The Lipstick Papers: HAPPY EVER AFTER (IN ANSWER TO MISS JONES)

"Exchange of cartes de visit should not be done immediately upon first acquaintance," opined The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine on flirting etiquette. It's June 1862, and the column is Answers to Correspondents. A Miss Jones is writing. Who knows if things ended well, and the couple found its happy ever after? I hope they did. There are few things I love more than reading Victorian periodicals! Getting into the periodicals is like getting into Aladdin's cave 😎

Lessons start this week, however. This means only one thing - a pause to my Victorian periodicals research! I will pick it up again next summer.

Data collection like this is essential to my research. It's like stats to the sociologist. When I write about beauty, clothes, makeup, female education, housekeeping, I need to have primary material to back it up. This primary material is put in dialogue with other forms of Victorian cultural production, e.g. the Victorian novels and letters!

However, I must also say that going through the periodicals is great fun. I enjoy it very much. Victorian writing is rich like a scone with jam! Yum!

What are the periodicals about? Personally I research mainly women's periodicals. You can find everything there, from cooking, and serving tea to dying gloves and, of course, flirting. They called it "courtship" back then.

Victorian women were expected to do everything in the home. They were even expected to know how to do soap and basic medicine (of course as industrialism and living standards both progressed, more and more women could afford to buy these things).

Though my research is postponed, my interest for the Victorians is not. Stay tuned for more on the 19th century 😀

And have a good start to the week! Xxx