Category: Book Club

• Poison Panic: Arsenic Deaths in 1840s Essex

  Helen Barrell examines the lives of three apparently ordinary women: Sarah Chesham, Hannah Southgate, and Mary May. 1840s Essex became notorious as a place where women stalked the lanes looking for their next victim to poison with arsenic, though much of the reported horror remains unfounded.

  Death and the Maiden

  31/10/2016

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Arsenic, Burial, Crime, Deadmaidens, Death, Essex, Helen Barrell, History, Investigation, Law, Lethal, Murder, Poison, Press, Punishment, Scandal, Trials, Victorian, Writer

• 7 Imaginative But Most Peculiar Novels About Death

  Writer, blogger and self proclaimed word-nerd Harriet Allner, presents the first in a series of special posts for Death & the Maiden that explore death in literature. This week’s novels take various questions about human life and death, exploring them in interesting, challenging ways. Examining how we construct horrors and hopes around dying, how we use story to…

  Death and the Maiden

  25/07/2016

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Book Reviews, Books, Books on Death, Curiosity, Deadmaidens, Death, Dying, Experiences, Fear, Grief, Human Life, Literature, Loss, Mortality, Novels, The Scribble Bug

• Rest In Pieces

  To celebrate the paperback release of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, author Bess Lovejoy is giving away a signed copy of her book. Rest in Pieces catalogs stories from the age of antiquity to today, tracing the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death and connecting the lives of the famous deceased…

  Death and the Maiden

  08/02/2016

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Bess Lovejoy, Book, Burial, Culture, Deadmaidens, Death, Embalming, Eva Peron, Evita, Famous Corpses, Female Identity, Gender Roles, History, Lady of Argentina, Rest In Pieces, Ritual, Writer

• Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs

  Historian, Verity Holloway’s first novella Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs is about magic, makeup, crypts, and clownfish. But mostly, it’s about our obsession with keeping the dead around. Here Verity shares how this book began as a few notes and takes us back to her first encounter with the incorrupt body of Saint Spyridon in Corfu.…

  Death and the Maiden

  23/11/2015

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Art, Beauty, Corfu, Deadmaidens, Death, Experiences, Greek Orthodox, History, Martyrs, Religion, Saint Spyridon, Saints, Shrine, Writer

• Midwives, Layers-Out, and Lady Pole

  Patricia Lundy explores the relationship between women and death by reflecting on two books. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty’s memoir on her experience (past and current) in the death industry and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with specific focus on Lady Pole. In this post Patricia entertains the…

  Death and the Maiden

  31/08/2015

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Birth, Change, Child Birth, Corpse, Culture, Deadmaidens, Death, Empowerment, Fear of Dying, Female Identity, Gender Roles, History, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Lady Pole, Life Cycle, Memoir, Undertaker, Undertaking LA, Women

• The Winter of Our Lives

  Death & the Maidens’ own Lucy Talbot talks with Dr Monica Williams-Murphy about her role as Emergency Medicine Physician, the experiences that led her to write the wonderful It’s OK to Die and travel across America educating and advocating for a better approach to death and dying. Explaining why we all need to prepare for the…

  Death and the Maiden

  07/06/2015

  Book Club, Interview, Lucy Coleman Talbot

  Change, Deadmaidens, Death, Doctors, Dying, Dying Matters, Education, End of Life, Experiences, Gender Roles, Good Death, Grief, Holistic Approaches, Hospice, Its OK to Die, Life, Life Cycle, Medical Practice, Medicine, Monica Williams-Murphy, Nature, Palliative Care, Preparation, Seasons, Society, Sprituality, Winter

• Tears Become Ideas

  In some places, the ability to sing or recite ritual laments became part of a feminine portfolio of skills, along with cooking, spinning, mending and cleaning. Here, author Sarah Murray shares an adaptation from her wonderful book Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre, How We Dignify the Dead to give us insight…

  Death and the Maiden

  27/04/2015

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Art, Artist, Beauty, Ceremonies, China, Culture, Deadmaidens, Death, Emotion, Experiences, Expression, Gender Roles, Greece, Grief, History, Ireland, Laments, Mourning, Music, Ritual, Russia, Women, Writer

• Women in the Mourning

  

  Author of The Undertaker’s Daughter, Kate Mayfield is here to take us back in time. A time when women were not public figures in the funeral industry but played important roles ‘behind the scenes’ at her father’s funeral home, Kate’s childhood home.

  Death and the Maiden

  16/02/2015

  Book Club, Guest Post

  Deadmaidens, Death, Death and the Maiden, Experiences, Funeral, Funeral Home, Gender Roles, Memoir, Private, Public, Society, Undertaker, Women, Writer