Browsing for Books in the Sixteenth Century

If you were browsing through a bookshop in sixteenth century Lyon, what would you find? According to Louis Bourgeois in Quand la cour de France vivait à Lyon (Fayard 1980), book production in the city at mid-century fell into roughly these categories:

28% of books treated religious subjects;

12% were dedicated to science and the arts (medicine and philosophy being most the popular);

33% could be considered belles-lettres  (grammar, Latin and neo-Latin literature, French poetry and prose);

6% discussed history;

the remaining 21% were mostly texts of Roman, canon and French law.

Good thing Lyon was far from the beach--not a lot of light reading to choose from!

Writing Software

When two writers start talking, one of the first questions they ask each other (after "What do you write?") is "What software do you use?" We all know that most people, when it comes to computers, are either strongly pro-PC or pro-Mac. I'm not about to open that debate. Suffice it to say that now that my Toshiba laptop has died after five valiant years of rough drafts, Curious George games and photo downloads, I am finally able to make the switch to Apple. My husband is ecstatic that our house will finally be PC-free. What I am ecstatic about is I get to write my next novel using Scrivener software.

Scrivener, as its designers describe it, is "a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts." It is available for download here. After the thirty day free trial period, it costs forty dollars to buy the license for continued use. I've been using it for a few days now and am thrilled. The best feature is a virtual corkboard that allows you to create and rearrange index cards, displayed all at once--the perfect tool for developing and plotting story events. You can open research files alongside your text draft, view synopses of each chapter, and keep track of the status of each chapter or scene. Although I haven't actually done it yet (I'm still in the plotting stage), you can supposedly view different threads in a document, for example calling up all the scenes in which a certain character appears, or that take place in a specific setting--an amazing tool for following the execution of story arcs and checking a draft for consistency. I'm not particularly computer savvy and I'm finding Scrivener easy to use. The documentation is pretty straightforward and there is a good tutorial to learn with. (Okay, I do have an incredibly helpful scientist husband to help me when I get stuck, but I'm sure you'll be fine without him.)

Those of you who write on Mac computers might want to check it out (you can import already existing work into the program). If my experience so far is any indication, Scrivener is worth every penny of the licensing fee. (Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with or compensated by the software designer, just a happy customer.)

I'll keep you updated on how it goes as I use more of Scrivener's features. And if anyone has other writing software to tout (even if it's for the PC), please feel free to tell us about it.

Sixteenth Century Earthquake

We have all been shocked to see the devastation and learn of the tremendous loss of life that occurred in China last week during the Sichuan earthquake. While reading about this current disaster, I was surprised to learn that the deadliest natural disaster, in  terms of lives lost, was an earthquake that occurred in the Shaanxi province of China, not far from Sichuan, in the middle of the sixteenth century. 

On  January 23, 1556, during the reign of Emperor Jianjing of the Ming Dynasty, a tremendous earthquake shook Shaanxi Province. Scientists have assigned a reading of 8-8.3 on the Richter scale to this quake. Although there have been quakes that have registered higher, no quake has resulted in more deaths. Based on historical records, an estimated 830,000 people are thought to have died. The destruction stretched over an area of 500 square miles; in some counties, over half the inhabitants perished. Many peasants of the time lived in cave dwellings carved into the soft silt cliffs; entire mountainsides collapsed, killing all inside the caves. Aftershocks continued for six months and fires raged for days. I doubt too many Europeans of the time learned of the disaster, but those involved in the spice and silk trade must surely have heard something. The Science Museums of China has information about the Shaanxi earthquake here.

As we pray for and send aid to the victims of the current catastrophe, let us remember the hundreds of thousands of people who died five centuries ago in eerily similar circumstances. 

The Man Behind the Lists

After my post on Peter Roget and his thesaurus last week, my father-in-law alerted me to something I'd never heard before--that Roget suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and possibly high-functioning Asperger's syndrome. This aspect of his personality is examined in a new biography of Roget, The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of 'Roget's Thesaurus,' by Joshua Kendall. A good deal of depression and mental illness afflicted Roget's family; Kendall views Roget's obsessive list-making as "a heroic defense mechanism," an attempt to order the chaos of his life and keep a grip on his mental stability. The writer of the NYT review of the biography points out, however, that if Roget did suffer from Asperger's, the list-making was not so much a conscious effort but an "involuntary part of who he was." In any case, the biography looks interesting and is definitely going into my TBR pile. The possibility of illness underlying Roget's efforts in a sense humanizes his cerebral masterpiece and is an example of how good things can often result from unfortunate circumstances. (And thanks to my father-in-law for prompting me to delve a bit further into Roget's life.)

