I read etiquette and homemaking guides from the 1800s mostly because they're a FASCINATING insight into cultural norms that we often don't think about. I honestly really recommend people crack one of these open at least once--it goes way beyond, like, "what to wear to a ball!!!"
The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.
And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.
They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.
And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.
Now that being said.
My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then
Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:
As I dive into researching signs of fear for my horror WIP, I wanted to share some of the most compelling and visceral reactions I’ve come across. Whether you’re writing a chilling scene or crafting a character’s panic, these 20 signs of fear can help bring tension and realism to your story.
Physical Reactions
Hyperventilating — sucking in air but never feeling like it’s enough
Chest tightens — feels like a weight or hands pressing down
Limbs shaking violently, knees buckling
Complete loss of muscle control — collapsing or unable to stand
Cold sweat soaking through clothes
Heart hammering so hard they feel it in their throat or head
Tunnel vision — the world narrowing down to one terrifying focal point
Ringing in the ears or sudden deafness, like the world drops away
Your characters are allowed to be bad people. Your story is allowed to have no moral lesson.yyour ending is allowed to be sad. The villain can win. The good person can do something unforgivable. The lovers can destroy each other. You are allowed to write the thing that no one asked for and everything that everyone told you doesn’t work and you are allowed to not explain yourself.
Genuinely think the most underrated skill in writing is knowing when a scene is done. not perfect. done. there's a version of every scene that keeps going because you're scared to leave it, scared it wasn't enough, scared the next scene is harder. so you keep adding. one more line. one more beat. one more little moment. and the scene dies from it. it needed to end three paragraphs ago and you just kept talking because you didn't want to face what came next. same as real life actually.
Can I ask: How are you finding all of these fashion images?
hi there anon!
yes, you certainly may ask I and I'm happy to tell you!! ☺️
right now, I have three main sources, so I'll list them all here along with my commentary (because if there's one thing about me, it's that I'm going to make a short story long 😅) (in fact, they're below the cut because I rambled too much lmao)
The Met's digital fashion plate collection – this is a super great resource, as their scanned images are in really high quality and they have a ton of them! the strength of this collection is definitely in the 19th century, but they do have some late 18th century things as well as some early 20th century stuff. they have things categorized by year and such, but I've found it's worth clicking through because not all the category names are accurate (there's one labeled "men's" that is definitely not what would have been considered menswear in that era). the dating is also pretty good for the most part, as many of the plates have dates on them, and most of the categorization is by date
Wikimedia Commons – as someone who works with historical images (both on this blog and for my PhD) I really love Wikimedia Commons! they have cool category features, one of which is "fashion plates by decade" and that's one that I use for the blog. the quality on these is a little more hit-or-miss, as they're uploaded by different people and organizations, and the dating can sometimes be hard to get super accurate if the plate itself doesn't have a date, but at least you'll usually know the decade
Catalogues and Wishbooks – this is a website that I'm so glad I found! (you may have seen images from it before either on the blog or elsewhere, as the images often include "Christmas musetechnical" above the image). I was really struggling to find 20th century stuff, but this website archives scans of a ton of 20th century (and into the 21st century) magazines, all organized by company and year. unfortunately, the scans aren't always the greatest quality, and it's difficult to zoom in without things getting a bit blurry, but the sheer amount of resources there is fantastic!
and I'll put a final note (although I won't officially number it) that I sometimes use Pinterest. I've always been cautious with Pinterest in the past, since both dating and quality are super iffy, but now I trust it even less since it has been infiltrated with AI slop (folks can read my anti-AI stance here if they're interested ☺️). even with my settings and filters set to no AI, if I want use what appears to be a historical image from Pinterest, I will often run a reverse image search to ensure it existed elsewhere on the internet before circa 2020 to ascertain that it is, in fact, a real image and not some AI-generated garbage (and yes, I have now seen a number of AI-generated fashion plates 😭). it turns out that many of the 20th century images on Pinterest are from the Catalogues and Wishbooks site anyway, but there are some things that I just have not been able to find elsewhere, such as a very large number of gorgeous late 19th La Mode Illustrée plates, so I will also venture into the wilds of Pinterest from time to time with great caution
I'll also say that if you have a local or favorite museum/collection, it might be worth just checking to see if they have any digitized collections with fashion plates! since fashion plates were pretty widespread and ubiquitous, many collections have them (even smaller ones), and you can even sometimes pick them up at antique stores (I have a couple myself!)
whew! okay, so sorry for all my ramblings, but hopefully this was helpful! as an art historian and also a material and visual culture studies scholar, it's super important to me to facilitate access to historical images, so if you (or anyone else) have any other questions about how and where I source images, I would be happy to share!! ☺️
my number 1 artist pet peeve is artists who constantly complain that they hate their stuff and they don't feel like they're improving when they literally do nothing to improve. like the tools to improve the way you want have existed for hundreds of years do 1 figure study
im trying to write an archetypally scorpion character but somehow its missing the Sauce. As an expert, what would you consider to be essential to a scorpion on the frogs back?
a scorpion is someone in a position to do great harm regardless of whether they want to. they're reviled (or at least believe they are) for their potential to hurt, which usually makes them paranoid and resentful, which in turn drives them to be proactively aggressive and hostile in order to prevent the boot from coming down on them (ie: waiting for the other shoe to drop) by stinging first. when the scorpion lashes out and self-destructs, then, it doesn't matter if they did it out of spite or because they felt threatened. the scorpion stung, and victim and perpetrator both drown in the consequences, muddying the waters of who is to blame.
in my (biased) opinion, paranoia is an essential quality of a scorpion. a reasonable fear of annihilation via rejection is made irrational to the point of dominating their actions and decisions by a combination of hyper-self awareness and social ostracisation or outright abjection, which both feeds and is fed by the scorpion's increasingly erratic behaviour, usually with a precedence behind it (eg: a character with fire powers is feared by and excluded from their community for their destructive potential because as we all know an uncontrolled fire burns indiscriminately; a character from an aristocratic background is unable to win the support and trust of the people who suffered under the cruelty of their ancestors).
