Happy Mothers Day

I do love holidays.

Happy Mother's Day

Good Books of 2008

I posted this interview on the Book Smugglers website last December.

Thought I'd repost here, just to improve the world a bit by saying 'this is good,' and 'I liked this,' one more time.



My Favorite 2008 Reads


Let me start out with three great RITA winners and a Finalist. They blew my socks off.

Madeleine Hunter, Lessons of Desire.

I always love her work. Dense. Enticing. Sensual. A rare pleasure.


Deanna Raybourn, Silent in the Grave.

A new-to-me writer. Historical mystery. I love the complex, intelligent interaction between H&H. I have her next book, Silent in the Sanctuary, on my TBR shelf.


Julia Quinn, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever.

I spend my whole time chuckling when I read Quinn. You just fall into the delight.


Anna Campbell, Claiming the Courtesan.

(I loved Untouched, too.) High-stakes H&H interaction. Intense writing. Compelling.


Leesee … who else?


Strangers in Death, by JD Robb.
With the In-Death series … it’s like you got a box of milk-chocolate-covered nuts. You know they’re all going to be good. (Even the Brazil nut, which is one of those odd, semi-edible things where you ask yourself, ‘What was God thinking?’)
Anyhow, if we’re doing this chocolates simile . . . Strangers is when you pick the piece of candy out and it’s almonds and almonds are your favorites.


His Captive Lady by Anne Gracie.
I just finished this one last week. Lovely writing. Gotta love that Gracie.


Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas.

She took a whole bunch of writerly risks. It all works. Character driven by unusual characters.


Simply Magic by Mary Balogh.

Intelligent Romance, as always. I find her characters appealing on so many levels. I always think I’d like to know them.


Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase.

Spies. Venice. Intrigue. Hero and Heroine conflict. Loretta Chase. What more could one possibly ask?


His Dark and Dangerous Ways by Edith Layton.
One of my long-time favorite authors. I was looking forward to this one. Multi-layer and realistic characters.
It must have been the year for using 'Ways' in titles.

EDITED TO ADD: We lost Edith Layton this year. A great lady, a great writer. Vade, and we are poorer for it.


Oh, let me mention a really nifty anthology –
It Happened One Night. This is Stephanie Laurens, Mary Balogh, Jacquie D’alessandro, and Candice Hern.

They rounded up a whole bunch of my favorite authors and put ‘em all in one book.I mean … What are the odds?


I’ve left off scads of great 2008 books because they are sitting three deep and densely packed in the TBR shelf. I haven’t had time to READ them.


My TBR shelf is like …

You know how your refrigerator whispers about the piece of pumpkin pie you got on the bottom shelf (… pie …pie … pie …pie …) every time you walk by and you gotta go tiptoeing off real fast with your hands over your ears … (Lah la la la lah)

My TBR shelf is like that.

I got no work done today.

I sat in Starbucks and drank two huge lattes and looked at the scene where my villain beats up the hero,
(my villain is named Guichet right now, but that's not going to last because 'guichet' means like, that booth in the Metro where you buy tickets. I have no idea why I'm calling him that.)
and I couldn't work on it.

I sat there and did nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

So I came home and planted German iris and yellow tulips and azaleas that are this absolutely beautiful soft pink and dahlias and phlox.

Then I came inside and painted my toenails.
Pink.

Novak Auction for Diabetes

Let me give everybody a heads up.

The Brenda Novak's On-line Auction for Diabetes Research will open May 1st and run through the month. here.

This is a worthy cause. There's great stuff to buy too.

here
We got ourselves a traditional, cameo circa 1890, and a coral cross pendant, circa 1880.

ETA:  I went in and removed the photos of the jewelry.  I have no problem posting the photos during the auction, but afterwards I take them out so I'm not violating anybody's copyright

.
Or, how about

Be a Werewolf.

New York Times best-selling author, Cheyenne McCray will use the reader's name in NO WEREWOLVES ALLOWED. The auction winner gets to be a werewolf! The winning reader also receives an autographed copy of the book when it is released. Here.

And we got this lovely mermaid necklace.

It's here.

ETA:  I removed the photo here so I'm not violating copyright.

One can also buy a copy of either of my books, autographed.

