calvert.]
The Temple of Hephaestus
Among the places we visited were the Acropolis (of course), The Temple of Hephaestus in the Ancient Agora, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Philopappos Hill, and the site of the original home of democracy, Pynx, the hill overlooking the Acropolis, and the first official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly (ekklesia). We also saw the car museum, ate food Indian, Chinese, Greek and Mexican, and, on our last day, visited the famous flea market.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Imagine the joy of wandering antique and second-hand book shops again as I used to years ago in London.
While doing so, I found two books that I have already ploughed through in my search for details of Athens in 1891; one about the Plaka area, and one about mapmakers and mapping of the Aegean. I could have spent the whole four days in these bookshops, but half an hour was all I could manage, otherwise, I’d have broken my bank.
The Tower of the Four Winds, Plaka.
And into 2023
Now, back home, I have taken up my morning walks again, and although they only cover two miles, they give me 40 minutes of alone time. This morning while walking, I unlocked the ‘How are they going to do that?’ part of ‘The Larkspur Legacy’ which has so far evaded me, and now have notes on how that climax is to go.
So, it’s, again, a Happy New Year from me, and not being one for resolutions, I am making no promises. However, for the first half of this year I intend to finish and release ‘The Larkspur Legacy’, bringing the saga to a close by, hopefully, the end of March. After that, I want to produce a Clearwater & Larkspur Companion to tie up any loose ends and give my readers something extra to accompany both series. The working title is currently: ‘Barbary Fleet and Other Matters; a Clearwater and Larkspur Companion.’
And a quick reminder if you would still like to vote for the Goodreads Awards the polls are still open for a couple more days. The links to the categories are at the bottom of this blog post, click here.
I’ll leave it there. There will be more about the work in progress, ‘The Larkspur Legacy’, on my Wednesday blog when I will update you on progress as my writing world gets back to ‘normal.’ Remember…
As it always is with me, once one book is out, it’s a case of ‘on with the next’, and today is no exception. Actually, I started work on ‘The Larkspur Legacy’ a few weeks ago, because what happens in ‘Starting with Secrets’ has a bearing on what comes next.
While writing the last book, I made notes about the next one, and that led me to a basic plot outline. Since early this year, I have had scenes in my head, moments from the novel I want to get in, twists, ideas and scenarios, and I am still thinking them up. I have, though, started writing, and have four draft chapters already, plus the more detailed outline, though that still has some holes in it. The characters will fill those in later when they start taking over the story.
I’ve also started on my research, and am currently reading this…
‘The Larkspur Legacy’ is going to involve a group of characters aboard a schooner, a clipper or barquentine, something like this…
As you can see, these pages are from The Merchant Schooners by Basil Greenhill, a two-volume look at the history, building, launching and sailing of these vessels. I have already picked up some words and expressions and read several excellent descriptions of boatyards, shipbuilding villages and ships.
So, it’s back to 1891 and chapter five. Before I go, I must thank everyone who supported the launch of ‘Starting with Secrets.’ It went straight to #2 in the Amazon charts of new releases/historical.
If you have read my previous blogs about how I write, you will know I am always looking up words. I don’t just mean finding an alternative word from the thesaurus, although I do that too, I mean discovering if the word I want was in use at the time I set my stories. (Currently 1888 to 1891.) Recently, I have had to change what I’ve written because some words didn’t exist back then; paperwork, acerbic, acidic, gobbledygook, for example. I also like to look up words to discover where they came from. I guess you might call me an amateur etymologist.
Imagine my excitement the other day when a visiting friend presented me with a present, a Reader’s Digest book, ‘The Origins of Words and Phrases.’ Once I have read the parts about how our language was born and developed and other interesting linguistic facts in the introduction, I will house the book on my shelves alongside my other handy reference guides ready to be used at a moment’s notice.
Talking of such books, I thought I would name a few of them today, in case you want to build up your own reference library and add to your writers’ toolkit. While I am about it, I’ll drop in random examples, and I’ll start with my latest addition, ‘The Origins of Words and Phrases.’
The Origins of Words and Phrases
A dictionary of over 3,000 of the most intriguing, amusing and surprising stories of the origin of some words.
