Proficiency in Whist Implies Capacity for Success...

By popular demand, weekly Whist games will be returning for the winter season!

Starting with 2 opportunities to play in person at the coffeehouse, Mississinewa 1812 & Trail of History. These are you're last chance to show off all the practice you've had at events over the summer or to simply fake out your reenacting friends who think you've been practicing. Even if you haven't gotten the chance to learn this easy & period correct game, never fear. The Widow is always willing to teach newcomers and since Whist involves no gambling, your purse is safe.

Period correct beverages & treats will be available, but feel free to bring your own items to add to the atmosphere. Remember, the coffeehouse is a First Person Environment and visitors are encouraged to participate.

 

Whist with the Widow Returns

Friday October 12, 2012

7 o'clock

at the C. Black Coffeehouse, during Mississinewa 1812

Whist with the Widow Continues

Friday October 19, 2012

7 o'clock

at the C. Black Coffeehouse, during Trail of History

Look for further details and the Facebook event page for the online games, starting in late October and continuing Every Friday night, all winter long.

There can't be good living where there is not good drinking.

As any experienced reenactor will tell you, once the gates close and the public returns home, the true fun begins. More often than not this evening entertainment includes drinking, at times prodigious amounts, of alcohol. What are those of us who wish to remind in first person to do when the bottle begins to be passed? Surely we don't want to pass up the option of free booze and the rare opportunity to sample the home brewed concoctions of our fellow camp mates, lest of all we come across as a stick in the mud and not be invited back for the next event. Instead of sacrificing authenticity or giving up on the dream of 24-7 first person, why not incorporate those late night alcohol fueled shenanigans into our first person experience?

Of course, to truly pull off drunken first person, we must know the proper terminology to describe not only what we drink, but who we are with & how we feel afterward. So I give to you, my historically inebriated readers,

The Regency Era Drunkards Lexicon
or Terms to Turn the Tea-Teetotalers Toes.

Things to drink when you're in the Regency Era:

Adam's Ale : water, plain & simple.

All nations: the drainings of several bottles all into one pot.

balderdash: adulterated wine of any kind.

Bumbo: brandy, water & sugar,

calibogus: rum and spruce beer mixed

Cobblers punch: The frightening combination of treacle, vinegar, gin & water mixed. Yes, together.

conny wabble: eggs & brandy beaten together.

Crank: A classic gin & tonic water, without the tonic.

Flip: small beer, brandy & sugar combined & heated with a red hot poker.

Sir Cloudsley: flip with lemon added named after Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell.

grog: rum and water.

hog wash: a thick, bad beer. Like flat Pabst Blue Ribbon.

rot gut: small beer

scandal broth: tea-drinking

slip-slops: tea, water-gruel and anything taken medicinally.

tall boy: The same as it is today, a two quart pot or bottle.

twist: half tea, half coffee

What to say when you're drinking in the Regency Era:

We gave the bottle a black eye: drank it almost up

I'm chapt: thirsty, very very thirsty.

dead men: empty bottles

tipsey: almost drunk

toss pot: a drunkard

wet one's whistle: to drink

chirping merry: exhilarated with liquor

toast: a health said over drinks

How much to drink in the Regency Era:

a bumper: a full glass

like a beast: only when thirsty

a dram: a small measure of spiritous liquors

Bung your eye or fire a slug: drink a dram

Just a nip of ale: a half pint of beer

a cup of the creature: a cup of good liquor

a swig: a hearty draught of liquor

What NOT to do when you've had too much to drink in the Regency Era:

cast up ones accounts, cascade, to shoot the cat, flash the hash : vomit

churl: drink malt liquor immediately following wine

admiral of the barrow seas: vomit into the lap of the person sitting opposite due to drunkenness.

Become boosey, flustered, foxed or groggified : to get drunk

capsize: drink till you fall out of your chair

become cropsick: sickness in the stomach arising from drunkeness

guzzle: to drink greedily

List complied from Captain Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811.

To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.

Self-Portrait by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, 1771.

“I'd love to participate but I don't have a character.”

I've heard this a lot since beginning First Person Interpretations Day at the C. Black Coffeehouse back in 2010 and feel the need to address what I think is a common misconception. There is this idea that you have to have a “character” in order to do first person reenacting. This is simply not true.

