by Diane Morris | Jun 2, 2022 | Body-snatchers, Life & Times, surgeons & surgery
The business of body-snatching thrived in Jane Austen’s England. It also flourished in Scotland (1), Ireland (2), on the continent (3), and in the United States (US) and Canada. The success of the body-snatcher or Resurrection man (as he was sometimes called)...
by Diane Morris | Mar 24, 2022 | Body-snatchers, Life & Times, Resurrection Men
A previous blog described some of the lessons I learned researching and writing about body-snatchers (1). In Jane Austen’s day (particularly the early 1800s), body-snatchers dug up the dead at night and delivered the fresh cadavers to the surgeons at...
by Diane Morris | Mar 9, 2017 | Life & Times, Regency clothing
My previous blog described Johnstone’s London Commercial Guide,1 published in 1818. The guide includes a street directory showing which individual or business worked at a specific address. I had been browsing Johnstone’s guide to find surgeons who were...
by Diane Morris | Sep 8, 2016 | Life & Times, Regency Research
Recently I happened to be perusing the 1816 volume of The Gentleman’s Magazine. I was photocopying the meteorological tables, beginning with March, so that I would have a sense of the weather conditions for the months in which several characters in my new novel...
by Diane Morris | Oct 8, 2015 | Life & Times, Regency Gentleman, Regency Research
The first lesson I learned researching the Regency era is that it’s hard to get the history right. The second lesson learned is this: if I were a man living in Jane Austen’s day, I would be considered illiterate. This point is driven home whenever I read a popular...
by Diane Morris | Aug 20, 2015 | Life & Times, Regency Research
I began researching the Regency era in earnest on August 1, 2009. I had written a story board outlining the plot for Rosings Park, my novel based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. (I later discarded the story board because my protagonist, Anne de Bourgh, refused...
