(@tefferbear@mastodon.art This is in response to your post regarding underwear prior to Victorian times. A friend boosted your post, but when I replied, I received a message saying that your post was marked as followers only or some such and couldn't be replied to. I just wanted to clarify a few things.

The following is from Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style (or the Ultimate Dandy in the UK edition) by Ian Kelly. Please forgive the (x). This was scanned into my computer (I'm blind) and there was an ocr error, so I wrote x.

"Like Brummell, and all young men of fashion, it appears that Byron wore underwear rarely or not at all. A study of Scrope Davies's accounts reveals a similar absence, and Prince (x)-Muskau's mention of the number of "summer trousers" a gentleman needed refers to the same issue. The older generation kept with older ways; some of the very rare examples of male undergarments surviving from the period belonged to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Coutts, the banker, but in their dotage. The younger set aspired to a different aesthetic, and the line of the trouser was not to be interrupted by rucked shirttails or underwear."

From another passage in the same book. This is from a discussion of when Brummell was still in England (he left in 1816), so it's well within the Regency.

"One Persian ambassador to the Court of St. James's was moved to write that he found the Brummell style of trousers "immodest and unflattering to the figure . . . [they] look just like underdrawers-could they be designed to appeal to the ladies?"

This is directly from Brummell. Keep in mind that he died in 1840, only three years after the Victorian era began. This is from The life of George Brummell, esq., commonly called Beau Brummell by Captain Jesse. It is a biography, not a piece of fiction.

"Pray send me what remains in the drawers of the bed-room there are some waistcoats, drawers, pantaloons, &c., and in the upper tiroir, sundry trifling things which I forgot, but which I may have occasion for."

This is from 1837 or so from the same book.

"I have not a single shirt that will hang to my back, nor are my socks and drawers in a better state."

This is again from Brummell, from a book that he wrote called Male and Female Costume. It was written in 1822 but not published until 1934.

"Ancient drawings and descriptions furnish us with an idea of the remainder of their dress in the resemblance of modern underdrawers."

From the same book.

"The following is the description of the dress of a Running Footman in 1730: ”They wear fine Holland drawers and waistcoats, thread stockings, a blue silk sash fringed with silver, a velvet capwith a great tassel; and carry a Porter’s staff with a large silver handle.”"
It is true that there was a trend to use shirttails as underwear. This remained so even into the Edwardian era. But drawers were certainly known prior to Victorian times.

#AntiqueMenswear #Brummell #clothing #Edwardian #fashion #Regency #Victorian

Queer Romance Club MARCH selection: I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner

I’ve deployed my tie-breaker to opt for this one, a YA-leaning graphic novel inspired by Jane Austen. I’ve put the tied book, Set in Stone on my TBR list, and look forward to reading it down the track (next time I re-up Kobo Plus, probably, and that’ll be July-ish).

From the ISNFIL blurb: The Prince and the Dressmaker goes to Austenland in this historically inspired, joyfully queer, stunningly romantic graphic novel mash-up of Jane Austen novels—where two friends discover their feelings for each other and find a space in their world for their love and identity.

Find it at your favourite retailer or it should be available at your library. Note the two possible covers.

QRC is open to ALL fans of queer romance: read at your own pace and post your commentary any time.

Use @queerromanceclub and #QueerRomanceClub tags. (The @group can be added to lists and appears in every reply to any posts you make so is a valuable addition to the # for promoting discussion)

See more about the club, plus past choices, here:

mastodon.au/@wendypalmer/11314…

If you’d rather try one of the other books on the voting list, or talk about a different queer romance book you’re reading as well or instead, feel free to use the tags for those too. We’re all about sharing the queer romance book love.

#QueerRomance #BookClub #books #romanceReads #GraphicNovel #QueerRomance #HistoricalRomance #Regency #JaneAusten

@bookstodon @lgbtbookstodon @romancebooks

Wendy Palmer

2024-09-16 02:46:58

I am the current coordinator of the Queer Romance Club (QRC), the FediBookClub for all readers of queer romance.

Boost this post to be notified-on-Edit of each month's vote & pick, or find it pinned on my profile.