Anyone who's reading one of the books doubtless wants to have a bookcover on it,

so two lovely bookcovers will be offered.

I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do this, but you can ask me to sign the bookcovers.

Those delights await you here, here, here, and here.

Amazon nitwittery

Amazon, in a burst of truly monumental nitwittery , has decided to protect you from exposure to 'deh gay'.

Now, when you go searching for books about gays on Amazon, you will not find them. Their Amazon rank has been removed. They are invisible.

Amazon will decide what you should and shouldn't read.
Don't you feel safe and protected? Discussion here .

Edited to add ...

Erotic books on Amazon continue to be deranked ....

Back from the Retreat

I'm back from the G-Nom Writers Retreat.

A great time.
Man, did I enjoy myself.

Got a lot of writing done too, which is always nice.

Here I am, sending Maggie to a whorehouse.

This is why I never get asked anywhere.

I'm a 91,000 words (out of 116,000) through Draft Two.

It'll get longer before it gets shorter again.

Here's Jenny Meyers doing just terrrible things to her characters.

Tara Parker and Jen Hendren.

Plotting.

And more plotting.
This time with Beth Shope.

Beth Shope plots with knives and prison escapes.

Beware.

We snuck off to watch men in tights ride horses and fight with swords and lances and shields and morningstars and maces.
Much Woot Woot.

Nature cooperated by being superbly stormy and romantic.

The angst was so thick you could cut it up and insert it into Chapter Eight.

The Birds.

The Birds.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH.

Donna Rubino discusses minor changes.

If those don't work . . .

Eh.

Me, drinking coffee.

Shall I kill somebody off right in the opening action? Or is this like kicking a puppy?

Sip.

Sip.

I do kill people in Chapter Twelve.

Surely that's enough.

Sip.

Sip.

Friends.
Fresh fruit. Coffee.

My computer.

Revolutionary France.

It doesn't get any better than this.

A little list of C18 Blogs

Passing this along from the great C18 Woman List . . . a few excellent blogs maintained by C18 re-enactors:

http://18thccuisine.blogspot.com/
http://furtradeclerk.blogspot.com/
http://mrswoffington.blogspot.com/
http://recreatedelephant.blogspot.com/
http://slightly-obsessed.blogspot.com/
http://manskerman1780.blogspot.com/
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/sfelshin/18cWoman/source-list.html


What we have here are great sources of nitty-gritty for anyone writing in, (or just interested in,) the Eighteenth Century.

A few more blogs of interest:

This one has lovely paintings of C18 women in America.
http://b-womeninamericanhistory18.blogspot.com/

This one sells reproductive C18 stuff. Has pictures.
http://www.jastown.com/blog//

DA BWAHA -- Oh Rats

I didn't win the DA BWAHA.
Heck.

There were close to 1100 votes. The final scores were 12 votes apart. This is just a tremendous showing for Spymaster's Lady.

Thank you all for your votes and your support. A cool and wonderful tournament.

DABWAHA. The CONTEST

While Spymaster's Lady did NOT win the DABWAHA,

losing by a mere handful of votes,

(we're talking relatively large hands here that can hold a good dozen votes at a time,)

to the tremendously nifty Iron Kisses,

this does not mean a total loss all round.

Some lucky person has just won their choice of exciting prizes.

The Spymaster's Lady Mad Props Contest has been won by

TAH DAH !!

Susan Adrian

Susan -- Get in touch with me to claim your prizes!!

************

Contest Rules: To be eligible for this contest, simply post a reply to this message saying that you are going to vote for The Spymaster's Lady in the finals or that you have done so.

The Contest Prizes:

1) Your choice of

-- a signed copy of The Spymaster's Lady
-- a signed copy of My Lord and Spymaster
-- a signed copy of the next book, (which you will have to wait about a year to get since it will not come out until 2010.)
or
-- a signed xerox of Her Ladyship's Companion, which is an old book and deservedly OOP

AND

2) Your choice of one of these three hand-crafted, cloth, paperback book covers, assuming they all show up from the vendor.




Entries will be closed fifteen minutes after the DABWAHA Contest closes.

Da Bwaha finals and EXCITING CONTEST

The Da Bwaha Tournament moves into the Finals.

