Mother's Old School Friends' Annual Gathering

Every year, Mother hosts a reunion of her school friends, a cheerful group of ladies who are extra cheerful when they get together. Dolly, Minerva, and Cousin Geneviève are expected to hover around but not mingle, lest they hear disturbing gossip about the husbands of these ladies, or mildly shocking information about the ladies themselves. Of course, they are anxious to hear the latter, as it might give them some clues about their paradoxical mother.

The girls are rolling their eyes at the so-outdated gowns of the ladies. Do they still dress as they did as girls, or is it all part of the reunion ritual?  Their fashion plates are from the French periodical Journal des Dames et des Modes, also known as Costume Parisien, which ran from 1797-1839. Geneviève is on edge. Never did she imagine that one of her aunt's school friends was the mother of her secret love, Louis.

The Lady's Monthly

Dolly and Minerva are visiting some women from another publication, The Lady's Monthly Museum; Or, Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction. Needless to say, they are not as pretty as the Ackermann women, but Mother assures them that beauty is only print-deep.

La Belle Assemblée

There were many competing fashion magazines in Ackermann's day, although none approached the quality of Ackermann's fine fashion plates. It is easy to see how some of them attempted to copy the images, but the result was always crude and poorly colored. La Belle Assemblée was owned by John Bell, a mover and shaker in the publishing industry. The magazine ran from 1806-1839. Early fashion prints were quite amateurish, but improved as time (and technology) advanced. Early in its run, La Belle Assemblée focused on informative and literary articles for women, as was the trend in the Enlightenment era, but by the 1820s, the so-called Romantic movement had shifted the role of women to more domestic and fashion topics.

Advice from Rudolph Ackermann

Father is visiting with Rudolph Ackermann today. He has noticed that the girls are behaving oddly and is at a loss for what to do about it. Of course, Rudolph has a solution for it. Of course, Ackermann's Repository is the best of all possible worlds, but it might broaden their horizons to wander through some other publications.

For Mr. Ackermann's office, I used a print of the workroom of Wilhelm Grimm, who along with his brother Jacob, was half of the Brothers Grimm, the famed collectors of German folk tales. They published their first collection of tales,  Children's and Household Tales, in 1812. Many revisions were made until these stories became the harmless "fairy tales" we are acquainted with today.