The Books

I can't believe that we are almost half way through the month of March already....it's really crazy how fast life just goes by.

Lately, I have really been interested in the history of the turn of the 18th century and the author Jane Austen.  I have been reading a book that details all the English customs of her time period, "The Jane Austen Handbook". It lays out the English Gentry as they would have lived and all those oddities that are a part of say Elizabeth Bennett's life in Pride and Prejudice, like going to a ball, paying a morning call...  I really enjoy reading about how people lived back in the old days.  And let me tell you...I would not have wanted to live during Jane Austen's time unless I was a member of the Aristocracy....which statistically speaking would have been very unlikely.  So that means I would have been a member of what is known in the social order as "the Great Unwashed"- Laborers, servants, criminals.  Here is the Social order of the 18th Century from the top:
1-Royalty {the King and Queen, and their numerous and dissolute progeny}
2- Aristocracy {House of Lords; and untitled persons who were very rich}
3-Gentry {Old established families with estates of all sizes, Genteel persons [one have no profession], or professionals from the Law, Medicine or the paid Commissions of the Military
4-Tradesmen, Yeoman Farmers
5-The Great Unwashed {ME :)}

Interestingly,  my father, whom I have probably gotten a great deal of my passion for history, sent me a book that he thought would interest me.  It's entitled, "The Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian"  It's a compilation of letters and journal entries kept by this young man of 24 years old who was to be a tutor to a family in Virginia on a plantation in the year 1773-1774. I haven't read it yet but I can't wait to start it!! 

So you see people have been recording their lives all throughout history...people now just do it electronically and in the form of a blog.