Random example: Lunatic derives from the Latin word for moon, luna. Why? Because it was once thought that people went mad during the time of the full moon. Werewolves and British politicians are good examples.
The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
Provides clear definitions of phrases and sayings with interesting facts and examples.
Random example: Roman holiday. An occasion on which enjoyment or profit is derived from the suffering of others. Origin; from Byron’s poem, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, where a dying gladiator is described as having been butchered to make a Roman holiday.
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
This is a great resource for finding old words, those that were in use then (1755) but which aren’t now.
Random example: Gymnospérmous (adj,) [γυμνος and σπερμα.] Having the seeds naked.
Well, I said they would be random! If you want a more up-to-date definition of this word, I managed to find this one: Gymnosperms are other types of vascular and non-vascular plants of the Kingdom Plantae, which produce seeds directly (without) bearing any flower.
Here’s another random one: Réremouse (n.s.) [hreremus, Saxon.] A bat.
An Unkindness of Ravens
A collection of collective nouns arranged in various headings. I could spend hours in this book, but here are a few fun ones:
A worship of writers. A kindle of kittens. A glaring of cats. A glozing of taverners.
Clichés Avoid them like the Plague!
This book is basically a list of our top clichés and where they came from. It doesn’t just go for the low-hanging fruit, it plays hardball, and hits the ground running. You might cry, Houston, we have a problem, but the book certainly kicks ass. When you’re writing, you might find yourself between a rock and a hard place because of not knowing if a phrase is a cliché, so this book is handy for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Yes, you might have to buy it, but then, there’s no gain without pain.
Mark Forsyth’s Ternion Set
Three books by the lexicographer, Mark Forsyth, are both informative and fun to read. I’ll never remember all the information in them, but I dip in now and then to discover the meaning of, for example, syllepsis. Syllepsis is when one word is used in two or more incongruous ways. The author gives an example of the word took being used in nine ways, and I’ll use it to give you an example of my own.
It was late, and the party was winding down, so I took my hat, my coat and my leave.
The set of three books also includes The Etymologicon, ‘A circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language’, and The Horologicon, ‘A day’s jaunt through the lost words of the English language.’ For example: Breakfast (somehow) comes from the Greek word, ariston, therefore the study of breakfast is aristology, and if you like eating breakfast, you are an aristologist.
There, I bet you didn’t know that.
The Vulgar Tongue
This is one of my favourites, and I use it a great deal when writing characters such as Frank Andino, and the new character in the Larkspur Mysteries, Bertie Tucker. This is a collection of slang and cant from 1785. I have a PDF version of it as well as a hardback because the PDF is easier to search. When doing so, I come across words like davy for affidavit. Crank, brisk and pert are all words for a mix of gin and water. A member mug is a chamber pot (or was). Seeing as how I am fast becoming an old fogey, I can tell you that it’s actually a very noble thing to be. Fogey derives from the French word fougueux, meaning fierce or fiery, and referred to retired soldiers.
Knowing your… stuff
I have plenty of other books in my collection, from dialect dictionaries to Brewer’s Fact and Fable, and from Strunk and White’s ‘Elements of Style’ grammar guide to the more succinct Joanne Adams book on the subject, ‘Grammar. Know your shit or know you’re shit.’
The shelves also contain an Oxford English dictionary, a thesaurus, a dictionary of quotations, a rhyming dictionary, and a guide to the English language, among others, and my online reference bookmarks include a glossary of Scottish words and an Irish one. Ship rigging diagrams, men’s clothing of the late Victorian era, a dictionary of idioms, a Cornish dictionary, a Gothic glossary, there’s a whole file about prisons and another about workhouses, and then there are digital, online copies of some of the print books mentioned above.
You don’t need all of these in order to write, but the point is, if you’re writing, words are your tools and how to use them is your craft. Understanding where words came from, and exploring how the language developed is background research for the writer in the way a painter understands what colours go together.
Apart from anything else, reading about words is fun and educational.
I must leave you with that thought now, because I’ve been sitting here for ages without a break, and I need to use my member mug.
See you on Wednesday for the Work In Progress update.
This website uses cookies to provide you with the best browsing experience.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
