Writing: Alpennian bookmarks
Jan. 1st, 2013 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjSince my survey of the past year suggested that my writing projects are my most common LJ topic, I might as well capitulate and try to renew my commitment to regular posting with more writing topics.
I keep a bookmark folder in my browser labelled "Daughter of Mystery" (should probably change that to "Alpennia") with an assortment of resources that I've found particularly useful. These aren't necessarily the most important resources for my background research, but they're the ones I go to the web for. Herewith my Alpennian bookmark collection and the purpose I use them for.
http://saints.sqpn.com/patron-saints-of-occupations/ This was much more relevant to Daughter of Mystery than it is to The Mystic Marriage but with so many references to patron saints and their characteristics, dates, and symbolism, I found this site immensely helpful for brainstorming purposes. Although the bookmark leads specifically to the patrons of particular occupations, other parts of the site have alphabetic lists, calendrical lists, other types of patronage (e.g., geographic), and so forth.
The Christian Year is a very convenient shortcut for the dates of the major moveable events for any particular year. A quick reference for the Easter season is particularly useful since it affects the scheduling of particular events in Rotenek High Society.
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/dayofweek.html When I went looking for a convenient calculator to determine what day of the week a particular date was, this was the one that I bookmarked. My outline-timeline for MM isn't quite as detailed as the one for DoM was, but there are times when it's important to know this level of detail for scheduling events. Similarly ...
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phasecat.html On one occasion, my characters were instructed to take action relative to moonrise ... so of course it was essential that I know exactly when that would be on the relevant date in the relevant location. Yeah, I really am that anal-retentive, but the point is that it only takes about five minutes to look it up so why not be accurate?
The Physiology of Taste - Brillat-Savarin, Index of On-line Historic Cookbooks, The Art of French Cookery - A.B. Beauvilliers Alpennia looks to French cuisine for its inspiration, and when my characters dine, they usually dine well. While I have an extensive personal library of historic cookbooks, they don't cover 18-19th century France. This is a lack I should remedy.
The Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century A delightful blog dedicated to topics of relevance to 18th century history and fiction. Similarly Jane Austen in Vermont for background information on the era of Austen's fiction. In particular, I found the series on transportation issues quite helpful, although further research on continental issues as also useful.
A History of the University in Europe - Chapter 8 'Student Education, Student Life' Although Margerit Sovitre was never a "regular" student at the university in Rotenek, I found it important to know what the norms of student life might have been, given the range of variation in real-history universities. This and various similar sources were useful as background.
The Clementine Vulgate As best I can tell, this is the version of the Bible that my characters would consider the "standard", so my occasional Biblical quotations are taken from this text.
Painting: A Hunt Breakfast and Death of a Stag (de Troy 1737) I've been attempting to research some detail-level information on upper-class "old-fashioned" stag and boar hunting in Europe ca.1800. This has been surprisingly difficult. The painting here is nearly a century too early but the discussion includes some other links to follow up on. Other leads turned up the French author Theodore de Foudras who seems to have written extensively on the hunt at my relevant time period. I tracked down one of his books at the U.C. Berkeley library and photocopied some relevant chapters ... which are, of course, in French.
...and then I wrote a bunch more stuff that got lost because LJ decided to forget my log-in while I was composing it. So I'll come back and reconstruct it later.
I keep a bookmark folder in my browser labelled "Daughter of Mystery" (should probably change that to "Alpennia") with an assortment of resources that I've found particularly useful. These aren't necessarily the most important resources for my background research, but they're the ones I go to the web for. Herewith my Alpennian bookmark collection and the purpose I use them for.
http://saints.sqpn.com/patron-saints-of-occupations/ This was much more relevant to Daughter of Mystery than it is to The Mystic Marriage but with so many references to patron saints and their characteristics, dates, and symbolism, I found this site immensely helpful for brainstorming purposes. Although the bookmark leads specifically to the patrons of particular occupations, other parts of the site have alphabetic lists, calendrical lists, other types of patronage (e.g., geographic), and so forth.
The Christian Year is a very convenient shortcut for the dates of the major moveable events for any particular year. A quick reference for the Easter season is particularly useful since it affects the scheduling of particular events in Rotenek High Society.
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/dayofweek.html When I went looking for a convenient calculator to determine what day of the week a particular date was, this was the one that I bookmarked. My outline-timeline for MM isn't quite as detailed as the one for DoM was, but there are times when it's important to know this level of detail for scheduling events. Similarly ...
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phasecat.html On one occasion, my characters were instructed to take action relative to moonrise ... so of course it was essential that I know exactly when that would be on the relevant date in the relevant location. Yeah, I really am that anal-retentive, but the point is that it only takes about five minutes to look it up so why not be accurate?
The Physiology of Taste - Brillat-Savarin, Index of On-line Historic Cookbooks, The Art of French Cookery - A.B. Beauvilliers Alpennia looks to French cuisine for its inspiration, and when my characters dine, they usually dine well. While I have an extensive personal library of historic cookbooks, they don't cover 18-19th century France. This is a lack I should remedy.
The Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century A delightful blog dedicated to topics of relevance to 18th century history and fiction. Similarly Jane Austen in Vermont for background information on the era of Austen's fiction. In particular, I found the series on transportation issues quite helpful, although further research on continental issues as also useful.
A History of the University in Europe - Chapter 8 'Student Education, Student Life' Although Margerit Sovitre was never a "regular" student at the university in Rotenek, I found it important to know what the norms of student life might have been, given the range of variation in real-history universities. This and various similar sources were useful as background.
The Clementine Vulgate As best I can tell, this is the version of the Bible that my characters would consider the "standard", so my occasional Biblical quotations are taken from this text.
Painting: A Hunt Breakfast and Death of a Stag (de Troy 1737) I've been attempting to research some detail-level information on upper-class "old-fashioned" stag and boar hunting in Europe ca.1800. This has been surprisingly difficult. The painting here is nearly a century too early but the discussion includes some other links to follow up on. Other leads turned up the French author Theodore de Foudras who seems to have written extensively on the hunt at my relevant time period. I tracked down one of his books at the U.C. Berkeley library and photocopied some relevant chapters ... which are, of course, in French.
...and then I wrote a bunch more stuff that got lost because LJ decided to forget my log-in while I was composing it. So I'll come back and reconstruct it later.
