Taylor's Architectural Library

I love buildings and architecture, but particularly I love houses. So when I am searching through Google Books, I am always attracted to early books about them. As I was looking through several of these books the other day, I noticed that many of them were published by J. Taylor, The Architectural Library.

1802

1815

In about 1770 Isaac Taylor, an engraver, took over a printing, publishing and bookselling business which specialized in architectural publications. By 1797 he had handed over The Architectural Library to his son Josiah. The publishing firm printed hundreds of different volumes; an advertisement in one of the books lists thirteen pages of titles for sale.

Some of the volumes were reprints of early titles. Grotesque Architecture had first been published in 1767.

 It included plans for hermitages, greenhouses and rustic seats, as well as grottoes and cascades.

Other publications were more modern and original.

These cottages are very austere, to my eyes, but they do have interesting floor plans. I must admit though to preferring the 'cottage ornee' style.

The Architectural Library also printed extremely usable handbooks such as: The Builder's Price Book, New Principles of Linear Perspective, The Carpenter's Pocket Directory et al.
And the following useful, and thorough, guide...

It has all kinds of plans:

Plan for a Farmyard

Plan for a Brewhouse, Washhouse & Bakehouse

Farmhouse and offices

I'll be looking through Google Books for more from The Architectural Library. I think we can be sure that readers, for nearly a century from the mid 1700s to mid 1800s, watched for their publications also.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Source: All titles from Google Books

Peacock's Polite Repository

While researching other things recently I came across, quite by chance, "Peacock's Polite Repository or Pocket Companion".

I thought it was a charming and very handy book. It was also a very long-lived publication. Appearing yearly, from about 1788 to at least 1830, it was a small book (115 mm x 74 mm), often in a slip-case. It contained diary space and an almanac of all sorts of useful information. It was exactly the sort of thing that anyone new to the country, or desirous of exhaustive information about the country, would have owned. In my new book, the hero buys the heroine a copy; she is definitely in need of the information.

From 1790 to 1811 Humphrey Repton supplied the illustrations for the books, generally a frontispiece and headings for the diary pages. The copy I am using is from 1812, and I have not yet discovered the illustrator but the pictures are charming.

St. Bernad's Well near Edinburgh

The information that filled the pages--about 125 of them--was wide-ranging.

With the number of dukes appearing in Regency fiction these days, it is interesting to have the actual list of those peers. There weren't very many.

 Below is the type of calendar that appears for each month before the diary blanks.

Each month has an illustration in the diary.

 

 

The universities figure large in the plethora of information:

Holidays which seem to have been organized by major organizations or business were not neglected. A little more explanation of them would not come amiss. There are more than I would have expected.

It was not a completely insular book. Below is part of the list of foreign rulers:

Even the esoteric was covered by the Repository:

I wonder what were the duties of heralds in 1812? I can feel more research coming on!

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne


Sources: a Google search on Peacock's Polite Repository will bring myriad results. I used several of them, but cannot list one definitive source.

1865 in the Regency era

The title of this post sounds odd, doesn't it? But I am working on a new book--to be released February 15, 2019--and 1865 plays an important part in my Regency-set romantic tale.

Victorian England in 1865 was very different from Regency England in 1815. Here are a few glimpses of that Victorian world.

Chester Chronicle - Saturday 17 June 1865

Lancaster Gazette - Saturday 30 September 1865

Liverpool Mercury - Saturday 17 June 1865

Wrexham Advertiser - Saturday 22 July 1865

My heroine is very familiar with 1865 and its Victorian sensibilities. She is accustomed to its comforts, and its burgeoning excesses. Without giving too much away, it is her world.

In 1815 there were no railways, no photographs, and there were few town clerks and public works. The parish was the local government and the landowners had the main voice in local improvements. There was little gas lighting, no steam travel, highwaymen were still to be feared and a great war had just ended. But the world was manageable, the pace of life was slower and expectations were more humane.

Human nature did not change as the Petty Sessions from 1815 and 1865 below prove. And human nature is what stories are built upon.

Derby Mercury - Wednesday 17 May 1865

  

Tyne Mercury; Northumberland and Durham and Cumberland Gazette - Tuesday 04 July 1815

You will be hearing further about my new book in the coming months. Please stay tuned to discover more about the connection of 1865 with 1815.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne