Books With Your Anime

[bookswithyouranime]

Emma, a Victorian Romance

From the Yen Press website:

Calling upon his inimitable former governess, young aristocrat William Jones is startled to find his knock answered by a clever, bespectacled maid–Emma. From that moment forward, the two are drawn to each other and slowly but surely grow ever closer. But as the love between Emma and William builds, so too do the obstacles that threaten to keep them apart. For in Victorian London, some things are simply not done, and marrying outside of one’s social class just happens to be one such taboo…

Servants is a history, though sourced through memoirs and diaries. Below Stairs is a memoir of a single woman.

Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth-Century to Modern Times by Lucy Lethbridge

Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

[bookswithyouranime]

Snow White With the Red Hair

From the Funimation website:

“In the kingdom of Tanbarun lives Shirayuki, an independent and strong-willed young woman. Her resourceful intelligence has led her become a skilled pharmacist, but her most defining trait is her shock of beautiful apple-red hair. Her dazzling mane gets her noticed by the prince of the kingdom, but instead of romancing her, he demands she be his concubine. Shirayuki refuses, chops off her lovely locks, and runs away to the neighboring kingdom of Clarines. There, she befriends a young man named Zen, who, SURPRISE, is also a prince, although with a much better temperament than the previous one. Watch as Shirayuki finds her place in the new kingdom, and in Zen’s heart.”

The culture (and a sprinkling of science) surrounding red hair has been studied in at least two books, both of which I found at my local library.

The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning, and Power of Red Hair by Marion Roach

Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Collins Harvey

Though the subject of red hair in Snow White With the Red Hair is ascribed meaning via its rarity, both authors go into why red hair is so rare, and the different symbols culture has assigned it.