Victorian Musings

Emily Bronte painted by her brother

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind~ Emily Brontë

July 30, 1818 was Emily Bronte's birthday. Although, I am a day late, I wanted to remember her through the one novel she ever wrote, Wuthering Heights! I wonder, if there is any girl out there who hasn't read this beautiful novel. Well, I implore you, regardless of age, read it immediately. Clear your schedule, make a pot of tea, a snack, curl up on the sofa, or get tucked up in bed and meet Cathy and Heathcliff on the moors in Yorkshire...

Setting for Wuthering Heights, The Yorkshire Moors

The Moors in Haworth where The Brontes grew up



What I loved about Wuthering Heights are its Gothic qualities, and the lack of moral comment from its author. The presence of ghosts and visions, the prevalence of storms and darkness (echoing the characters…

On this day in 1829 was born a girl who would change the lives of four men known as The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. One in particular, would fall madly in love with her bringing him to the point of delirious grief and madness. Who was Elizabeth Siddal 'Lizzie' to most who knew her?
Her husband the great Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet knew best. So, for all intent purposes, my tribute to Lizzie will focus on her marriage to husband D.G. Rossetti.

So, how did Lizzie and Rossetti meet...

Twelfth Night by William Deverell

There she was 'discovered' by Walter Deverell, a young, good-looking associate of the recently founded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and asked to model for the figure of Viola in the picture he was currently painting, Twelfth Night. Rossetti was also sitting for the picture, taking the part of the jester Feste, and it was in Deverell's studio that he and Lizzie met.

Deverell was in raptures over Lizzie's appearance, describing her to Holman Hunt as…

The Royal Palace A Childhood Mary Queen of Scots
The Palace at Stirling Castle allows visitors to step into the astonishing richness of royal life in the 1500s.

Mary of Guise, James V of Scotland, (Parents of Mary Queen of Scots)
James V’s Palace at Stirling is one of the finest and best-preserved Renaissance buildings in Great Britain. Following a major programme of research and re-presentation, it can now be seen by visitors much as it may have looked on completion around 1545.

The decoration of the Palace’s six main rooms is overwhelmingly colourful, rich and elaborate. James and his French wife Mary of Guise aimed to present themselves as wealthy, learned and sophisticated.

The decorative style belongs to the Renaissance – a great flowering in arts, literature and philosophy that revolutionised Europe in the 1400s and 1500s. Bright colours, expensive fabics and ornate patterns were essential elements.

But this was not flamboyance for its own sake. The decorative scheme was filled wi…

Product Details
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (March 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312671156
ISBN-13: 978-0312671150

BOOK SYNOPSIS
The unlikely yet enduring love between Jacobean poet John Donne and Ann More inspires British writer Maeve Haran to write her first historical novel:

Set against the sumptuousness and intrigues of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, this powerful novel reveals the untold love affair between the famous poet John Donne and Ann More, the passionate woman who, against all odds, became his wife.

Ann More, fiery and spirited daughter of the Mores of Loseley House in Surrey, came to London destined for a life at the court of Queen Elizabeth and an advantageous marriage. There she encountered John Donne, the darkly attractive young poet who was secretary to her uncle, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He was unlike any man she had ever met—angry, clever, witty, and in her eyes, insufferably arrogant and careless of women.…