Links and Hidden Nookie Pamphlets

I go away for a week, and the inbox explodes with awesomeness. Links ahoy!

From Kim: sexy erotica from the 1770s was discovered in a Lake District manor house. OH LA LA.

One tale is called The Crafty Chambermaid’s Garland and details the story of a young woman who tricks a man into marrying her.

Written in 1770 it states: ‘The Merchant he softly crept into the room. And on the bedside he sat himself down. Her knees through the counterpane he did embrace. Did Bess in the pillow did hide her sweet face.

‘He stript (sic) of his clothes and leaped into bed saying now lovely creature for thy maidenhead. She strug led (sic) and strove and seemed to be shy. He said divine beauty I pray now comply.’

The National Trust has put some of the steamy pages with their illustrations onto digital photo frames with MP3 recordings also available for visitors.

So when

Jane

Elizabeth and the Gardiners wanted to go to the Lake District but couldn’t, this is what they were missing?! I went to the National Trust website but couldn’t find the illustrations there – anyone got a link?!

Last week, over Good Friday and Easter, the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference took place. I was originally schedule to attend and present, but alas, due to the fact that it was Good Friday and Easter, I couldn’t make the travel happen, much to my dismay and embarrassment. Pam Regis, however, was there, and she presented a paper on online spaces for discussion of romance fiction, including the hot pink palace of Bitchery. I read about the presentation as it happened via Twitter, and Dr. Regis was kind enough to send me her notes and works cited – SO COOL. It might be a good thing that I wasn’t there. I’d probably still have very very red cheeks.

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Regis, she’s a rock star of the first water. Her book, A Natural History of the Romance Novel, rocks my casbah regularly, and she was recently featured at the McDaniel College magazine’s online edition for her work in teaching respect for the romance novel.

In the early years of Regis’ scholarly attention to romance fiction, she stood essentially alone and was criticized and all but ostracized from the academic community when she presented a paper describing Jane Austen as a romance writer. Although nearly 20 years have passed, Regis will always remember it as her Davy Crockett moment since the paper was delivered in San Antonio, home of the Alamo, where the famed frontiersman and statesman took a stand — and perished.

“Oh, it was ugly. I was under siege,” Regis recalls. “They attacked. They handed me my head.”

…

Feminist Germaine Greer blamed women romance writers — and they were mostly all women — for “cherishing the chains of their bondage” and subsequent critics fretted that the genre celebrated patriarchy and instilled a complacency among women with their lesser lot in life.

“I simply refused to believe that women were as deluded and as duped as the earlier critics implied,” Regis says. “My answer to these critics was A Natural History of the Romance Novel.”

Yay for Dr. Regis!

Jane from Dear Author also presented at the same panel on romance fiction, which was organized by Dr. Sarah Frantz, about safe spaces in romance, and wow damn am I sorry to have missed that. Well done, y’all.

Finally: Modern Warfare 2 + Twilight = WIN. “Prepare for the most lucrative franchise ever.” HAHAHAHAH – thanks Kate Rothwell!