 One of the hardest parts of world-building, as you have to do with a historical novel, is coming up with the hundreds of little events that happen every day in a city like London. One of Eloisa's favorite resources is the journal La Belle Assemblée, one of the most popular in the period, especially the section "Remarkable Occurrences, Deaths and Marriages." In The Taming of the Duke, a young actress recounts a terrible carriage accident. Here's the original, from La Belle Assemblée, September 1810: "A dreadful accident happened to one of the Lincoln coaches while stopping in the town of Biggleswade, the horses were alarmed by the passing of a load of sheep-skins, piled to some height on the back of an ass…[The horses fled and in consequence] Miss Phipps, a young lady of Peterborough, who was traveling in the coach at the time of the accident, died twelve hours after, in consequence of the fright." Eloisa notes that her modern hard-headedness made her a little wary of Miss Phipps dying of "fright," so she changed it to her injuries.
This is Eloisa's Egg #16 - "collect" them all!  |
