Helen Steadman is the author of historical novels Widdershins and Sunwise, both published with Impress Books, and released on July 2017 and April 2019 respectively. Her stories deal with the persecution of women in England in the 17th century, under banners of ridding the land of witches and evil doers, even if those women are known herbalists and healers, loved and respected in their communities. Read the full interview with Helen Steadman below: SA: Where does your fascinat

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to pre-revolutionary Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Read further below on Women Actors Now and Then There is a tremendous love and devotion behind the choice of becoming an actor. Being in the theatre, or in film, or both, requires an enormous amount of work and sacrifice. Actors in ancient Greece, India and other civilizations were pries

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to pre-revolutionary Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Read further below on London's Music Halls in the Nineteenth Century. Music halls can be traced back to the taverns and coffee houses of 18th century London where men met to eat, drink and do business. Performers sang songs while the audience ate, drank and joined in the singing. By the

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to pre-revolutionary Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Read further below on Russian Tea and Tea Party Culture. Tea is one of my favorite beverages, and when I first visited St. Petersburg I was delighted to find out that Russia has a very long standing tea-drinking tradition. I learnt that tea was first introduced to Russia in 1638 by a Mon

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to pre-revolutionary Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Read further below on Russia Before the Revolution. The Russian Revolution took place in 1917 when the peasants and working class people of Russia revolted against the government of Tsar Nicholas II, dismantling his autocratic state, and creating a new communist government that led to th

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to Russia hoping to meet playwright Anton Chekhov and Konstantin Stanislavky, but life and other adventures get in the way. However she manages to learn Russian and ends up translating one of Chekhov’s plays, Uncle Vanya, with the intention of bringing it to London stages. Read further below on Chekhov and Russian theater at the turn of the century; on

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century. Read further on the Victorian Era and Women's Corsets. The focus of the stylish feminine silhouette of the mid and late 19th century was an hourglass figure with a tiny waist, and the use of corsets, which had been popular in Europe since the 16th century, reached a fashionable peak in the Victorian era. Victorian corsets didn’t end at the hips like their 18th cen

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels through Siberia in the middle of Winter and spends time trying to cross Lake Baikal which is frozen over. Read further on the amazing Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is an ancient, massive lake in Siberia, north of the Mongolian border. It is considered the oldest lake in the world, at 25–30 million years—and the deepest. The lake is surrounded by mountains a

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who travels to St. Petersburg, Russia, and then through Siberia to Vladivostok, on the Trans-Siberian Railway. No railway has captured the imagination like the Trans-Siberian. Running almost 6000 miles long through some of the most inhospitable yet gripping landscapes on earth, it has seduced travelers and dreamers alike since its inception. Traveling across eight

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who gets sexually abused by her co-actor and employer, and finds it very difficult to confess to her sweetheart, not just because of shame, but mainly for fear of reprisals. Read further on the history of rape culture and how rape has often been considered a question of honor, mainly an injury to husbands and male relatives. Throughout history, a woman’s “purity,”

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, who gets sexually abused by her co-actor and employer, but finds it impossible to report, not just because of shame but for fear that her professional status as actor will render her claim dubious. Read further on the history of rape culture and how women have always been suspect of some degree of acquiescence, and how rape trials have focused on the victims havin

In my novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Lily is an actress working in London at the end of the 19th century, when women who ventured on the stage were still being perceived as transgressing harlots, alongside being admired for their beauty and their acting skills. Read further on this paradoxical perception of the emerging female artists that had flooded theatrical stages by the turn of the twentieth century. Until the mid nineteenth-century, women had been confined into

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Down Labyrinthine Family History Paths If there was one mysterious, spellbinding female member in our family tree to look up to when I was growing up, it was our great grand aunt, Gertrude Throop Cable. The mention of her name in family gatherings always created tension. But whenever my four sisters and I, who lived in Madrid, Spain, got together with our four paternal cousins, who lived in Manchester, it was only a matter of time before speculation about Lily’s adventurous l

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