The Case of the Missing Mother – Cabinet Card

Thanks to QuelleBooks, I’m obsessed with finding these “Missing Mother” portraits.  According to the fascinating and unnerving post on Retronaut, “This was a practice where the mother, often disguised or hiding, often under a spread, holds her baby tightly for the photographer to insure a sharply focused image.”  Some are more subtle than others and it’s…

REVIEW: MRS. ROBINSON’S DISGRACE by Kate Summerscale

Kate Summerscale has once again uncovered a fascinating story from the ever contradictory Victorian era.  Not so very long ago, divorce was nearly impossible (unless you were King Henry VIII, of course).  Until 1858, “marriage could only be dissolved by an individual Act of Parliament, at a cost prohibitive to almost all of the population.…