Jeu de paume

As promised, here is the link to an excellent article on the history and current practice of the precursor to modern tennis, jeu de paume. It includes a fascinating account of Margot of Hainault, who in 1427 defeated some of the best male players of the game. Henri II played daily, dressed in white, with white shoes and a straw hat upon his head. He supposedly allowed no deference for his royal status while on the court. Think you'd be brave enough to beat the king?

Answers to Quiz #2

My apologies for the delay in posting the correct answers to Quiz #2. My laptop hard-drive is dying a slow death, so I've been forbidden from using that computer until my husband can back the entire thing up and defragment the disk. I'm working on a different computer now, and it's taking me a bit of time to navigate my way around. And please excuse the lack of accent marks in this post--I haven't figured out how to insert them yet!

Here are the correct answers for the quiz:

1. C The House of VALOIS ruled France from 1328, when Philippe VI took the throne, until 1589, when Henri VI, the first Bourbon king, took over. During the sixteenth century, it was actually a minor branch of the house, the Valois-Angouleme, who ruled. The monarchs were: Francois I (15115-1547), Henri II (1547-1559), Francois II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henri III (1574-1589). Catherine de Medici served as regent for Charles IX, who was only 10 years old when he became king, and again for Henri III.

2. A ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM was the famous Dutch humanist of the Renaissance. Although he never formally abandoned the Catholic Church, his rationalistic biblical commentaries and other writings provided fodder for those who did. In 1519 Francois invited him to head a new college for the study of the classics, but Erasmus valued his intellectual freedom and, not wishing to be tied to any prince, turned him down. (The fact that he did not want to offend Charles V, from whom he was already receiving a stipend, probably also influenced his decision.) The post at the College went to Janus Lascaris, a noted Greek scholar from Italy, instead. Francois's readers formed the prestigious institute of higher learning now known as the College de France.

3. D TENNIS, or jeu de paume, was the trendy sport favored by kings and courtiers during the Renaissance. There is an excellent article on the history of jeu de paume, which is still played in classical form in France, here. The name "tennis" is thought to derive from the French "Tenez," or "Get ready," called at the beginning of a match; "love" from "l'oeuf," or "egg," meaning "zero." (Wrestling was also practiced by Francois and Henri VIII, but not by courtiers and their ladies as well.)

4. C CHARLES V (1500-1558) was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, beating out Francois, who had run a close race. With Charles ruling Spain, the Netherlands and sizable portions of Italy, France felt threatened on all sides. The political, personal and military rivalry between the two monarchs remained intense their entire lives.

5. B Anne de Pisseleu, eventually honored as the DUCHESSE D'ETAMPES, became Francois's mistress after his return from captivity in Spain in 1526. Whereas Francois's first mistress, Francoise de Foix, played no political role, the duchesse d'Etampes was a member of Francois's privy council and, according to one foreign ambassador, the person who wielded the most influence on the king in matters of state. I will do a longer post on Anne later, as she will be one of the main characters in my second novel. Anne's chief rival at court was Diane de Poitiers, the Dauphin Henri's mistress.

Three people took the quiz--Sarah, Catherine, and Daphne--and they all did quite well. DAPHNE answered all five questions correctly, and Sarah and Catherine only missed one question each. CONGRATULATIONS, ladies! Thank you for playing the game and being faithful readers of the blog. I hope everyone reading learned a little something she didn't know before.

Elizabeth Chadwick Comments on Covers

Elizabeth Chadwick, bestselling author of numerous historical novels including The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion, added a comment about her own covers down in the comment section of a previous post. I'm reposting it here so you are all sure to see it. Elizabeth writes:

The women (and the man in one case!) on my covers aren't exactly headless, and may even have faces next time around but they belong to that school of design - and especially the nice but not historically correct frocks thing. However, since having been given those covers my sales have more than quadrupled and I have gone bestseller. I have heard from a major chainstore bookbuyer in the UK that the general public is still very keen on the headless nice-frock school of jacket and they are still selling big-time. In fact he's going to be saying so in an article for a writing magazine soon.

Other than that I had a reader write to me to say she so much preferred headless or turned away because then she could imagine the character in her own head and didn't have to put a post it note over their faces for the duration of reading the novel!

Bottom line: Headless may be a cliche, but at the moment it is still selling books like hot cakes!

The inside scoop from someone who knows! I thank Elizabeth for her input and hope that she will alert us to the bookseller's article when it is published. Be sure to follow the ongoing cover discussion at Historical Fiction.

A question for readers: does it bother you tremendously if the depiction of the main character on the book's cover does not match the description of the character in words?