Book Review: A Lady's Proposal

A Fair Trade Book, I Think

Title: A Lady's Proposal

Author: Jeanne Savery

Date: 1998

Publisher: Kensington

ISBN: 0-8217-5992-2

Length: 252 pages

Quote: “Actually, her beauty had been her bane for...something near a decade...ever since age sixteen when Lady Hel's beauty burst forth much as a rose opens overnight.”

Lady Helena Woodhall is an interesting fictional confection: a child of the 1990s living in a rather flimsy mock-up of the 1790s. She likes Simon, Earl of Sanger, and he likes her, but she has more money than he has...and in their version of Regency England, that money is hers, not assigned to a male “guardian” until it's automatically transferred to her husband upon her marriage. Lady Hel also climbs walls and crawls through tunnels, completely unimpeded by the flimsy gowns and drapey shawls that looked so “elegant” and “romantic” because they positively shrieked “Wearer does not do any work, or even go outdoors.” She doesn't believe in any of the superstitions that dominated her era, and she can take a bullet, as the contemporary expression was, “like a man.”

She is in danger, and hopes to obtain protection from marriage, but obviously nobody has ever succeeded in persuading Lady Hel that men don't feel a need to protect a woman who they suspect can kill her own snakes. In a proper “Regency romance,” the boy rescues the girl. In this one, Lady Hel does respect the rules enough to faint in Lord Sanger's arms, and technically the murderer dies by misadventure, but we all know Lady Hel kills her own snakes. Sanger marries her anyway.

You knew, of course, that they'd be married, because this is a Romance. You knew that their courtship would be cute and comedic (Lady Hel is not a sweet heroine) rather than earthy and physical, because it's a Regency Romance. No rule of the genre would keep the identity and motives of Lady Hel's enemy a matter of suspense, but Lady Hel knows the answer to those questions, and so do readers.

The best thing to be said for Regency Romances is that they convince us that characters are “in love” without dragging us through the details of every smooch. The turn of the nineteenth century was a period when the English admired wittiness, and although in practice most of them preferred women who smiled at men's wisecracks rather than wisecracking in their own right, even a real Regency Romance (the genre, of course, being inspired by Jane Austen) requires couples to flirt wittily rather than flop into bed.

Historically this novel is about as credible as that 1978 nightgown (the drape of brushed acetate tricot, not linen gauze) and 1998 makeup job Lady Hel is modelling on the front cover. Still, she's pretty; the story's pretty. Does a contemporary story that gives pleasure need to be historically sound? Say it takes place in an alternate universe, somewhere on the Lost Planet of Nice, and enjoy it in peace.

Jeanne Savery appears to be alive, though not active in cyberspace, so this is A Fair Trade Book. If you buy it here, $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, for a total of $10 or $11, we'll send $1 to Savery or a charity of her choice. At least seven more books of this size will fit into a package along with this one, and, if able to locate living writers and/or identify their charities for all seven, the package would cost $45, of which we'd send $8 to the writer(s) and her/their charity/ies. 

Book Review: English Porcelain and Bone China

Title: English Porcelain and Bone China 1743-1850

Author: Bernard and Therle Hughes

Date: 1955

Publisher: Lutterworth

ISBN: none

Length: 248 pages plus index

Illustrations: several black-and-white photographs and sketches

Quote: “Antique porcelain is one of England’s most fascinating but tantalizing treasures...a major delight is the limitless range of [t]his subject.”

Fresh data about old ceramic work is always turning up...and in this book, Therle and Bernard Hughes supply enough detailed data about antique British chinaware for the serious collector.

That’s what you will and won’t love about this book. It explains which of the myriad of brands of porcelain and china on the market have high collection value, and why...with descriptions of the colors each manufacturer used, the techniques, the favored decorative motifs, sometimes the names and biographies of the people who made up each manufacturing company. It's like a guidebook to consult while deciding what to bid on most competitively at an auction.

Since 1955 makers of replicas have had the chance to use this book to make more credible faux antiques, so the Hughes’ work may have become a less reliable guide to separating the replicas from the Real McCoy. (Speaking of which, of course...this book doesn’t discuss U.S. ceramics at all, and never mentions McCoy.) On the other hand, the complexity and expensiveness of antique porcelain production has tended to limit the profitability of fake antiques. Nine out of ten people who buy plates with landscape pictures on them are satisfied with either a friend’s efforts or a mass-produced, frankly plastic piece; for those who want the real thing, a few corners may be cut, but it’s not easy to fake eighteenth-century china without actually making something close to the equivalent of eighteenth-century china.

Current information about what’s selling at what price is, of course, available online. For historical information, still valid, about the antique British trademarks to look for, here’s more than anyone not in the antique business could possibly have asked for about Chelsea, Bow, Longton Hall, Derby, Bristol, Worcester, Caughley, Liverpool, Lowestoft, Nantgarw, Swansea, Madeley, Plymouth, New Hall, Spode, Coalport, Minton, Rockingham, Davenport, and Wedgwood.

You’ll learn why a porcelain owl or pheasant was once an exciting technological breakthrough, which colors could have been used on a china figurine in 1750 and which would only have been available in 1850, which manufacturers always stamped a nice clear label on the bottom of each piece and which ones didn’t, and the precise chemical reasons why some antique china had distinctive tones or textures that might not be found in other antiques from the same year.You’ll learn which brands often identify the work of women artists (sometimes husband-wife or brother-sister teams) and which brand was painted by men who threatened a strike when women artists were hired.

This is the kind of book that belongs under the counter for reference, and would also make ideal bathroom reading, in an antique shop.

Amazon shows limited availability of relatively cheap paperback copies and collectors' prices on hardcover copies...and what I have is a hardcover copy. What you'll get, if you send this web site $5 per book + $5 per package (you could fit four books of this size into a package) + $1 per online payment, will be a paperback copy. If you're opening an antique shop or selling a relative's collection, that could be a great investment.