Tomorrow, Iron Kissed and Spymaster's Lady enter the ring.
One will emerge the victor.
(cue to theme from Rocky)

I'll post the time and place for voting as soon as I get them.
Monday is all I know right now.

I will also post THE EXCITING CONTEST that will be held here for the final round.

So check back.

Important Notice Here: The Da Bwaha is a showcase for some of the best books of 2008. Books I just loved to pieces.

The list is in a post down below. Skip down about four posts and take a look. Buy a few.

Da Bwaha

I'm in the final four in this contest, up against the excellent Maya Banks.
This is so exciting.

We're real close on this one. About a dozen votes.

Voting is here. Do feel free to drop by and vote tonight for Spymaster's Lady.

Edited to Add:
It is five minutes after midnight.

804 votes cast.

The Spymaster's lady -- 411.
Be With Me -- 393.

Anybody who is reading this and who voted for Spymaster's Lady ...
YOU WERE ONE OF THE 18 VOTES.

YOU WERE.

Thank you.

Women's costume France 1795 - caps and hats

Here we are talking about the headwear of middleclass and working class women in 1794. Women's hats and caps.

(With any of these images, click on the images for a closer look. )

In the C20, adult women started going bareheaded. Before that, in Western Europe, women wore some type of head covering virtually all the time, inside the house and out -- shawls, caps and hats.

In 1794, inside, most grown women would have worn a cap. Outside, they would have worn a hat or a hat over a cap. It's hard to add this costume reality to a Historical Romance without the reader finding it strange.

Caps

Caps for our middleclass and working class woman could mean either a simple mob cap or a fancier lace cap. Even a relatively poor woman might wear a fancy lacy cap as an indulgence.

A mob-cap was a circle of cotton or linen, gathered up and held on the head with a band or ribbon. A deep ruffle ran around it, framing the face and neck.

Our famous tricoteuses are wearing mobcaps. In the period it was sometimes called the 'Charlotte Corday'.

In 1794, in Paris, a cap like this would have been ornamented with the tricolored cockade or rosette. It wasn't quite a law that women had to wear the cockade. (It was the law for men.) Women just found it a good idea.

To the left here, see a tricoteuse in a simple linen cap.

Here, we got a 1790 cap. It's English, but it's a good workingclass cap, and all these designs are very similar. See how fancy it is.

A mob cap was the simplest of caps. It was essentially unchanged for a century before 1794 and close to a century afterwards.

In France the mobcap's design would have conformed to Revolutionary ideas of simplicity and modesty. It'd be 'politically correct' in 1794.

Another simple cap -- if you zip down to the next post, the one on aprons, you'll see a Greuze portrait of a little girl asleep, wearing a simple cap of this type.

Where did women wear caps?

Inside and out.

Here's an early C18 example of women inside the house, wearing simple caps. The wealthy women at the card game wear a couple similar caps. The maid who's serving them coffee has the same cap on, basically. Hers may be a little simpler.

This Boilly painting is 1803. We got our upscale people in Paris. Mom -- see her there -- is wearing a sort of turban type cap.

Where I'm going with this picture ....

In the English upper middle class and gentry, there seems to have been something of an age distinction in the wearing of caps.

Young ladies might wear their hair uncovered, gathered in a simple fillette or band. Mature women and married women wore caps. One of the Regency Romance staples is a spinster deciding it's time to start wearing 'caps' indoors.

Did this ' young marriagable' versus 'spinster' age distinction hold true in France? The Boilly portrait would seem to indicate it might.

Women, as I said above, wore caps on the street, or hats. Sometimes wore caps under their hats.

So, how did you wear a cap and a hat all simultaneous?

On the left, Madame Seriziat in this David's 1795 portrait is doing it. here.

Her cap is a large, lacy and fancy one, but the pricniple's good for our simper women in simpler mobcaps.

Our 1790s newseller in Paris is wearing a bouffant lacy cap on the streets, not unlike the one in the David picture. Her cap is covered by a kind of scarf drawn up over her head and her cap

 

You remember where I said the mobcap was sometimes called the Charlotte Corday? Here's the lady herself in jail awaiting execution. Her bonnet is more fancy than the usual mobcap.

Midway between a hat and a cap are several sorts of fashionable turbans.

