The perils of being a historical writer
Or is that a writer of history? Anyway, the danger for a writer of books historical is not when you write something of which you’re unsure. After all, if I write that Charlotte House “put down her pencil,” then all sorts of red flags should go off in my head. When was the pencil invented? When was the mineral lead replaced by graphite? Were pencils yet encased in wood? Or were they more like the mechanical pencils of today? Did pencil in the Georgian period mean what it does today? Could you pencil someone in for eleven? When were pencils graded by hardness?
You might think there is nothing wrong with that sentence unless you happened upon the March 2012 edition of BBC History Magazine. There you would learn that well into the 20th century, boys were often dressed in pink and girls were dressed in blue. The magazine quotes the Ladies’ Home Journal from June 1918: “… the generally accepted rule is pink is for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” (Of course I’m unsure whether the Ladies’ Home Journal, being an American publication, would have spelled color with a “U.” But that’s how BBC History Magazine spelled it in their quote.)
So it’s pretty tricky writing this historical stuff.