There is nothing in first person reenacting that requires us to take on anything fake, from the accents to the personal backgrounds and everything in between. The simplest and most honest persona is the one that you already have: yourself. There is no reason that whomever you are in your modern life, can't also be who you are when doing first person, only with a little historical twist.

So, in order to help others prepare for the upcoming reenacting season and the ongoing first person interactions offered at the coffeehouse, here is a simple guide to turning your modern self, into your historic self.

The Basics

Name: Use your real name. That way you don't have to remember to respond to a new name while at events! It is also easier for your fellow reenacting friends, especially if they are also doing first person and having a hard enough time remembering to call everyone “Sir” or “Mr.”!

Age: Subtract your actual age from the year you are portraying to get the year you were born. Stick with your real birth date, it's easy to remember & face it, no one is going to ask you when your birthday is while in character anyway. However, knowing the year that you were born historically, does help with the types of experiences you might have had. More importantly, it helps you to remember just how much of the era you've lived through! I am sometimes surprised to discover just how much of the late 18th century my Regency self would have experienced, or maybe I'm just older than I realize.

Occupation: What skill or trade do you already have? Do you typically demonstrate, sell items or do certain tasks around camp? What do you do in the modern world & how does that translate historically? When in doubt, be someone generic. A street seller, a sailor or a solider, a servant, anyone that is one of a large group is easier to portray. This is doubled if that generic person is also of the lower classes. Remember, there might only be one General Washington, but there are hundreds of Private So-N-Sos.

City or Country: This is probably one of the things that scares people away from first person reenacting the most, having to decided where to be from. I will let you in on a little secret, unless you are in a very organized event, with a focused time & location, no one really cares where you choose to be from!

Want to hear another secret? Only the super hard-core folks will notice any little flaws in the match between your personas location, clothes, accent etc. If anyone comes up to you while you are doing first person and starts nagging that (some picky little detail) wouldn't have been used by a (whom ever you are portraying) in (where ever you are from) in (what ever year it is), you have my permission to tell them to get stuffed, especially if they are not making the effort to do first person!

When ever I am asked where I am from, or more often where the coffeehouse is located, I always tell them we are “3 miles from town”. What town? Well “the” town of course, don't they know what town is just 3 miles away? Being vague, yet specific, is a great way to be flexible as event locations are always changing while our personas do not.

Self-Portrait by Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee le Brun, 1800.

Class Level: Most of us are lower class, even those of us portraying business owners or tradesmen. Just like in life, start at the bottom and worry about working your way up over time. This goes along with your choice of occupation as well. It's easier to portray one of the masses. Don't be afraid to be a generic, lower class nobody! Want yet another secret? Portraying the lower class is also cheaper; less accessories, simpler clothes and no fancy duds to try and keep clean while in camp. This means more time to really enjoy not only the events, but the first person interaction as well.

Spouse & Children: If you have them, great. I'd suggest using them, especially if they are doing first person with you. If they don't reenact, or you don't have one, there are lots of reasons a spouse could simply be “someplace else”. The war, sailing, at work, in “the” town etc. The same goes for children. Indentures are another great way to get rid of your children, whether you actually have them or not. I frequently mention my own daughters “indenture” to various (and constantly changing) individuals, when in reality she is just at home.

As morbid as it sounds, death is another good way to explain someone not being there. One point of caution however, especially for widows, be prepared to explain how your husband died, the public always seems interested in that detail when you least expect it. As with everything, stick with simple, understandable modes of death, a fever, injury or that ever so helpful “war”. They are easy to remember should anyone ask, easy for the public to understand yet vague enough that no one will be unintentionally hurt by hearing the story.

Other important things to know about yourself: Can you read or do you just look at the pretty pictures? Do you play an instrument or sing out of key? Have a gambling habit? Like coffee but think tea is for wimps? Go to church regularly? Do you love gardening but the names of every single general in the war bores you to death? Think about your modern day personality and interests and how that translates into your historic persona.

Many people new to first person reenacting think that they have to know “everything about everything” when creating a persona, every battle, every politician, every tool etc. The truth is, if it's not something that you'd care to know about in the modern world, why would your historic self want to know it in their time? I can relate the recipe for a double chocolate mocha brownies by heart, but heck if I know the name of my senator; my historic self is no different!

