Needless to say, artificial light was hugely different, but people of the past came up with ways of dealing with it.
However, bear in mind these torch boys often worked in concert with thieves and cutthroats, so there’s that complication to take into consideration. A footman in every coach would have been armed with a blunderbuss or other firearm, but honestly what made people safe was all the traffic clogging the roads.Īnd when the moonlight wasn’t strongest, give your character brave (or crazy) enough to walk the city streets on foot a torch boy (a person-often a child-with a lantern, who hired out their light to those who could afford it) to light the way. And also bear in mind that there was safety in numbers.
#Sun haven tonya location full
And remember that the roads would have been crowded-during a full moon, people were out and about. If you have a ball or a soirée in your book, set it on nights when moonlight is strongest. Conversely, ladies planned social events on nights when the moon was full. And moonlight was more important when the moon waned, people up to no good such as thieves and smugglers were out and about. “Medieval writings abound with mentions of the things they saw in the night sky…”Īnd nightfall remained more absolute for centuries-even in the upper classes, who could afford artificial light in the form of candles and oil lamps and (Victorians) gas lighting, the quality of the light in no way approached what we enjoy today. You name it, there was probably a comet spotted in the sky by a diligent monk beforehand. Untimely death of a monarch or heir to an ancient family? Comet. Comets foretold the Black Death, as well as just about any major war you can think of. Comets carried with them particularly evil omens. Medieval writings abound with mentions of the things they saw in the night sky, usually interpreted as portents for evil things to come. And see things, they did: comets and shooting stars. Even daylight was different, without all the pollutants in the air, and the night sky shone so brilliantly with stars that we must now go to very remote places on our planet to catch even a glimpse of what the ancients saw. The fact is that people in the past simply saw the world differently than we do because of light. Light is a subject near and dear to my heart, and important to take into consideration when writing fiction set in the past. The eighteenth century is my area of expertise, but I do happen to know a few things stretching both before and after the long eighteenth century. In this blog, which I was happy to write for my friend and colleague Tonya Ulynn Brown, I shall be discussing the use of light, both natural and artificial, in the past. In my own blog, I approach my historical topics through the lens of historic worldbuilding in fiction. I have published one novel, The Black Unicorn, and I am currently at work on its sequel, which will have something to do with phoenixes in its title. Carter, and I write eighteenth-century historical fiction.
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