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hrjSomehow I've managed to skip the intake blog for the two books I got for Christmas, and I just received two books by mail this week, so it's time to get caught up.
Tinterow, Gary & Philip Conisbee. 1999. Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ISBN 0-87099-890-0
Part of my behind-the-scenes work for the Alpennian books has been coming up with pictures to provide a "visual reference" for all the major (and some minor) characters. As I've mentioned before, I'm not actually a very visual person, so it helps me to be looking at an appropriate image when I'm describing a character or even simply visualizing how they would act and react. I've done a lot of poking around in Google images and generally try to use portraiture of the right era and approximate culture. When I found that a significant number of the images that "fit" were by Ingres, I added a comprehensive collection of his works to my Xmas list.
This is a fairly exhaustive collection of Ingres' portraiture, as well as some of his non-portrait work. It includes information about the sitters, a selection of preliminary sketches (and re-uses of the same images for other purposes) as well as the political context that influenced his topics. (His oeuvre spans 1780-1855, which was quite a happening time in France.)
Pendle, Karin ed. 2001. Women & Music: A History (2nd ed). Indiana University Press, Bloomington. ISBN 978-0-253-21422-5
What with one of the primary characters of Mother of Souls being a composer, and with the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac turning her hand to promoting the careers of female artists of all types, including musicians, it seemed useful to augment m personal library with some sort of basic reference work on the topic of women and music covering 19th century Europe. This was another acquisition from the Xmas wish list. Although only a couple of chapters cover material relevant to my novels, it's exactly the sort of basic foundation I was looking for. For a more specialized work …
Letzter, Jacqueline & Robert Adelson. 2001. Women Writing Opera: Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-22653-4
I had this book out from the UCB library and realized that there was no way I was going to extract the information I wanted during a reasonable borrowing period. Fortunately, although it's a fairly pricy book, I found a copy online used for a very reasonable price (in excellent condition and even with the original dust jacket). I've barely had a chance to skim the book at this point, but it looks like exactly what I need to provide the nitty gritty of what a woman composing opera in the late 18th and early 19th centuries would have to deal with in terms of reception and interactions with colleagues and rivals.
Mademoiselle de Leiurich. 1758. The entertaining travels and surprizing adventures of Mademoiselle de Leurich. Who travelled over Europe, dressed in man's apparel, attended by her maid-servant as her valet de chambre. Alex M'Culloh, Dublin. (Facsimile published 2010 by Gale ECCO, Print Editions. ISBN 978-1171057826)
I recently made a reference in passing to my ambition to write the "good parts version" of The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu and it was pointed out that there already was a version that had all the pointless philosophical digressions stripped out. To wit: the present work. Well, it has a bit more than simply the boring parts stripped out. For example, the entire stay in London and travel through the Low Countries is glossed in a couple of sentences, making a complete hash of a reference on the next page to someone who had featured in the excised portions. (This is only one of the easiest items to note, as it appears at the end of the book.) And, in any case, my intended "good parts version" is intended to be a complete re-write, as even a mildly abridged version of the original would be tough going for the modern pleasure-reader. But I rather like having this second version residing on my bookshelf.
Tinterow, Gary & Philip Conisbee. 1999. Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ISBN 0-87099-890-0
Part of my behind-the-scenes work for the Alpennian books has been coming up with pictures to provide a "visual reference" for all the major (and some minor) characters. As I've mentioned before, I'm not actually a very visual person, so it helps me to be looking at an appropriate image when I'm describing a character or even simply visualizing how they would act and react. I've done a lot of poking around in Google images and generally try to use portraiture of the right era and approximate culture. When I found that a significant number of the images that "fit" were by Ingres, I added a comprehensive collection of his works to my Xmas list.
This is a fairly exhaustive collection of Ingres' portraiture, as well as some of his non-portrait work. It includes information about the sitters, a selection of preliminary sketches (and re-uses of the same images for other purposes) as well as the political context that influenced his topics. (His oeuvre spans 1780-1855, which was quite a happening time in France.)
Pendle, Karin ed. 2001. Women & Music: A History (2nd ed). Indiana University Press, Bloomington. ISBN 978-0-253-21422-5
What with one of the primary characters of Mother of Souls being a composer, and with the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac turning her hand to promoting the careers of female artists of all types, including musicians, it seemed useful to augment m personal library with some sort of basic reference work on the topic of women and music covering 19th century Europe. This was another acquisition from the Xmas wish list. Although only a couple of chapters cover material relevant to my novels, it's exactly the sort of basic foundation I was looking for. For a more specialized work …
Letzter, Jacqueline & Robert Adelson. 2001. Women Writing Opera: Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-22653-4
I had this book out from the UCB library and realized that there was no way I was going to extract the information I wanted during a reasonable borrowing period. Fortunately, although it's a fairly pricy book, I found a copy online used for a very reasonable price (in excellent condition and even with the original dust jacket). I've barely had a chance to skim the book at this point, but it looks like exactly what I need to provide the nitty gritty of what a woman composing opera in the late 18th and early 19th centuries would have to deal with in terms of reception and interactions with colleagues and rivals.
Mademoiselle de Leiurich. 1758. The entertaining travels and surprizing adventures of Mademoiselle de Leurich. Who travelled over Europe, dressed in man's apparel, attended by her maid-servant as her valet de chambre. Alex M'Culloh, Dublin. (Facsimile published 2010 by Gale ECCO, Print Editions. ISBN 978-1171057826)
I recently made a reference in passing to my ambition to write the "good parts version" of The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu and it was pointed out that there already was a version that had all the pointless philosophical digressions stripped out. To wit: the present work. Well, it has a bit more than simply the boring parts stripped out. For example, the entire stay in London and travel through the Low Countries is glossed in a couple of sentences, making a complete hash of a reference on the next page to someone who had featured in the excised portions. (This is only one of the easiest items to note, as it appears at the end of the book.) And, in any case, my intended "good parts version" is intended to be a complete re-write, as even a mildly abridged version of the original would be tough going for the modern pleasure-reader. But I rather like having this second version residing on my bookshelf.