I hope these simple tips will help many of you develop first person personas and encourage more participation in the first person interactions being offered at the C. Black coffeehouse. Remember, be yourself. The easiest way to create a historic persona, is to use as much of your real life as possible. Don't fall into the trap of assuming your first person persona has to be entirely different from who you are naturally. This just makes doing first person more difficult and creates unneeded stress, keeping you away from the fun of actually doing first person.

After all, who do you know better than yourself?

Self-Portrait by Benjamin West, 1758 or 1759.

Soup for the Historian's Soul

Soup for the Historian’s Soul or how to make an economical dish for those who spend much time thinking of the past whilst living in the future.

Vegetables for the Soup, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin , 1732.

The cold winter weather has finally settled around us, and so too do we settle, around the fire with a hot dish of soup to keep away the chill.

Soup, or a “decoction of flesh for the table” as defined by Samuel Johnson in 1798, has long been a stable food for all classes. In the 18th century it was commonly served as an early course to a formal dinner or along with three other dishes in a more meager family meal. Part III of A Treatise of all Sorts of Foods begins with liquids, soup included, reasoning that “that we ought always to begin our Meals with liquid Foods as being thofe which are eafier of Digeftion and ftay leaft in the Stomach.”

The ease of soup on digestion is further supported in its use for fever patients & others with weak stomachs or suffering from illnesses. In fact, soups and other liquid nourishment are so common that a full 15 of the recipes Hannah Glasse gives in her chapter on “Directions for the Sick” are for broth, soup & meat “tea”. Women suffering from the puerperal fever, more commonly called child-bed fever, were encouraged to eat small, frequent quantities of “Chicken-water, or mutton-broth made weak and cleared of all its fat, beef-tea” along with other nourishing liquids, proper medication & rest. Soup could also cure that most common and dreaded aliment among sailors, scurvy. Although the idea of “a Soup of boiled Cabbage and Onions” as advised in Richard Brookes' 1765 General Practice of Physic is not the most appetizing, his promise that it would “cure an adventitious Scurvy in its firft Stage either at Land or Sea in any Part of the World befides” makes it worth adding to any sailors recipe book.

However, in the 18th century that comforting bowl of soup was not as simple as cracking open a can of Campbell’s. Not only did the home cook have to consider the types of meat or fish, vegetables and herbs to be used, but the order in which the ingredients were added to the pot and even the cooking vessel itself played an important role in the quality of the resulting dish. According to E. Taylor in The Lady’s, Housewives & Cook-maids Assistant the cook must “be careful to use pots and sauce-pans with the lids well tinned, and very clean, free from grease and sand, for fear of giving the soups a bad taste”. Clean, well maintained tools are very sage advice, even for today's modern cooks.

White Soup Bowl, Anne Vallayer-Coster, 1771.

While the process of making a soup is not particularly complicated, small changes could easily effect the final product. Elizabeth Raffald advises cooks “to lay your meat in the bottom of your pan with a good lump of butter” in order to “give the foup a very different flavour from putting water in at the firft”. She also advises that “when you make any white foup, don't put in cream till you take it off the fire,” presumable to prevent any possibility of the milk scalding while over the heat. Such subtle variations in the method could not only dramatically change the final flavor, but even change the dish from a proper soup, to a broth, gravy or “meat tea”.

Despite all the variations soups were still an economical meal, requiring few ingredients and tools. While meat, fish or foul was preferable for a good, hearty soup, they weren't the only option for those of meager means. Even the poorest of the poor could feed on bread soup, given nothing more than water, a few spices & a crust of bread, hopefully with the mold spots scraped off. They could indulge in a barley soup flavored with mace & perhaps a piece of lemon-peel. The suggested white wine in Hannah Glasse's recipe needn't be of particularly high quality, as anyone who has cooked with alcohol knows and in a pinch could easily be substituted with plain water. Such economical recipes were the saving grace for those struggling to put food on the table, or those, such as the Killuloe School in Dublin, feeding many mouths. Reports from 1800 by the Society in Dublin for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor show that 48 children could be fed a pint of soup each with the entire cost only amounting to 12d. Certainly the children were being fed the most basic, and inexpensive soup possible, but it was better than “dog's soup”.

