era: roaring twenties

  • Pepper Jam Sandwich Recipe from 1922

    This recipe comes from For Luncheon and Supper Guests by Alice Bradley, published 1922 by Whitcomb & Barrows. It’s a series of 10 menus meant for small dinner parties, automobile picnics (road trip food!), lunch rooms, etc. and it’s very well written– it even has an introductory section explaining how to prepare everything ahead of time for the party, where to get your ingredients and how to order them, the pantry staples you should have at hand, and so on. I’ve pulled a selection of recipes from the book and will be sharing them here on the blog, but if…

  • 30+ FREE Books: Women’s Historical Diaries

    This is the third of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read. This specific post focuses on the following: Be sure to also check out 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World for more books! I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books on the “diaries” keyword pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! My hope is that putting these lists together will help you discover…

  • 100+ More FREE Books About Women Traveling the World

    This is the second of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read. This specific post focuses on the following: Be sure to also check out 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World for more books! I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books within the various travel-related subject pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! While you can find a lot just going through the main…

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    Illustrations from The Princess and the Goblin (1920 edition)

    The Princess and the Goblin is a children’s fantasy book written by Scottish author George MacDonald in 1872. It’s one of my favorite books, highly recommend picking it up if you haven’t read it already! This edition, published in 1920 by David McKay Company, was illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, one of my favorite artists from the early 20th century. I’ve used a scan from the Internet Archive to pull her illustrations for the book out into individual images and then uploaded them here for you all to enjoy. As they’re in the public domain, you can use them for…

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    Illustrations from Rose Fyleman’s The Rainbow Cat (1923)

    The Rainbow Cat is a children’s fantasy book written by British author Rose Fyleman, published originally in 1922. This edition was published by the George H. Doran company in New York in 1923. The art in this book was by American artist Thelma Cudlipp (listed as Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor on the book itself). I like the balance of clear lines and delicate colors, and especially how cute the cats are! These images were collected from a PDF scan provided by the Library of Congress. They aren’t the clearest, unfortunately, but I thought they were very charming and I wanted to…

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    3 Fairy Poems by Rose Fyleman

    These poems come from the book The Fairy Flute by Rose Fyleman, originally published in 1921. It’s a collection of children’s poems about fairies; I picked these three specifically to share because I like the interaction between the real world and the fantasy world the fairies come from. The featured post image is “The Fairy Queen takes an airy drive in a light carriage, a twelve-in-hand, drawn by thoroughbred butterflies,” from the book In fairy-land (1875). 👉 All posts about fairy tales / All children’s stuff posts / More poetry / More literature IN BOND STREET Upon her little velvet…

  • Cream Fritters Recipe from 1923

    This is an interesting dessert from the 1920s, from a church recipe book called Reliable Recipes. It looks like it’d be fairly fast to make, though you do have to wait a bit for it to set up before frying the fritters. Would be good to have it prepped before dinner, and then fry it right before eating. 👉 More Desserts / All Recipes / More from Reliable Recipes (1923) Original Recipe Here’s the original recipe text: CREAM FRITTERS1 pint milk1/2 cup sugar2 tablespoons corn-starch1 large tablespoon flourYolks of 4 eggs14 cup sweet creamPinch of cinnamon Warm the milk in…