Bits and pieces

I'm back. Last year was crazy. I'm sure writing Lady Beware necessitated some spot research - in fact I know it did -- but I never had time to post anything here.

I'm beginning something new, however, so...

Have I said how much I love the google book search? There are some fabulous old resources there. I'm looking at travel in France in the mid 18th century. (Yes, I'm back to the Malloren world. I went first to Lawrence Sterne's travel book. Just the right period.)

From the google search thus far I've downloaded a 19th century road book from Calais to Naples, and an 18th century one called The American Wanderer. In that I came across a little bit that interested me in general.

Among writers of 18th and 19th century fiction we sometimes debate the use of pencils. Well, in the latter book the traveller mentions one. "I recollected my lead pencil, by the medium of which we held a kind of disjointed conversation."

More, probably, at other times.

Jo