~ ~ ~
A Modern Historic Soup
adapted from Sarah Harrison's, The House-keeper's Pocket-book: and Compleat Family Cook, 1739.

“A Soup.
TAKE three Pints of strong Broth, fifty Balls of Forc'd-meat, a Handful of Spinage and Sorrel chop'd, and a little Salt; let it stew a little, then put in a
Loaf Loaf of French Bread cut like Dice, and toasted, and fix Ounces of Butter. Tofs it up, and serve it.”

48 oz. (1 large can) chicken broth
1 bouillon cube
12 meatballs, homemade or frozen
1 bunch of fresh spinach, coarsely chopped
1 handful of sorrel or arugula, coarsely chopped
1 loaf of French bread, cubed & toasted or 3 cups fresh croutons
salt & fresh pepper to taste

Heat the broth and bouillon together. Add the meatballs and allow to cook until done. Frozen pre-cooked meatballs only need to heat through. Add the spinach and arugula. Cover the pot just long enough for the greens to wilt. Remove from the heat. Add in the bread or croutons. Season with salt & fresh pepper Stir briefly and serve immediately.

~ ~ ~
works cited

Brookes, Richard. General Practice of Physic. 1765
Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. 1784.
Grose, Francis. Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. 1796.
Harrison, Sarah. The House-keeper's Pocket-book: and Compleat Family Cook. 1739.
Johnson, Samuel. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. 1798.
Lemery, Louis. A Treatise On All Sorts of Food. 1749.
Raffald, Elizabeth. The Experienced English Housekeeper. 1786.
Society in Dublin. The first number of the Reports of the Society. 1800.
Taylor, E. The Lady’s, Housewives & Cook-maids Assistant. 1769.

With as Much Dispatch as They Would a Dish of Fritters.

A recipt for Hasty Fritters, sometimes called Common Fritters, ideal for use with apples or other such sturdy fruits of the season.

Everyone has heard of the classic colonial "Apple Fritter", but what really is an apple fritter, or a fritter at all, according to 18th century cooks? Further, are they worth adding to our stash of historic recipes? You know, the ones that always impress, taste great and aren't so difficult that we spend the entire cooking time cursing who ever invented food.

To answer the first question I turned to many of my favorite recipt book authors of the era, names I'm sure you've either heard, read or at least recognize from all the times I reference them here on Slightly Obsessed.

The queen of 18th century cooking, Hannah Glasse, has a fairly simple recipe for what she calls Hasty Fritters in her ever so popular book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1784 edition). These fritters include apples & currants, but unlike many of the other fritter recipes in the same book, rely on beer for leavening, making them faster than other methods while still being just as soft & tender once cooked. It also means the cook gets to enjoy a little something extra while doing all the hard work. Splash for the pot, sip for the cook!

"To make Hasty Fritters

TAKE a stew pan put in some butter and let it be hot. In the mean time take half a pint of all ale, not bitter, and stir in some flour by degrees, in a little of the ale put in a few currants or chopped apples, beat them up quick and drop a large spoonful at a time all over the pan. Take care they do not stick together, turn them with an egg slice and when they are of a fine brown lay them in a dish and throw some sugar over them. Garnish with orange cut into quarters."

Hannah's recipe is so popular it actually turns up, word for word in quite a few later cookbooks by different authors, such as John Farley's 1787 edition of The London Art of Cookery. I guess plagiarism wasn't as big of a deal in the 1700s as it is today.

While Hannah is making her Hasty Fritters, Elizabeth Raffald shares a recipe in The Experienced English Housekeeper (1786) specifically for Apple Fritters. Although in reality this is just a glorified version of Common Fritters, which she lists earlier in the book as a separate recipe. Elizabeth does point out though, that these fritters are "Proper for a side dish for supper." I'll do you one better and eat them for supper thanks.

"To make Apple Fritters

PARE the largest baking apples you can get, take out the core with an apple scraper, cut them in round slices and dip them in batter made as for common fritters, fry them crisp, serve them up with sugar grated over them and wine sauce in a boat. They are proper for a side dish for supper."

