The Long Eighteenth Century
Erasmus Darwin Is Tracking Me Down
One of the weird facts about historical research (or maybe just about life in general) is that once a person or idea has come to your attention you find references to him/it/them everywhere. In a footnote. As a tangential character is a study of something else. The subject of a new book sitting on the…
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Words With a Past: Strike While The Iron Is Hot
I’ve always assumed that the phrase “strike while the iron is hot” was simply a term derived from blacksmithing. I recently learned that the phrase has a history beyond the making of horseshoes and sword blades. Who would have thought it was linked to marriage? Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754 changed the laws governing…
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The Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons
If you spend much time hanging out in the eighteenth century, you are forced to consider the question of Freemasonry. * Everywhere you turn, you find a major historical figure up to his Whig in Masonic craft. Today Masonic lodges don’t look that different from the various fraternal orders that appeared in America’s Gilded Age…
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