MARCH selection: I Shall Never Fall In Love by Hari Conner
mastodon.au/@wendypalmer/11406…

QRC is open to all, read at your own pace over the month and post about it under #QueerRomanceClub and @queerromanceclub tags, and/or add some commentary on Bookwyrm.

No rules: let’s hear reactions, theories, reviews, favourite quotes etc, any time throughout the month or indeed whenever you happen to read it 😊
CW for spoilers if going into details but general observations can be open.

Note we’re also open to free choice selections, so if you’d rather post comments about a different book you’re reading as well or instead, feel free to use the tags for those too. We’re all about the queer romance book love, and love to hear about titles we may have missed!

2025 Schedule (subject to change/open to suggestions):

Dec: winter/holiday vibes
Nov: classics/old favourites
Oct: paranormal
Sept: mystery/suspense
Aug: cosy
July: Lambda winners
June: pride month no matter what the fascists say
May: fantasy
April: science fiction
March: historical — I Shall Never Fall In Love by Hari Conner
Feb: BIPOC — Leather, Lace and Locs by Anne Shade
Jan: contemporary — Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet by Samatha Allen

#QueerRomance #books #BookClub #LGBTQBooks #romanceReads

Since this post is about fashion, let me start by answering the question that I am sure will be on your mind upon seeing my name. No, I am not related to The Beau. However, I love dandyism as a whole, and I took this name in tribute. I am also working to have his book, Male and Female Costume, published online freely, but that's for another post and time. At any rate, I am forty-one and am passionate about antique menswear, Regency as a scholarly pursuit, and Edwardian for daily wear. Naturally, I am constantly researching and trying to expand upon my knowledge. I am totally blind, so I must rely on descriptions rather than images.

I am the type who would like to wear a three-piece suit and accessories everywhere I go. I've decided that for my first one, I should get a lounge suit, since I can wear it almost anywhere during the day, provided it's not a formal occasion. I will eventually have morning wear, white tie, black tie, and informal evening wear, but that's for later. I have found some sites which create reproductions of men's Edwardian suits, but most use synthetic materials and/or zippers, which I refuse to wear, and none uses fabrics of the proper thickness. I found sites that make women's suits with men's specifications (no ridiculous enhancements of breasts, butt, shallow pockets, soft colours, buttons on the wrong sides of shirts, etc.) but they only make modern clothing. Ebay and Etsy occasionally have some authentic pieces, but most are too formal for daily use, even by Edwardian standards! I am also having difficulty with finding some accessories, such as proper ties and socks without elastic. My other option is to have a suit commissioned, but for that, I need to find a good tailor. The best in the world, in my opinion, is Zack Pinsent, but he's in England and I'm in America (New Jersey).

I am seeking those who share my interest in antique menswear, and perhaps some advice as to where I can find such clothing and/or accessories. Even a bathing suit would be great, since we do own a saltwater pool.

#accessories #antiquemenswear #bespoke #clothing #dandies #dandyism #daywear #dressing #Edwardian #eveningwear #fashion #formal #historicalclothing #informal #loungesuit #masculinewomen #mensfashion #menswear #morningwear #offtherack #Regency #suits #tailors

Please ignore this post, unless you find the tags interesting and wish to add me on account of them. The search function on blob.cat doesn't work with screen readers, and I can't view my profile without editing it, which turns the tags into regular text, not links. This is a work-around so I can follow various tags.

#19thCentury #AARP #accessibility #Akkoma #AltText #Android #animals #AntiqueMenswear #atheism #BeauBrummell #baking #BelCanto #birds books #blind #blobcat #blob.cat #BritishEmpire #BritishLiterature #cats #ChildFree #chamberMusic #champagne #choirs #ChoralSinging #ChoralMusic #ClaraNovelloDavies #ClassicalMusic #coffee #cooking #crafts #dandies #dandyism #dating #DinoBorgioli, documentaries #Dreamwidth #Edwardian #England #English #EnricoCaruso #EtonCollege #Facebook #fashion #Fediverse #fediverse #FerruccioTagliavini #FineDining #food #fortepiano #Friendica #friends #gardening #GayRights #grammar #HighCulture #humor #humour #introduction #IvorNovello #LatinLanguage #LeopoldSimoneau #mocktails #monarchy #MSDOS #NasalSnuff #nature #NewJersey #nobility #NoelCoward #NoPolitics #NVDA #OldMen #opera #operetta #operettas #pets #plants #poetry #reading #ReceivedPronunciation #Regency #RichardTauber #royalty #RoyalFamily #seniors #sherry #singing #snuff #suits #tea #theater #theatre #TitoSchipa #TWBlue #TweeseCake #UpperReceivedPronunciation #WCAG #windows7 #WindowsXP #wine #wordplay

The imaginist

Edmund Blair Leighton: The Piano Lesson

Emma by Jane Austen.
Edited by James Kinsley and David Lodge.
World’s Classics, 1980 (1971).