Before Hannah and Elizabeth were frittering away the pages of their respective cookbooks, E. Taylor was directing all the readers of The Lady's, Housewife's and Cook-maid's Assistant (1769) on the fine art of Hasty Apple Fritters. While I like the addition of cinnamon and sugar and the idea of draining the freshly fried fritters in a warm place so they stay hot before serving, a batter made from only beer and flour doesn't sound all that appealing. In fact it sounds rather awful! I'm not certain that any amount of extra sugar on top will fix a bland batter.

"Hasty Apple Fritters

Pare your apples, scoop out the core, cut them in slices across as thick as a half crown, have ready some thin batter made only of strong beer and flour, put a large quantity of lard dripping or butter into your stew pan, dip the apple into the batter and then immediately into the hot lard. When they are a light brown take them out with a slice and lay them upon a drainer before the fire. Send them to table with beaten cinnamon and sugar"

Leave it to a man though, to actually combine all the best aspects of the preceding fritter recipes. All thanks go to John Perkins for doing the hard work in his book Every Woman her Own House-keeper (1796). Here we have not only the wonderful use of beer for leavening, but eggs, nutmeg and sugar to create a batter worthy of frying on its own. That wasn't enough for John though, he uses this perfect batter on apples and further, sprinkles sugar on top of the final fritter goodness. Really his only flaw was not including the recipe for wine sauce, even though he so kindly suggests it!

"Common Fritters

Get some large baking apples, pare them and take out the core, cut them in round slices and dip them in batter made as follows: Take half a pint of ale and two eggs and beat them in as much flour as will make it rather thicker than a common pudding with nutmeg and sugar to your taste. Let it stand three or four minutes to rise. Having dipped your apple into this batter, fry them crisp and serve them up with sugar grated over them and wine sauce in a boat"

To answer the second question, yes fritters are more than worthy of a reenactor's recipe collection. Above are my results after following John Perkins recipe. Soft but still crunchy on the inside, sweet without being cloying, easy to make and not overly messy to clean up after. Even the left over batter made tasty plain fritters when tossed with cinnamon and sugar.

I used my favorite Spartan apples for these, even though they are a recent style of apple, only having been developed in the late 1930s. They are however a good all around fruit with a nice tartness that holds up well against the simple batter. I skinned and cored using my modern OXO tools for speed, but a simple knife and some patience would work in a historic setting just as well.

I did end up using a bottle of Newcastle Nut Brown Ale for the batter. Normally my cooking beer of choice is Boddingtons, partly because it originates to the 18th century but also because I like the way its flavor holds up in recipes. However, I took the advice that the beer not be bitter. Plus, since I only needed a half pint, a single bottle of Newcastle was more economical than a full 4 pack of Boddingtons. It is a Sunday night after all. Maybe next time I should make fritters on a Friday & enjoy the left over beers as part of the snack!

