The Long Eighteenth Century
Fairy Tales, Pt 2: Antoine Galland and the Arabian Nights
When I sat down to write about Charles Perrault and Tales of Mother Goose, I had no intention of writing more about the writers who “created” fairy tales as we know them . But as I wrote about Perrault I remembered some of my favorite stories,[1] and stumbled across a new one. Suddenly a small…
Read More
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Kathryn Gehred
Kathryn Gehred has a master’s degree in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and was part of a team of editors who completed The Papers of Martha Washington, a transcribed collection of all of Martha Washington’s known correspondence published by UVA Press in 2022. She began releasing Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant in 2020…
Read More
The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713–aka as Girls Can Rule, Too
Back in December, when I was trying to make sense of the tangled succession of the Hapsburg dynasty and Holy Roman Empire, I came across a reference to the Pragmatic Sanction, issued by Emperor Charles VI in 1713. It caught my attention for reasons that will become clear to you in just a moment. …
Read More