This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
There is a line in the remake of The Parent Trap when the man (who owns a vineyard) is showing his former wife his collection of special wines: "I'm a man of limited interests". That is sort of like me with books! I have accumulated quite a few old books and it's not just because I love books.
Our oldest complete book is the one above. It predates most of the settings for my books, the Jacobites, and the Great Fire of London. There is something very exciting about thinking about the different people who have read it over the years! I got it because it links in with one of our family's favourite books, The Children of Green Knowe.
And then there are books which directly impact on my own writing. My sister bought me a first edition of Walter Scott's Ballads and Lyrical Pieces, a book which is gifted in my own story Day's Dying Glory. It is amazing to be able to hold the book, getting an idea of things beyond the words: the weight of the paper; the size of the margins where short notes can be written; the intricate swirls and colours of the cover's inside...
And, of course, there are those old books which indulge other aspects of my interests. These interests - as mentioned in last week's blog - go on to inspire my writings in one way or another.
So I think it is not only sensible but also right to gather old books, and certainly a great source of inspiration for an historical fiction writer. Not only do we get to hold the same object we are setting into the hands of our characters, we also get to see the stories and the instructions people received through books then. Remember: all these books were an inspiration to someone back in the day too, or they would never have been published!
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