Dames blanches are the French version of White Ladies, ghosts, fey, or other spirits who can be encountered anywhere in the country. Many can be kind if deferred to, but failure to do so leads to more malevolent response, sometimes fatally. #PhantomsFriday 🖼️: Dismyrkva

I've always found this painting of Mary I faintly disturbing, as if she's just about holding onto sanity. I'd expect Bloody Mary to appear more in #folklore She haunts Sawston Hall, #Cambridgeshire, where she escaped a murderous plot, but she has to share it with many other ghosts. #PhantomsFriday

heh jimmy yawright ih stull wayiz urryi ih heh jimmy ma right insane yirra pape ma right insane yirwanny us jimmy see it nyir eyes wanny uz —Tom Leonard, “The Good Thief” in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongate.co.uk 2021 #Easter #poetry #GoodFriday canongate.co.uk/books/3267-t...

"The Haunted Library. Hastings Library can be found in Claremont & is known as the Brassey Institute. ...he thought it was just the light filtering through the window...but then a ball of light glided gracefully up the staircase." From "Haunted Hastings" by Tina Brown, 2006. #PhantomsFriday #Brassey

#PhantomsFriday "For outside, riding the mist in ghostly majesty, a great Viking dragonship lay parallel with our compartment, its sides adorned with moisture-dripping shields. And behind those shields, spears raised in hideous salutation, ranks of armored skeletons..." Book/art credit in alt text

The Haunted House (Catherine Duke Quickened her Steps) by Howard Pyle, 1904 #PhantomsFriday

Good day, dear Bibliophiles 🎨Chris Dunn

"Three men and three women came and followed his fiddle, dancing, to the Preußlitzer Flur, where the graves of the old people stood in the woods, and there, the curse hit them and the Seven were turned to stone." www.tumblr.com/whatthecrowt...

'Marguerite's Ghost Appearing to Faust' - an early 19th Century French print. #PhantomsFriday #ghost #engraving #artsky #Goethe

Once, there was no dancing on Good Friday, any place they spoke German. But, as the story goes, there was a girl in the woods of Anhalt who did... Read our 34th #darkspringtide tale below. 🎨 Anne Anderson

"Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?" -- Jane Goodall, born #OTD 1934

“I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death.” 📖 “The Three Musketeers” ~ Alexandre Dumas, 1844 #BookchatWeekly #FictionFriday #BookSky 🎥 “The Three Musketeers”, 1973 10am TODAY on @5ACTION_tv

The husband and I did some tidying today, and the kitchen table now feels lovely and calm. Enjoying some tea from a crockery set gifted for our wedding several years ago. Also, getting to grips with Nerval's style of writing #bookchatweekly

“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.” 📖 “On the Beach” ~ Nevil Shute, 1957 #BookchatWeekly #FictionFriday #BookSky 🎥 “On the Beach”, 1959 11am TODAY on @SkyArts

“With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.” 📖 “The War of the Worlds”~ HG Wells, 1898 #BookchatWeekly #FictionFriday #BookSky 🎥 “The War of the Worlds”, 1953 12:40pm TODAY on @Legend__Channel

‘Alix appearing in the mask' by Tony Robert-Fleury (1890) #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly

Thank you for your utterly commendable posts, dear Bibliophiles! See you next week on #BookologyThursday 🥀 art by James Tissot (1876)

I’ve spent 20 years inside palaces. This week on MY LIFE IN THE PAST, I introduce the book I wrote after leaving them. QUEENS & KINGS is now available to pre-order. It’s not a conventional history, but the stories that stayed with me. Read more about it here! lucyworsley.substack.com/p/from-hampt...

Thank you for your utterly commendable posts, dear Bibliophiles! See you next week on #BookologyThursday 🥀 art by James Tissot (1876)

#BookologyThursday Dickens' sentimental description of the death of Little Nell was not universally appreciated - Oscar Wilde wrote that: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

#BookologyThursday When Dicken's novel was published in a monthly magazine, it was reported that people queued on the docks in America to find out the fate of Little Nell in the final instalment. 🎨George Cattermole - The Death of Little Nell

#BookologyThursday "She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird - a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed - was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child mistress was mute and motionless for ever." The Old Curiosity Shop

O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee. The Princess, A Medley Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1847 #BookologyThursday

#BookologyThursday "'Little bits [of fluff] fly off fro' the cotton, when they're carding it, and fill the air ... there's many a one as works in a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spitting blood, because they're just poisoned by the fluff.' Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South

7:30pm TODAY on @BBCRadio4Extra From 2017, Ep 4 (of 10) 📻 “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4” - “The Kiss” Sue Townsend's 1982 novel📖 abridged by Sara Davies & read by Harry McEntire. #BookchatWeekly #BookologyThursday #BookSky

#BookologyThursday Despite the sentimentality of the age, Victorian children's literature was full of dire warnings about the consequences of disobedience or folly, such as this poor child who died after petting a mad dog. Mercy for the naughty was in short supply.