‘How much more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight!’ — Emma, Volume III Chapter 3

Emma thoroughly deserves its plaudits as an epitome of the author’s skills. Its status as Austen’s longest novel and the main product of her mature years ensures that any assessment I give is bound to be brief and inconsequential; but I’d be remiss if I didn’t add my own two-penn’orth of praise to the general applause.

Its chief protagonist is Emma Woodhouse of Hartfield, Highbury in Surrey. She lives alone with her aged widowed father — alone, that is, apart from the usual complement of servants — since her elder married sister now lives in London 16 or more miles away. As Highbury and parts of neighbouring parish Donwell constitute a sizeable village, almost a town, she is familiar with most of the inhabitants, their comings and goings, their status and their prospects.

This allows her a substantial amount of time to imagine unattached individuals being paired with other such souls, and at first she is pleased to picture herself as a matchmaker. This has already happened with her former governess, Anne Taylor, with Emma fancying she had a hand in uniting Miss Taylor with Mr Weston: ‘there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match.’ She soon devotes herself to pairing her protégée Harriet Smith with the new vicar Mr Elton. But disaster is just around the corner and Emma realises she has committed a monumental misjudgement.

WordPress Free Photo Library

Just as she resolves to learn her lesson a new person enters Highbury society: Frank Weston Churchill is the son of Mr Weston by a former wife, adopted by relatives, the Churchill family from Yorkshire. By all appearances he appears to be making a play for Emma herself, though despite being flattered she lacks any conviction that she owns any reciprocal attraction. Again, all is not as it seems.

If Jane Austen was ever tempted to follow the alliterative leads of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice she might well have entitled this something like Dissembling and Deception. On one level Emma is all about deceit, whether done by those attempting to deceive others by overt behaviours or practised by those who unknowingly deceive themselves. But to merely characterise Emma this way would be to do it a great disservice.

Austen’s novels are often referred to as comedies of manners. There is certainly humour aplenty. The garrulous Miss Bates, whose monologues in company often amount to a page or more of text, is one figure of fun; another is the thoroughly unpleasant Mrs Elton who — an imaginist in her own way — unfavourably compares and contrasts Highbury society with that of Maple Grove near Bristol, and who disparages anybody she feels below her station. But the author can just as easily turn on a sixpence and in the midst of a comic situation deliver despair and mortification.

Embedded in this realist novel though are nuggets of Austenian metafiction. First is Emma’s self-definition as an ‘imaginist’: when Miss Woodhouse foretells the narratives of future relationships (whether or not they turn out as she predicts) Jane is surely slyly acknowledging her own role as a fiction writer — and ours as readers — in imagining where people’s paths through life will take them. We are, in a sense, all imaginists if we play the game.

Secondly, the author doesn’t do what she had done in a couple of earlier novels, inserting her authorial voice in a concluding chapter. Instead she indicates her hidden presence by numerous references to game-playing.

Early on Emma tries to ‘improve’ Harriet by encouraging her to collect riddles, puzzles, enigmas, charades or conundrums to put in a special notebook at Hartfield. Later on, at Donwell Abbey (the home of the upstanding Mr Knightley, a dear friend of the Woodhouse family and significant player in the action such as it is) letter tiles designed to educate Emma’s nephews and nieces are purloined; they’re put to new use for some of the assembled company to play a Scrabble-like word game for their amusement. Later still, a group excursion to Box Hill occasions an ill-judged injunction for people to state frankly what they are thinking.

The fact that all three episodes of game-playing result in undesirable outcomes may well be Jane’s subtle way of intruding herself anonymously: if not for these notionally innocent games that she has inserted, the author seems to be saying, the plot would not be driven onwards to achieve ultimately desirable outcomes, and Emma would just be a succession of scenes and vignettes from village life. Which, emphatically, it is not.

