Tag: History

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occult photography Victorian

An Update on the Heretics Series

In the original Darkness Begins blog I shared details of my writing. The first novel in a projected trilogy is Alchemists of Time. Here’s some information about the first two books and an update on what’s happening with book three.

In Alchemists of Time:

1859 Benjamin Strutt and Jane Taylor practice the occult sciences and conjure demons. Daisy is trying to escape from the squalor, the violence and life as a prostitute in the dangerous rookeries and backstreets of a Victorian town.

1959 When Alex and Maxine move into an old house, Alex finds himself transported back to the time when Benjamin Strutt lived in the house. Unless he can learn the alchemical and occult arts that Benjamin teaches him he can never go home to his own time. And Bella Nightingale is already threatening the stability of time itself with a killing spree lasting more than a hundred years.

In Ghosts of Time:

Ghosts are just people lost in time….

After ten years living as a Victorian, Alex Harrison is not sure whether he wants to return to his own time of the 1960s. Maxine, Alex’s girlfriend, can’t even remember him after her timeline was altered. When an old enemy reappears the life of Alex and everyone he holds dear comes under threat and he must unite his Victorian family and his friends in the 1960s to defeat an evil that threatens to warp the very fabric of time.

What to expect in book 3 Well of Time*

It’s six months since the apocalyptic events at the end of book 2 and all is not well. Two of the Victorians find themselves transported to the late 1960s, Benjamin Strutt has disappeared from the 1869 house and those remaining are in disarray and under siege from fresh enemies. Meanwhile Alex and friends find they need to revisit their assumptions about time paradoxes to ensure their survival.

It’s early days in the writing process for book 3 so don’t hold your breath! I’ll try not to do a George RR Martin and leave it hanging for years and years.

I’ll update you on Loake and Patel book 3 in a later blog.

(*Potential for confusion with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time I know).

Categories
photography

Marjorie Sear, Ballerina 1939

Miss Marjorie Sear in a beautiful hand-coloured photograph. This is the only colour photograph of her from a recently acquired and comprehensive set of Marjorie and her friends all in dance poses. Many of the photographs are dated around 1939 and this is likely to be from the same period.

I first came across Miss Sear when I bought a set of 22 sepia photographs of her. When I acquired this set the only identification was the envelope in which they came addressed to “Miss Sear.” They came in an envelope from Jerome Ltd of Kings Cross Road London. They were all date stamped 31 March 1939. It wasn’t until I was later able to acquire two more sets of photographs from the same source that I was able to identify her as Marjorie Sear. One photograph records her age as 15 on the reverse but there are obviously some when she is older and a few when she is younger.

A black and white version of the coloured photograph.

About half of the 60+ photos feature Marjorie with her friends in various dance costumes both on stage and outside. Whatever happened in their later lives they were clearly all enthusiastic dancers and liked to dress up.

As ever I am amazed how family treasures such as this set of photographs can disappear into salerooms and ebay having been lost or discarded. I know that these photos came from a house clearance and so I assume Marjorie Sear is dead and there are no relatives who survive her and want to keep her memory alive. How many more marvellous documents of social and personal history have been lost for all time? You can see the full set of photographs of Marjorie and her friends in this flickr album.

Categories
photography

About Cabinet Cards

I’ll be posting examples of my own collection of old photographs starting with cabinet cards. Cabinet cards were first produced in the 1860s but did not reach peak popularity until the 1880s by which time they had largely replaced the smaller carte de visite. Soon cabinet cards would also be overtaken by the introduction of the Box Brownie in 1900 making it possible for everyone to make their own photos.

The cabinet card shown at the top of this post is a fairly typical example of the ever-popular family group. I used this as part of the back cover design for my book Alchemists of time. Tracking down details of the studios and photographers who made these cards is not an easy job. Even when we have  the name of the studio on the card it’s more likely than not that the studio disappeared many years ago and often without trace. There are resources that can help but that’s a topic for another post.

It’s always nice to find cards from your own locality, in my case Derby and Nottingham, though the same problems of provenance apply. These two are from Derby, one a portrait of a girl, the other a “candid” shot of a woman sprawled out over chairs. Who said all Victorian portraits involve someone standing straight and with a serious expression?

Rabbit man is one of my personal favourites, this time from a Nottingham studio. I suspect the rabbits were bred to eat rather than being pets but we’ll never know.

Black for mourning is often to be seen as is white (for purity?)

And what’s this dog thinking?

And finally I couldn’t resist inserting myself into a cabinet card, the surround being from a Victorian photo album designed to take cabinet cards.

( If you think you’ve seen or read some of this before it’s quite possible as my former blog imploded so I’ll be recreating entries here).