These seem to have been worn -- shaped a little differently -- by both sexes. They were popular with the 'arty' crowd. Maybe this was influenced by the same love of the exotic Orient that gave us Banyans.

I'm going to assume these turbans were made up carefully and permanently and set on the head, rather than being created de novo each time from a long swath of fabric.

Ok. Having said that women wore caps and hats about all the time, I'm going to backtrack and say . . . 'They didn't always.'

Sometimes grown women ventured out on the streets of Paris with their heads just bare. Look back up to our

newspaper seller above. That woman in the background is capless and hatless.

See the women here also. (Find it at home, here, at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.)

This to the right is a roughly 1790 print -- see the tricolour ribbon on one of those fancy, frilly hats -- that's a feature of the period.

Anyhow, we got a half dozen women sitting on the very fashionable Boulevard des Italiens. A couple of them have uncovered hair. Might be a fillet or band on the head by not a hat.

The child is wearing a simple straw hat. The other hats are pretty elaborate. Upscale.

My guess is that 'bare-headed' meant fashionable and young,

or not quite respectable.

I think modest working women had a tendency to cover up.

The next post, the one about aprons, shows us some prostitutes at the Palais Royal in a time close to our target year. You can wander down and have a look at it. Several of our filles de joie have their hair uncovered.

. . . the thin line between fashionable and indecent was always skimpy in Paris, and never thinner than in Paris of the Revolution and the Directory.

Hats

A huge favorite, the chip straw hat in the 1795 David portrait of Madame Serizat, above, is typical of the era. Natural color straw, flat crowned, with a large flat brim, wide ribbon that coordinates with the outfit, tied under the chin.

In this LeBrun self-portrait to the right, we see a variation of the straw hat. It's similar in shape to the David portrait, and of similar shape, but with a feather and no ribbon tying it under the chin. The brim is turned up a bit.A lot of these straw hats were straw-dyed-black.

Below, we got a mixed bag of fashionable hats for young ladies.

These would last about ten minutes on a modern kid methinks.


Are we richer or poorer that the average person doesn't spiffy up this much?

Women's costume 1794, France, Aprons and Pockets

We're back for another installment of the clothing of the working and middle classes in France in 1794. This one is on Aprons and 'Pockets'.


Aprons

Did somebody say apron?

We don't wear aprons these days, so it's a little hard to work out what they felt like to wear. How you handled them. In 1794, everybody in the middle and working classes seems to have gone running around in an apron, more or less continuously.

Now the rich in the C18 don't routinely wear aprons over their clothes. They sometimes show up in little lacey apron-ettes, but that's not applicable to my working folks.

It seems to me well-to-do women in the 1790-1794 period start showing up more and more with an apron on 'em as part of their day dress. Maybe they were making a political point.

So. Looking at aprons.

This one is from 'Street Cries of Paris' by Bouchardon, and dates to about 1740.
But I think aprons stayed very much the same.

We got ourselves a salad seller. Romaine lettuce, looks like.

The apron is as long as the skirt, which seems to be typical for working women. It's pulled up and the hem tucked into the waist of her skirt on the side. It's the left side, (her left,) so it's likely that's what right-handed people do.

Here's a closeup of two aprons. (Greuze, The Village Bride, 1761.)

Both mother and child have the pinned-up bib on the top. See more detail of a pinned-up bib below.


Mom has her apron tied, not in back, but on the side. Her right side. That would be easier for a left-handed person, ISTM.
I have also seen period apron strings so long they come clear around the wearer and are tied in front.

The girl holds her apron up, making a pouch, keeping her little bits in it. She takes a handful of fabric. This is going to be just an automatic gesture for anyone who wears aprons.

As long as I got the picture here , look at the caraco on the woman above. I think there's a slit in the side seam to allow access to a pocket beneath.
More on pockets below.


See how the child has her fichu tucked into the top of her apron bib. There must have been an art to tucking the fichu.

Here we got another too-early picture ... before 1771. This is market women.

The clothes are much too early to be relevant. But see how our gal on the left has her aprong converted fully into a secure pouch for carrying . . . I dunnoh. Maybe the entire Oxford English Dictionary or watermelons.