To mention more characters would amount to a bald catalogue; better by far would be for new readers to acquaint themselves with Highbury folk as they appear in the pages of the novel; there’s no doubt they repay the effort many times over.

This World’s Classics edition from Oxford Paperbacks includes a not too out-of-date bibliography and a short chronology of Jane’s life, plus notes and an enlightening introduction (best examined subsequent to a first reading) by David Lodge.

Austen in August (RoofBeamReader com)

Review first published 12th April, 2017 and now re-posted for Austen in August

#19thCentury #classic #classicRomance #DavidLodge #Emma #JaneAusten #Regency

I wrote both of these posts in their entirety on Friendica, but these are the Dreamwidth versions. If there is enough interest, I will repost them separately, here on Blob.cat. Please feel free to comment here or on Dreamwidth. If you do the latter, though, kindly let me know that you saw this on Blob.cat so that I have an idea of how far this post reaches.

1

Here, you will find links pertaining to dandies and dandyism as a whole. It is the culmination of at least five years of research, though I am constantly finding new things to add to my collection. If they are good enough, I will include them here. Please feel free to comment with any that you would like me to consider.

Dandyism Links

dandylover1.dreamwidth.org/181…

2

In this post, I will provide links related to men's fashion during the Regency and Edwardian periods. My apologies to those who prefer Victorian styles, but my interest in Regency clothing and culture is connected to my love of dandyism, and my interest in Edwardian clothing is because that is how I wish to dress personally.

How Fashionable!

dandylover1.dreamwidth.org/210…

#accessories #AntiqueMenswear #BeauBrummell #books #clothing #dandies #dandyism #Edwardian #fashion #Regency #suits

Hello. Georgiana Brummell is not my legal name, but it is what I prefer to be called. I chose it in honour of Beau Brummell. I joined Friendica in October of 2024, after Facebook closed their Basic Mobile site (not app), since their main page is barely accessible with a screen readr. However, I noticed many accessibility issues there as well, and they will take quite awhile to be resolve. I have, therefore, chosen to switch to the Blob.cat instance of Akkoma, though I do not intend to delete my Friendica account.

I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, nature and historical documentaries, old BBC radio shows, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I also love cats. In classical music, I enjoy Baroque through a bit of early Romantic, with Classical being my favourite, while in popular (listen to rarely), I usually prefer 1950's through 1970's, and some acoustic recordings. I love theatre (especially English and Viennese operettas, Edwardian musical comedies), and some Regency/Georgian plays. I am starting to learn about opera, with my main focus being singers from the 1940's and earlier, due to the change in singing style that began roughly in the 1950's. I prefer antique menswear and accessories. It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. My parents are lesbians, and I am a gay rights supporter. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity. I am happily childfree and am not religious. My main goal in life is simply to enjoy it, and have fun learning new things along the way. I am also single and searching. If you are or know a genuine dandy, or at least, a single, childfree, intelligent, well-dressed man, preferably over sixty, please tell him about me.

Please note. I don't write about American politics, race, anticapitalism, or world affairs (wars, poverty, oppression, etc.), and will not add those who do, as I don't want it filling my timelines. While I am interested in technology to an extent (particularly website accessibility), I am not a programmer or gamer, do not use Linux,and don't care what social network you use. I tend to get along better with people much older than I, but I will accept friends twenty-one and over. I have no understanding of chronic illness, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, loneliness, etc. so if you need help with that, I'm not the one to ask. I enjoy hearing about cats, cooking or gardening adventures, animals and nature, antiques, and interesting facts and life stories.

This is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member.

dreamwidth.org

#19thCentury #accessibility #animals #BeauBrummell #BelCanto #books #blind #cats #ChildFree #ClassicalMusic #coffee #cooking #crafts #dandyism #documentaries #Dreamwidth #Edwardian #Facebook #Friendica #gardening #grammar #HighCulture #introduction #monarchy #NasalSnuff #nature #nobility #NoPolitics #NVDA #operettas #plants #reading #Regency #seniors #singing #tea #theater #theatre #TWBlue #TweeseCake #UpperReceivedPronunciation #wine