Until then, that's all the time I have to "Fritter Away" this evening.

~~~
works cited

Hannah Glasse. 1784. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Printed for W. Strahan. p. 161-2
John Farley. 1787. The London Art of Cookery and Housekeeper's Complete Assistant. Printed for John Fielding. p. 228
Elizabeth Raffald. 1786. The Experienced English Housekeeper. Printed for R. Baldwin. p 161
E. Taylor. 1769. The Lady's, Housewife's, and Cookmaid's Assistant. Printed by H. Taylor for R. Taylor. p 226
John Perkins. 1796. Every Woman Her Own House-keeper. Publisher James Ridgway p 184-5

Historically Speaking

Historically Speaking; 5 tips to getting started.

The most intimidating part of first person interpretation is speech. However, speaking in a historic manner does not need to be a overwhelming, uncomfortable task. There are a few small things that can be done to our regular speech patterns that will make us sound more historical to the public & will add an element of depth to our first person reenacting. Speaking historically isn't about adopting unnatural speech patterns or phrases, but about making those small alterations that are both convincing & easy! Remember that funny, false accents aren't needed to sound period correct. In fact, false accents are best left to stage actors who only have to say a few pre-planned lines, while we reenactors need to be able to speak freely while sounding historically correct.



1. Give everyone a title.

Adding Mr. or Mistress to the beginning of everyone's name is the quickest, easiest way to sound more period correct. Social lines were more formal in the Regency era and the use of proper titles helped to enforce that social division. If you don't know someone's last name, try adding a title to their first name. If you don't know their name at all, or if they are a member of the public, substitute other formal titles like Sir, Ma'am or even Friend. This applies to children as well as other adults. While it seems odd to call a young child “Young Master” it is very period appropriate, and the public children love it! The one exception to this is for those portraying servants. It is period appropriate for servants to be addressed only by their first names, by those they are serving. However, when in doubt, use a proper title. It's always safer to be more formal rather than less.

2. Formalize your greetings.

Try saying “good morning”, or greeting someone with “good day” rather than your usual “hi”. Not only is this a more period way of greeting, but it helps you keep track of what time of day it is. Formal greetings are also a good way to introduce an ethnic persona, without confusing those around you with a foreign language which they may not understand. Try greeting others with “bonjour” if you are portraying a Frenchman, or “guten tag” if your persona is German.

3. Eliminate modern slang.

No way, dude! Yes way! The first step to eliminating modern slang is to be aware of the words you use. Listen to yourself in daily life, record a phone conversation & listen for frequently used words. Once you've identified the modern words it's only a matter of hearing them in your head before you speak & changing them out for a period term. For example, I am terrible about saying “cool” when someone is showing me something. I have worked to replace that reflexive “cool” with “extraordinary”, a much more Regency word. For a while though “cool” would still come out, and I would correct myself out loud. I'm sure many thought I was a little nuts, always saying “cool...err...extraordinary”, but in the long run it has paid off. Now I hear the modern word in my head by my lips say the period one!

4. Eliminate contractions.

Speaking without contractions automatically makes you sound more formal even if it is a little uncomfortable at first. Like eliminating modern slang, eliminating contractions takes time & awareness of your own speech. It is just one a small change that leads to a big difference in the effectiveness of your first person speech and is well worth the added effort.

5. Learn a few key period phrases.

There are many Regency era term & phrases that we still use in our modern speech. It's not difficult to add these terms to our conversations since they already feel natural, yet they are also historically correct. Following are just a few terms of my favorite period terms, still in use today, to get you started.

1. babble: confused, unintelligible talk
2. To put the cart before the horse: to mention the last part of the story first.
3. To snivel: to cry
4. elbow room: sufficient space to act in.
5. go teach your granny to suck eggs: said to anyone as would instruct in a manner he knows better than themselves.
6. hell-cat: a termagant, a vixen, a furious scolding woman
7. rumpus: a riot, quarrel or confusion
8. to leak: to make water; to piss
9. down in the dumps: low spirited, melancholy.
10. windfall: a legacy or any accidental accession of property

***
Works Cited:

Grosse, Francis. 1788. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: S. Hooper. Google Books Edition.

Rowlandson, Thomas. Veronica, a Breakfast Conversation, etching & engraving , 1786. (Lewis Walpole Library, New Haven, Connecticut). http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/oneitem.asp?imageId=lwlpr05999

“You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir.”

A Guide to Proper Citations for Historic Bloggers.

It has been suggested recently that historic blogs should include proper citations of their research. The idea is to encourage good research techniques on the part of the writers, while also reassuring historic sites and museums that we writers respect their copyrighted property, be it a book, artifact or image.

While this is a great suggestion, which any of my regular readers will notice I've been practicing for several years, there is one glaring problem with the suggestion; the majority of bloggers don't have much, if any experience with proper citations! Frankly, unless you've spent years writing historic research or have been subjected to an anal retentive professor, most of us don't use citations in our daily lives. Adding to the problem are the sheer number of citation styles, from the more common Modern Language Association (MLA), American Physiological Association (APP), and Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) systems, to the specialized and obscure Bluebook style used in Law, Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) common in the United Kingdom, and the Vancouver System suggested for scientific and mathematical research. You could spend nearly as much time deciding how to cite your sources as you did finding them in the first place. It's enough to make even a dedicated researcher run for the hills!