She's tucked the hem of the apron neatly into her waist at the middle, letting it gape a bit at both sides.

Note also that this is a dark blue apron. I have other examples of dark-coloured aprons in France, at least one of them in period. See the 1794 apron on the tricoteuse further below.

Here are some 1850s aprons.
I'm just wandering all over the place, timewise, ain't I?

This Millet is here only for the custom of typing the apron back behind the butt like this and making a big carryall. I'm assuming this was done in my era too.

But since you're tired of me wandering all over French history ... we got some truly period aprons coming up.

Lookit.

The next ones are early 1790s, as are the tricoteuses further on.

In the picture where our sansculotte young lady is carrying a sword, see the way the skirt is drawn up on one side and tucked in. It's on her left side. Right-handed sansculotte?
Visit that bottom print at home here,

In other news, in these three prints, note the mid-length hair, worn undressed and loose under the cap. Note the sabots. Note the striped material of the skirts.

Our lady above, on the upper left has a little basket on her arm and what looks like a bag slung at waist level. I think the basket is to hold yarn. We see the same thing in the Greuze painting below. The little pouch on the side of her seems to be an exterior pocket. I've seen these from time to time.



And here we got Les Tricoteuses Jacobines by LeSueur, which is, of course, smack dab in period.

Our knitters have specialized aprons. Little pockets on the right, (their right,) side of the skirt.

And here is the dark apron I mentioned. So they weren't all white, even among our working class gals.
One way we know they are working class is the length of their skirts. See our gal on the right? Short skirt = laboring class.

Find our tricoteuses here.

Below is a rather interesting take on that 'tricoteuse apron'.

This is the Palai Royale, a noted haunt of prostitutes.

See the madame in the back offering the pretty young knitter to that unpleasant fellow? Her pocket says she's a working girl and gives the impression of an innocence she's about to sell.

Find it here.

Now ... here is Greuze, La Tricoteuse Endormie.
Let us all pause to go aaaaaawwww.

Ahem. Back to business.

This apron shows how the bib attaches. See how one side has come unpinned?

Purely by the by, see those four needles in the knitting? I have tried to knit with four needles. I will blog about that.

And we got that basket the 1794 knitters carry to hold their ball of yarn when they don't have a pocket in their skirt..


Moving on to the fascinating subject of 'pockets'.



'Pockets'

These were not the sewed-in feature we are used to. They were a little bag tied at the waist, under the skirt. Often this was two pockets, tied separately, and worn one on each hip.

This makes comprehensible the nursery rhyme:

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it.
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.

which has worried and puzzled generations of readers.

We have some early C18 pockets here, from the V & A.

These are linen, sewn with linen thread, embroidered in coloured silks, with silk ribbon and linen tape

A couple more below.

Find them in detail here.

These are from Meg Andrews, Antique Costume and Textiles. Her site is here. These pockets are white cotton, marcella quilted, joined on a wide 2 inch band. They tie with tapes. There's a different design on the two pockets. Odd, what.

Here's a pair of 1796 pockets -- exactly in era. These are embroidered linen.



They belong to the Met, which welcomes you here.

You're wondering how folks got into their pockets in 1794?


Folks got into the pockets by reaching through slits in the seam of their skirt. The caraco in 1794 wouldn't have been long enough to interfere with access, so they could just go through that skirt.


Lookit here where you see just exactly those slits.


They're doing the other thing they did with these pocket holes, which is they pulled a hank of skirt up through them to shorten the skirt. Fashionable women did this for 'the look'. Working women did it to get the skirts out from underfoot.

Or for the look, I guess. And this print is from Yale. Find it Here

Here you get a look at the slit in the side of the skirt where our young lady could reach in and get to the pockets. See this picture, here. Click at the site for a closer look.

Da Bwaha

Life is strange. In a good way.

I have come aaaaall the way through the Da Bwaha eliminations.
We are in the Final Four.

The books are

Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs
Blue Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas
The Spymaster’s Lady (by me)
Be With Me by Maya Banks

BED goes up against IK on Saturday morning.
TSL knocks heads with BWM on Saturday, noon till midnight.

Come drop by and see how it goes.
You have to have been registered for a couple of weeks
to vote for who should win.
But this is also a spectator sport.
Here.

