Persuasion – The Word Wenches

Let’s Get Together!

May 12, 2025 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here. Sorting out my old photographs the other day, I came across a picture from about five years ago that I had forgotten about. It was the original Georgian Assembly Rooms in the Cornish city of Truro, which I visited back in 2021. Only the façade of the building remains these days but it is a very fine façade indeed, originally built in 1780 when the assembly rooms were the hub of entertainment in the city, hosting splendid balls once a month. The elegant frontage features a series of three Wedgwood plaques representing Thalia, the muse of comedy, the playwright William Shakespeare and the actor David Garrick. This was an allusion to the fact that the ballroom could double up as a theatre; during the 1810 – 1811 season, a theatrical company performed over 70 different plays there. It was also the location for concerts and exhibitions.

These days we are accustomed to having a big variety of different entertainments to choose from but back in the Georgian and Regency period, of course, things were very different, especially for women. The home was the centre of most activity and opportunities for meeting up with family and friends, particularly of the opposite sex, was limited. No wonder that in the provincial towns and cities particularly, the anticipation of the monthly ball gave rise to extreme excitement and the assembly room was the hub of the social universe!

The Joy of the Letter

June 27, 2023May 29, 2023 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here, talking about letters and cards, letter-writing and research. Last week, a friend who lives a few doors down, put a hand written card through my door to fix up a get-together. She could have texted or used any one of a half dozen other ways of getting in touch but the card really thrilled me because it feels so unusual to receive hand-written cards and letters these days. Despite this, cards and other beautiful stationery are very popular and I’m always tempted to buy some when I visit historic houses or other lovely places that sell smart stationery. As a result, I have an ever-increasing pile of cards in my desk and seldom seem to have the chance to send them to anyone, though I do my best to find those occasions when I can.

At the same time, I’ve been researching the book I’m writing about the history of Ashdown House, and have been reminded of how important letters and letter-writing was to our forbears as a way of sharing news (and gossip!) and consequently how useful letters are to historians. In fact, my new fiction timeslip book also underlines this, as the heroine and her sister are both illiterate, never having been taught to read or write as children because they were poor (and girls). Learning to read is one of my heroine’s ambitions.

Crying over a good book!

June 28, 2023September 23, 2014 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here. Last week I spent a day on writing retreat with a very good friend of mine, also a romance writer. Over lunch, we got chatting about the books that make us cry. We weren’t talking about those books that drive us to tears of frustration as we’re writing them although there are plenty of those. We were talking as readers about the scenes that can make us cry every time we read them, even though we know them back to front and word for word. Not all of our favourites were romance books although some of them were. Others were thrillers, crime stories, even biographies.

There is No Friend Like a Sister . . .

June 28, 2023February 11, 2014 by Andrea Penrose

“For there is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather, to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.” —Christina Rossetti

Sisters. It is one of the most elemental bonds of all. And yet, a number of us—me included—have never experienced that close relationship. I have two brothers. They are wonderful, and I’ve learned a lot of important life lessons from them—how to throw a curveball, how to drive a stick shift, the important of sucking it up and NOT crying when you fall out of a tree.

All About Aunts

June 28, 2023January 7, 2013 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here. Today, 7^th January, is St Distaff’s
Day and I am writing in praise of aunts. I expect a lot of us may have been
back at work a while but in the past the 7^th January was
traditionally the day on which everyone went back to work after the Twelfth
Night holiday. It took the name St Distaff’s Day because it was the day on
which we ladies were supposed to be picking up our spinning once again, the
tool of the trade for women being the distaff to spin flax. From the trade of
spinning comes the word spinster, a recognised legal term for an unmarried
woman. The spear side and the distaff side were legal terms to distinguish the
inheritance of male and female children.