History and me, Part II

by Carola Dunn


Continued from http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/2013/05/history-and-me.html

...The world was changing...

Dick Turpin was a highwayman of credit and renown

... Again around 1800, roads were improving, highwaymen and footpads were much reduced in numbers, and someone invented springs for carriages (Before that, the body was hung on leather straps). Travel was so much easier that gentlemen going up to London for Parliament and the court took their wives and daughters along, and the London Season was born.

 Later came the railways, but still a respectable young lady would not travel without a male or older female relative for chaperon. World War I and the automobile age put an end to that. By the 1920s, a young woman who had driven generals about during the war--or even an ambulance at the front--was not about to be satisfied with sitting meekly behind the chauffeur. They owned and drove their own motor cars, or at least had a bicycle.

Daisy's Gwynne Eight

 By 1919, women over 30 could even vote in national elections and graduate from Oxford University (though not from Cambridge for another 30+ years!).

The shadows of the First World War still hung heavily over Britain. About a million young men went to their deaths on the battlefields or later from wounds and the effects of poison gas. Many of those who returned alive suffered from shell-shock, the equivalent of what we call PTSD. A large number of young women lost their husbands while others would never have an opportunity to marry. 

UK edition

On the other hand, many young women, having experienced the comparative freedom and good wages of factory work, were unwilling to return to domestic service. And a lack of men to take up the professions gradually allowed increasing numbers of women to become lawyers, accountants, doctors, and engineers.

For Daisy Dalrymple, the protagonist of my 1920s series, finding her way in a swiftly changing world is as much of a challenge as solving any of the crimes she just happens to stumble upon.

From failing history, I have come to the point of being obsessive about historical detail. I spend hours looking up words and phrases to make sure they're appropriate for the period about which I'm writing. I revel in old newspapers, as much or more for the advertisements as for the news. I note the names of police officers in Berwick upon Tweed in 1923--and use them (Murder on the Flying Scotsman), and email dental museums to enquire how nitrous oxide was administered by dentists in 1924 (Die Laughing). I pore over the Day Book of the Governor of the Tower of London for April 1925, when Daisy falls over the body of a Beefeater/Yeoman of the Guard (The Bloody Tower). I know more about the rumrunners of the Prohibition than most Americans. And then there's the treatments--water and electric--available at a Derbyshire hydro/spa in 1926 (Gone West).

Now I'm also writing a series (the Cornish Mysteries) set around 1970. Yes, I lived through the '60s and '70s. It's hard to grasp that they're now history. As I say in an author's note at the beginning of the three books, I haven't tied myself down to a specific year in the series, as I did for years in the Regencies and Daisy's adventures.  But I'm still doing obsessive research on subjects such as the equipment of ambulances and lifeboats at the time and the position of women in the police force...

And I really enjoy it!

History and me

by Carola Dunn

Excavating my desk has turned out to be an interesting endeavour. I've found stuff going back to 2004. Somehow I've never managed to clear up all the notes etc. from one book before the notes etc. for the next started to pile up.

One thing I found was a handwritten essay on my rocky relationship with History. I have no idea whom it was written for--certainly not for myself. But I thought others might find it interesting, so here it is.

First, a confession: I failed History at school. We started with Caesar's invasion of Britain in 43 BC (or was it 55 BC?). I then went down with flu, the pandemic of 1957, followed by 3 weeks in isolation with mumps. The result is that I still don't know the purpose and function of Hadrian's Wall. Back in class, we proceeded from date to date, from monarch to monarch, battle to battle, until Waterloo, 1815, when I dropped History.

I dropped it with a thump, having written an exam paper in the style of 1066 And All That.








Why, then, choose to write historical novels? I grew up in England, but left at 22 (to go around the world). So, in spite of frequent visits, I'm out of touch with present-day life in Britain. Yet even after bringing up a son in the US, I don't have a visceral grasp of growing up in America. Any of my friends would agree that I'm still English in many ways, including sounding to Americans as if I stepped off the boat yesterday. And in England people say I sound American.

So if I wrote contemporary fiction, set in either Britain or America, it would be as an outsider. When I write about history, my readers are as much outsiders as I am.

I started out writing Regencies . I always loved Jane Austen, whose books were published during the Regency (1811-1820) and I'd been rereading Georgette Heyer's Regencies for years--to the point where I knew what was coming on the next page. I decided if I wanted any more, I'd have to write my own. I was already familiar with the period, so the necessary research didn't seem too daunting.

I was lucky enough to sell my first book, Toblethorpe Manor,

and went on to write 32 Regency novels (also a dozen or so novellas). I might still be writing them but that both the publishers I was writing for decided, within 6 months of each other, to stop publishing Regencies.

Time to move on.



I'd read hundreds--if not thousands--of mysteries, with a preference for cosies, though I didn't then know the term. I fancied a change of period. Daisy Dalrymple was born.

Why the 1920s? I'd been writing books set in the Regency (early 1800s) for 15 years before I started writing mysteries. I wanted a change of period and I saw certain parallels between the Regency and the 1920s that intrigued me. Both were periods of great changes, especially for women.

For a start consider clothes.

from Mrs Hurst Dancing

Around 1800, the enormous hoops and tight lacing of the 18th century gave way to the Empire gown. The clothes allowed women to move more freely--There's a charming painting from the Regency   of a lady and her maid catching flies...

Of course, Victorian fashion regressed to crinolines and bustles and tight lacing. Worse followed, the Edwardian "Grecian Bend," corsetted to make the bosom stick out in one direction and the bottom in the other. Then came World War I, truly a liberating event for women however catastrophic otherwise. Because of the shortage of men during and after the war (about 1 million British soldiers killed), women were able and needed to work at jobs they'd never aspired to before. Land Girls even wore trousers!

Another revolution was in transportation....

To be continued May 15