I am really excited. I have laid in a supply of popcorn.
For the BED/IK match.

I will tell you quite frankly that I enjoy a contest more when I'm not an active participant. When my own match comes up I will go plant dahlias.

EDITED TO ADD: you don't have to be pre-registered to vote. So you can come and vote even if you aren't registed.
I had no idea.*


*This is generally the case.

RITA Finalist -- Twice

I am a RITA finalist for The Spymaster's Lady in the Historical Romance category. I'm a finalist for My Lord and Spymaster in the Regency Historical category.

Two Finals.

I am so happy and excited my stomach hurts. This is Exactly like the birthday party where you get the electronic game you wanted and eat six pieces of cake and then throw up, except that you have to buy a long black dress too.

An Outtake from MLAS

Martha, in the comment trail, asked about scenes that don't make it into the final book.

As a generality, there are Good Reasons why scenes quietly disappear from the ms before the Editor ever sees them.
The scene is boring.
Or it twiddles off down a line of minor plotting, instead of telling the love story.
Or it is talking heads conveying information.
Or all three.

Here below is a scene that got written
and then a draft or two later got grubbed up by the roots and tossed out.

The scene is not dreadful in and of itself. It explains why Jess, (our heroine in MLAS,) is knee deep in kimchee with the British Government.
But we do not write scenes to 'explain things'.

The stage action I kept, because I need the little jigsaw piece of scene to transition from one place to another. The action shows up, much modified, in MLAS as pages 152 to 158. But the version that hit the book is all about the love story instead of suspense plot and intrigue.

Below, you're looking at Second Draft work, not Final Draft work.
There's lots of awkwardness and bad phrasing.
And I've left in my 'notes to myself'.

*************** See the out-take here ******************
It begins ....


Adrian was propped against the wall in the stuffy closet they used as a listening post, reading from a black, bound notebook. He crooked a finger in invitation and kept reading. "Close the door."

There wasn't room for three in the cubbyhole. He slid in behind the table, the rack of pistols on the wall poking into his back. Trevor, the spy in training, sat at the table, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that emerged from the wall and wrote, scribbling fast. The only light in the room came from the dark lantern at his elbow. Three sides of that were closed, the fourth open. In the bright oblong it cast, his pencil made a manic, dancing shadow across the page. Three books, like the one Adrian held, lay to his left. Another dozen were stacked and ready.

This was where the British Service watched and listened to what went on in the library. Jess was right -- the walls were full of rats.

... and it ends ....



"You and Josiah are playing games. Jess isn't."

"Then it's time she did." Adrian was still a moment. "Josiah knows what I am. Eventually, Jess will. Do you know, there are times I do not find being Head of Section at all amusing. Shut up, now. When I open this they can hear us."
****************

Women's costume 1794 France, shifts and nightshifts

Consider Shifts

A shift is what we'd call a 'slip' in the US. The shift lay next to the skin and protected the wearer from the roughness of the outer garments . It protected the expensive outer garments from the body. It was cheaper to replace than the outer clothing, and the shift was washable.

The shift, for all of the Eighteenth Century is a simple garment, cut loose, straight, and ungathered, going to about the knee. It closed at the neck with a drawstring or was bound with a band.

Here to the right is an extant shift in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Drawstring neck. The little ruffles on the sleeve, IMO, would have been intended to show beneath a tight-fitting sleeve on the dress or caraco. This is made in England or France, late C18 to early C19.

The early C18 shift might be somewhat fuller than this example above. After 1785-ish, when the round gown and dresses of thin fabric became popular, the shift began to be cut closer to the body so as not to disturb the line of the dress -- something that wasn't a problem with the robe à l'Anglais or the simple jupe and caraco. The sleeves of the shift, which had been longer and fuller in the first half of the Eighteenth Century, became close fitting or short.

Here's an example of a modern reproduction mid-C18 shift being worn.

A difference between how we regard underwear in C21 and Eighteenth Century is that a shift -- underwear -- was often intended to be seen. It was meant to show beneath the jacket or vest or the neckline of the dress.

See , to the right.

(This is a screen capture from the latest remake of The Scarlet Pimpernel, included here under Fair Use for comment and review.)