“When Children Are Asleep” (oil on canvas, 1885), by Thomas Faed (1825–1900). Held by the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. #BookologyThursday #C19 #art

“'In th' evening late old Glaucé thither led Faire Britomart, and, that same Armory Downe taking, her therein appareled Well as she might with brave bauldrick garnished.” (From “The Thirde Book of the Faerie Queene” ed. Thomas J. Wise, London, 1895) 🎨 Walter Crane #bookologythursday

#BookologyThursday From fairy-rings to Lewis Carroll’s Alice, mushrooms have long been entwined with the supernatural. Mike Jay looks at reports of mushroom-induced trips & how one species became established as a motif of fairyland. publicdomainreview.org/essay/fungi-... Art- John Anster Fitzgerald

“No Romanticist or Victorianist can excuse an ignorance of Scott. Back then, everybody read him. He was the first global superstar of the novel… Everybody read Scott, no exceptions” —Prof Adam Roberts on Walter Scott #BookologyThursday #C19 amechanicalart.blogspot.com/2016/06/some...

#BookologyThursday ⚰️🐇 Victorian post mortem photo. This tiny, somber 1845 daguerreotype shows a pet rabbit named Genushe, captured in a post-mortem portrait. Dressed in doll clothes and holding flowers, Genushe was memorialized after death in this rare Victorian-era memento. Photographer unknown. 🕯️🐰

#BookologyThursday 📚 🧚‍♀️🌼 In #Victorian Britain & Ireland, Fairy belief still lingered in hedgerows and hearths—iron was kept close to ward off their mischief, and whispers of changelings haunted families. Meanwhile, cunning folk offered charms and remedies to keep the unseen at bay. 🧲 #BokChatWeekly

"I will tan thy hide till it be as many colors as a beggar's cloak." "Thou pratest like an ass... for I could send this shaft clean through thy proud heart before a curtal friar could say grace over a roast goose." - Howard Pyle, "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" #BookologyThursday

1/4 A precocious 1700s poet named Thomas Chatterton was publishing mature work by the time he was 11 & dead by his own hand at 17. In spite of his genius he lived in poverty. 3 days before death, he fell into an open grave. redbubble.com/shop/ap/3802... #bookologythursday #art #wallart #literature

#bookologythursday "How can'st thou part sadness and melancholy." Love's Labour's Lost 1.2 #greatexpectations #misshavisham #bookchatweekly Charles Dickens #victoriana

Arsenic was used in cosmetics to achieve a pale, “perfect” complexion. Beauty, in the Victorian imagination, often came with a quiet, poisonous cost. #BookologyThursday

The #Victorian Age was one of great scientific progress but this encouraged a lot of charlatans who were sometimes promoted by credulous editors Here's Dr Emmens and his 'argentaurum' in Pearson's 1898 . How many investors and dosh did he get? Where did he disappear to afterwards? #BookologyThursday

#BookologyThursday "I got her a crape veil. She's the happiest mourner you ever saw. She went back to the Widows' Home like a spring lamb. She doesn't even cry. But she takes it out in crape. You can't think how happy she is in that veil." A Singular Life, Elizabeth Phelps #TheVictorianBookoftheDead

"The devil's most devilish when respectable" ✍🏻Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'Aurora Leigh' 🎨 'Awkward contre-temps in Regent Street during the height of the season: "That Girl seems to know you, George!".' Victorian virtue on #BookologyThursday

"The Arsenic Waltz" published in Punch magazine in 1862. This image depicts a skeleton gentleman asking a skeleton lady to dance, and was a commentary on the health risks associated with using arsenic to produce vibrant green colors in fabrics, wallpapers, and artificial foliage. #BookologyThursday

In Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood, there was (& I hope still is) a Victorian device built to horrify, edify, & entertain the young… When you deposit your coin, mechanical puppets re-enact the grisly story of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber #BookologyThursday #C19 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee1S...

I have a number of The Strand Magazines in individual numbers rather than bound into volumes and this means I get to see the adverts, too. This one, from the close of the 19th Century is fab, isn't it? #BookologyThursday #Victorian #artnouveau

"The danger arising from the use of arsenical wall paper is increasing... These toned papers, with no figures, or only a delicate tracery of vines and flowers, are becoming very fashionable, because very beautiful." —Shadows from the Walls of Death (1874), Dr. Robert Kedzie #BookologyThursday

#BookologyThursday "Have we not seen, round Britain’s peopled shore, Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore? Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main." 🎨The Emigrant's Last Sight of Home - Richard Redgrave used Goldsmith's words alongside his art.

'And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott.' 🖋️Alfred, Lord Tennyson 🎨John Atkinson Grimshaw #bookologythursday

Welcome to #BookologyThursday 🥀 Join us today as we explore our theme: 🥀. VICTORIANA 🥀 Realism, Pre-Raphaelites, the Aesthetic Movement, obsessions with death, peculiar manners, toxic beauty products, bizarre hobbies… in Victorian-era literature, art, and lore.

“The practice of medicine requires a keen mind, a steady hand, and a compassionate heart.” 📖 “The Citadel” ~ A.J. Cronin, 1937 #BookchatWeekly #BookologyThursday #BookSky 📻 “The Citadel”, s10 Ep 2 2:15pm TODAY on @BBCRadio4

“If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock’s” —“A Penny Plain & Twopence Coloured”: Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about his childhood love for toy theatres in MEMORIES & PORTRAITS (1887) #BookologyThursday #C19 #history www.pollocks-coventgarden.co.uk/products/pol...

Victorian realism sought to capture life as it was, industrial, crowded, and often harsh. Yet even its most grounded stories carried an undercurrent of moral tension and quiet unease. #BookologyThursday Art: Gustave Courbet

That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #BookologyThursday #BookChatWeekly 🎨Patrick Whelan