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There have been a lot of articles and blog posts floating around lately about what to read if you’re into Downton Abbey. One in particular, which talked about Elizabeth von Arnim apropos of one character giving a copy of Elizabeth and Her German Garden to another, made Evangeline at Edwardian Promenade say, “hey, what about Elinor Glyn?” Which, obviously, is the correct response to everything. And then I read it, and thought, “yeah, Elizabeth and her German Garden was popular when it came out in 1898, but would people really be trying to get each other to read a fifteen rear-old(ish) novel by a German author during World War I?” And then we decided that we could probably come up with an excellent list of Edwardian and World War I-era fiction that tied in the Downton Abbey. And so we did.

It’s a pretty casual list, mostly composed of things we came up with off the tops of out heads, a bit of research on Evangeline’s part and a bit of flipping through advertisements on mine, so we’re making no claims to be exhaustive. If you have suggestions for additions to the list, leave a comment.

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Today’s confident on the hip high five comes from Edward Stratemeyer.


My guess is you have no idea who this is. Eddie is the brainchild behind Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and boatload of other popular series that have been a mainstay on the entertainment. My favorite will always be the Bobbsey Twins. He wrote about 1300 books for kids. Yes, that is a lot of books.

Perhaps something is stewing in you is going to spring up an entire industry in the children’s book field. Think about being a risk taker as you move forward with your goal. Those who play it safe rarely get what they want. Go ahead, take a leap to day. See where it leads you.

Keep working. Today’s coffee is practically a double of shot of energy.

A quote to consider:

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things. - Niccolo Machiavelli

In roughly chronological order Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures. This is my favorite of the Ruth Fielding books, and the kind of thing I often pick up when there’s nothing in particular I want to read. But the most recent time I picked up this one was so long ago that I can’t remember where I got [...]

I found this Nancy Drew parody the other day and I think it’s excellent. Cleolinda Jones has distilled the Nancy Drew books to their predictable and ridiculous, yet hugely enjoyable, essence. “E. Stop meddling, Nancy Drew! We’re so dangerous that we 1. made a threatening call to your house! 2. left a threatening letter in your mailbox! 3. ran [...]