I wouldn't go to the stake on the details of this. It looks fairly fancy, compared to the extant examples. Anyhow, what you got here is a C18 chemise being worn over front-fastening stays, and showing at the top.

(The opening scene of the movie, btw, is her getting dressed in petticoat, caraco and jupe, which is interesting to watch. Reminds me of the dressing scene in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. )

The neckline of the dress or caraco was cut low by our standards. This means the shift underneath was cut low too. The neckline of the shift tended to come just an inch or so above the stays, as it does in the picture above.

This left the heavy work of concealing the bosom to the fichu.

Here we got a caricature from just after 1794. This is not reliable as to what was actually worn, but it does illustrate a point about the length of the shift.

The shift wasn't a full-length garment down trailing in the mud and showing lace at the bottom when the dress blew up in the wind. A petticoat or underskirt might do that, but not the shift. The shift was short. You wouldn't see a shift if you raised your skirts some to step over a puddle.

Below we got us some delightful pictures of an extant shift from Vintage Textile which is at home here. This particular shift is listed as 1820 to 1830, but it's similar to what you would have seen in 1790s.

Vintage Textile says of the shift above:

Our chemise is fashioned from coarse linen and is completely hand sewn.

With time and multiple washings, the linen has whitened and softened. The neckline and sleeve edges are trimmed with hand-embroidered scallops. The chemise has a hand-embroidered, monogrammed "AF" in front.

Chemises, particularly in pattern catalogues, are picture flat so that you can see how they are cut. The triangular side panels in the flat pictures give the impression that the chemise stands out from the body on the side. In fact these side panels push the front and back into graceful bias folds.

A late-C18-to-early-C19 shift would be made of linen or cotton. In 1794, it would probably linen for the middle and lower class. Good quality cotton was still a luxury material in France.

There was a slow movment towards cotton for underclothing as cotton got cheaper in the early C19. Perception of linen in shirts and underwear changed. By the time we get to Beau Brummel ... linen was a more upperclass/stylish fabric than cotton. In 1794, linen would probably have been the fabric of choice, but without the same class

The English word 'shift' fell into disfavor after 1800. 'Shift' became regarded as old-fashioned and somewhat coarse. The snazzier French 'chemise' sneaked in to take its place. That's what we did in English for a century or two ... tossed out perfectly good English words and invited French hussies in.

Nightclothes

WARNING: Partial nudity below.

Women's nightclothes closely followed the design of the shift. In fact, one could be used for the other, pretty much.

There are differences The examples of nightshifts I've come across seem to have 3/4 or long sleeves and the shifts of late C18 don't. The nightshifts are often mid-calf length or longer, rather than more knee-ish. So the nightshifts were a specialized garment, similar to but not identical with the shift.

Note the low neckline on these nightshifts below. If that neck isn't tied up carefully with its ribbon or drawstring, the breasts get loose and go showing themselves.

The nightshifts are longer than the shift, but still only mid-calf length. You heroine wouldn't need to hold her hem up as she crept down the stairs, trembling, with a candle in her hand, investigating the noise.

Considering England's -- or France's -- climate, your heroine would be an idiot if she didn't put on some kind of a robe or peignoir so she don't get all clammy and freezing even before the villain has a chance to kidnap her.

The hero seeing your heroine in her nightshift takes on a whole new meaning when you stop picturing it as a floor-length, high-necked Victorian nightdress with 57 little pearl buttons up the front.

This is Baudouin, Le Lever. A bit before our period.

Wheatly gives us Mrs Wheatly Asleep. Close to the 1790s I think. The night cap Mrs. Wheatly is wearing -- see how fancy -- is part of the whole going-to-sleep ensemble.

Here's Blanchet, Perils of Love: Julia Seeks Solace with her Cat above. Again, a bit before 1794, but probably similar to what women were wearing in the decade.

This is Regnault, La Nuit.

And Boucher's famous L'Odalisque is wearing a 1745 shift. It's here, click at the site for a closer view. See the low neckline, mid-length sleeves, and the not-too-long length.

Admittedly, these particular nightshifts are painted largely for an excuse to show off skin, but it does look like nightshifts dipped low at the neck.

Night shifts, like shifts, were white or just off-white, made of cotton and linen.
Not silk. Sorry.