As a way to aid my other blogging friends and encourage more writers to share references, I offer this simple citation guide specifically geared towards historic bloggers. This guide follows Chicago Manual of Style's Author-Date system, since this is both an easy system to use and remember while not overwhelming the typically shorter articles found on historic blogs. The information included within the text also encourages readers to notice the reference and increases the spreading of these important details.

There are two parts to a proper citation using Author-Date style, the shorter in text portion and the bibliography or works cited at the end of the article.

Quotations and The In Text Citation

Following any quotation within the text of your post include the author, editor or artists last name, the year of publication or creation and the page number in parenthesis. “This is the easy part” (Black, 2011) of in text citations. Quotations should be worked into the text of the sentence as much as possible rather than left free floating. The exception to this is longer quotations which comprise several sentences or even a full paragraph. While they too can be incorporated into the text, it is often easier to separate them from the main body as a block quote. Most citation styles have suggestions for how and when to use block quotations based on number of words or lines.

“a hundred words or more – or at least eight lines – are set off as a block quotation.” (Chicago Manual of Style, 2003, 447)

Whether to use block quotations in a blog entry is really a personal choice. Ultimately, it is the effect of the quotation and how the information is presented to the readers that matters more than any arbitrary rule. When in doubt, develop your own style and maintain that pattern through out all blog posts. This makes reading an article easy to follow and can even make writing them easier.

The Bibliography or Works Cited

At the end of any post include the full reference for each quotation in the appropriate format for the type of work being referenced. References should be listed in alphabetical order, however in shorter blog posts order of inclusion can also be acceptable. This is where things get a little tricky, especially considering the types of objects and information being referenced by most historic bloggers. Following are a few of the most common citations and variations specifically geared to the types of objects and media frequently used in blogs.

Book with one or more authors or editors:
Last name, First name of first author or editor, First Name, Last name of subsequent authors or editors. Year. “Chapter of the Book if used”, Book Title in italics. City of Publication: Name of Publisher. Web link if published electronically.

Article from Magazines, Newspapers or Journals:
Last name, First name of first author, First Name, Last name of subsequent authors. Year. “Title of Article”, Magazine or Journal Title in italics, date of magazine or publication for newspapers, edition number for journals or magazines if available: all pages of the article referenced. Web link if published electronically.

Website:
Last Name, First Name of websites author or Website title or Owner of website. “Title of web page,” Link to site (date accessed, optional).

Painting or image especially those found in an online source:
Last Name, First Name of artist. Title of Art Work in italics, medium, date of piece. (Name of institution where piece is housed, city where housed). Link to where the image was found.

Item in a Museum or Historic Collection especially those from online sources:
I have not been able to find any information on how to document an extant example from a museum collection. The following is a suggested format based on the method used for paintings and other artistic pieces. However, if anyone knows the proper way to cite an extant piece in Chicago style, please let me know and I will update this guide.

Last Name, First Name of artist or creator if available. Title or description of piece in italics, medium, date of piece. (Name of institution where piece is housed, city where housed). Link to where the object was found.

Paper, speech or presentation given at a conference or event:
Last Name, First Name of presenter or speaker. Year presented. “Title of presentation, speech or paper.” Paper presented at the Name of organization or event, City, state presentation was given, Month and date of presentation.

Hints:
** Dictionaries are cited like books with authors or editors.
** Online database, such as The Old Bailey, are best cited as websites, including a link to the database main page.
** Google books are cited like books, with a link to the Google books page.
** Hyperlinks are nice but do not stay with an article if it is copied into another form. To maintain the connection between information and references, it's best to use written citations with links as a bonus.

I hope this quick guide will help other historic bloggers to use proper citations in their entries and encourage the continued sharing of resources, research and references. While not exhaustive, most of the basics have been covered and of course, if anyone wants to read more on proper citations, you can always look up all the references in the works cited.

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Works cited:

"BibMe: Fast & Easy Bibliography Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian - Free." BibMe: Fast & Easy Bibliography Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian - Free. http://www.bibme.org/

Bonnor, Thomas. Junius. Etching, 1770. (Lewis Walpole Library, New Haven, Connecticut). http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/oneitem.asp?imageId=lwlpr02960

"Purdue OWL: Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition ." Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/

"The Chicago Manual of Style Online: Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide." The Chicago Manual of Style Online. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html