Quibbles
I have been reading the Lord John bits of the Outlander series (re-reading, actually, though I did read pretty much all of the most recent tome, because John is a pov character with some substantial parts) and the Lord John novels.
I still really, really love Lord John, and have a nice crop of bunnies for stories germinating (gestating?) in the back of my mind.
But in the course of working out Lord John's timeline -- which I will probably post at some point, but not in this post, because it isn't nearly complete enought yet -- I have found a couple of historical errors that really didn't have to be errors.
So, to relieve my own feelings, here they are.
1. Brotherhood of the Blade: The Perseid meteor shower that John & his father & Victor Arbuthnot watched 'a couple of weeks' before Gerald Grey was killed.
Gerald dies in early June (the date on the bet at White's is 8 July 1741, a 'month' after the event. Taking that as exact puts the death on 8 June 1741 (Old Style, I am assuming). Even not taking it as exact still puts the death in the first week or so of June.
The Perseids happen at the very end of July/first half of August. Even correcting for the 11 days that got lost in the change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian in 1752, that only puts the Perseids in the second half of July, not all the way into May. It can't have been the Perseids they were watching. On the other hand, there is a perfectly good & reasonably bright (though not as well known) meteor shower that *does* fall in May: the Eta Aquariids. Though with the date shift they were likely in late April, but they go most of the way through May at any rate. Admittedly, the Eta Aquariids were not officially 'discovered' until the 1880s, there are records of them going back to antiquity.
Or, the lying about on the lawn watching the stars could have happened the previous year. But the page is dated pretty clearly in the text.
2. Bred in the Bone: Goudy Bold 10.
Frederic Goudy was a typeface designer who flourished in the first half of the 20th Century. Goudy Old Style (of which the variant Goudy Bold is a subset, and was in fact designed by Morris Fuller Benton) did not exist until 1916. There is no possible way for that typeface to be present in 1777. Even if Claire happened to know enough about typefaces and typesetting before she went back in 1767 to recognize a specific font, she surely could not reproduce it. And there's nothing in the text to support her knowing that much about fonts & type. That's one of Jamie's things, from after she left the first time.
On the other hand, Caslon Italic is period.
I can handwave the medical stuff -- and it does seem like DG has done the proper research for that, but I get out of reason irritated at this kind of error -- because they are really unnecessary.
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comments. Please comment there using OpenID.
I still really, really love Lord John, and have a nice crop of bunnies for stories germinating (gestating?) in the back of my mind.
But in the course of working out Lord John's timeline -- which I will probably post at some point, but not in this post, because it isn't nearly complete enought yet -- I have found a couple of historical errors that really didn't have to be errors.
So, to relieve my own feelings, here they are.
1. Brotherhood of the Blade: The Perseid meteor shower that John & his father & Victor Arbuthnot watched 'a couple of weeks' before Gerald Grey was killed.
Gerald dies in early June (the date on the bet at White's is 8 July 1741, a 'month' after the event. Taking that as exact puts the death on 8 June 1741 (Old Style, I am assuming). Even not taking it as exact still puts the death in the first week or so of June.
The Perseids happen at the very end of July/first half of August. Even correcting for the 11 days that got lost in the change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian in 1752, that only puts the Perseids in the second half of July, not all the way into May. It can't have been the Perseids they were watching. On the other hand, there is a perfectly good & reasonably bright (though not as well known) meteor shower that *does* fall in May: the Eta Aquariids. Though with the date shift they were likely in late April, but they go most of the way through May at any rate. Admittedly, the Eta Aquariids were not officially 'discovered' until the 1880s, there are records of them going back to antiquity.
Or, the lying about on the lawn watching the stars could have happened the previous year. But the page is dated pretty clearly in the text.
2. Bred in the Bone: Goudy Bold 10.
Frederic Goudy was a typeface designer who flourished in the first half of the 20th Century. Goudy Old Style (of which the variant Goudy Bold is a subset, and was in fact designed by Morris Fuller Benton) did not exist until 1916. There is no possible way for that typeface to be present in 1777. Even if Claire happened to know enough about typefaces and typesetting before she went back in 1767 to recognize a specific font, she surely could not reproduce it. And there's nothing in the text to support her knowing that much about fonts & type. That's one of Jamie's things, from after she left the first time.
On the other hand, Caslon Italic is period.
I can handwave the medical stuff -- and it does seem like DG has done the proper research for that, but I get out of reason irritated at this kind of error -- because they are really unnecessary.
This entry was originally posted at http://lferion.dreamwidth.org/229879.html, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.