Quote
Originally posted by IolantheAlias:
What Jane Austen Ate And Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox-Hunting To Whist - The Daily Facts of Life In 19th Century England by Daniel Pool.
What was a guinea? Which ranked higher, an earl or a baron? What was the difference between getting married by banns and getting married by a special license? What was a glebe? And all sorts of other information about the stuff in Victorian novels that everyone knew at the time but has now disappeared.
Answers: A guinea is a pound plus a shilling, so 21 shillings. An earl ranks higher than a baron but is less than a duke. Banns were announcements of a marriage from the pulpit in church, for three straight weeks. If no one forbade the banns the man and woman could be married. The banns were free, unlike a special license which had to be gotten from the Archbishop of Canterbury and cost a whacking great sum. And a glebe was the farmland attached to the clergyman's "living" - his position as a rector or vicar to a parish in the Church of England.
I have that book, although I can't tell you where it is currently located. Probably in a box with all my Agatha Christie novels. Ah, reminds me of my days as a hopeful Regency novelist. Sigh. Someday, I'll make it back to England and travel the countryside by coach or train (I'm sure both the English and I would prefer it I *didn't* drive myself). Eat real scones, drink real tea, walk through real gardens. Sigh. I hope all of you living in Britain take advance of that whenever you can, so the rest of us can live vicariously.

VirginiaR.
"On the long road, take small steps." -- Jor-el, "The Foundling"
---
"clearly there is a lack of understanding between those two... he speaks Lunkheadanian and she Stubbornanian" -- chelo.