hotlanepress

Early nineteenth century figures offer glimpses of a world that has vanished. Enjoy a text that explores the tales the figures tell, probes their design sources, and guides those who collect them.

Lt. Hugh Munro escaped from the jaws of the tiger that mauled him.

Prior to the New Marriage Act of 1823, either a husband or wife might use quirky legalities to nullify their marriage after many years—and many children.

England had no divorce law. For the common man desperate to end a miserable marriage, what better than putting a cattle halter around his wife’s neck and auctioning her as “livestock” at the local market?

Industrious Italians plied England with trained animals. A “paw-a-piece” alliance was a four-man partnership in bear ownership: two men traveled abroad with a bear and remitted profits to two domestic sleeping partners.

Beer was considered a nutritious dietary necessity because it was the safest, most palatable, most accessible liquid. Children drank it, and hospitals gave patients beer rather than water. England seemed to have a chronic crisis of drunkenness, or as Shakespeare’s Iago commented, “in England . . . they are most potent in potting.”

Rampant fascination with natural history inspired interest in birds, their nests, and their eggs. Bird nesting was not just for children. Passionate naturalists tramped across the countryside, locating nests and noting differences in the work of the diminutive artisans who had fashioned them.