Writing and Researching

An interesting day. This afternoon Somewhere Else, my writing group, was invited to spend some time with the author Judith Cranswick who talked us through her experience of independent publishing. It's an avenue that several of us are planning to pursue and it was very useful to hear of tried and tested approaches, the pitfalls to avoid and sources of help with the practicalities.

"Whose hair I wear I loved most dear" - mourning jewellry

I'm also much enjoying my Exeter University course "Writing Memoirs and Family History". Quite apart from the course material and the input from our tutor, Cherry Gilchrist, it's so useful to read and consider the contributions of the other students and to learn from them. At present I'm working on some research into the life of my great grandmother, Elizabeth Morgan. For a variety of reasons, she's proving a difficult customer - disappearing from the records for years on end - but I do know the colour of her hair! In fact, I have a plaited lock of it, incorporated in the reverse of this brooch, which her daughter, my grandmother, left motherless at the age of five, wore faithfully every day of her life. Researching such Victorian mourning jewellry has been fascinating; there's a large display of it at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford that's well worth visiting..