Well, I bet you can guess from my searching history (of which you can see a sample below) that I’m trying to pin down the position in the education of the women in two of my stories. Both Ingeborg (The Frozen Maze protagonist) and Ombretta (Bones of the Titans protagonist) have studied at the university. It’s easy to say it today, but the 1920s were (as it’s often the case) a time of passage, where women started to be recognised as students in universities across Europe and America. In 1924 – when both stories are set – women could be awarded their degree both in Britan and Germany, but it’s kind of difficult to really know what their curses of study were like, even without considering that university courses were quite different from today in general.

I’m trying to see how the university worked back in the 1920s and how women featured in it. Quite a tricky matter online, but unfortunately, I haven’t found a book that addresses this specific subject yet.

Still, I’ve found a few interesting tidbits.

Have a look!

In what year were women allowed to graduate from Oxford University?

This is a concise and necessarily succinct article about women at the University of Oxford, where women had studied since the 1870s but could earn their degree only from 1920s.
But there’s one small piece of information that caught my eye: the University of Dublin started granting degrees to women already in the first years of the XX century.

Ombretta, my character from Bones of the Titans, spends her teen years in Ireland with her step-father. I thought that then she left for London to study, but this info may change her background completely. Ombretta will be in London in her mid-twenties. I’ve thought she went there to study, but I see now that probably she didn’t.

October 1920: Women granted full membership of Oxford University

A quick view of the first few years after Oxford permitted women to gain their degrees. It’s an article full of tidbit info and includes a couple clippings from the newspapers of the time.

Women in the University

A brief history of women at the University of Glasgow, which seems to have started inclusion a lot early than Oxford and other English universities. The Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women was founded in 1877, it became a college in 1883, and it was finally amalgamated with the University of Glasgow soon after. Women started to graduate from that university in 1894.

Women in the 1920s in North Carolina

It’s true that this article addresses Carolina universities and women (at least at the beginning) and that it has a larger scope than just education, but it’s overall interesting. It gives a comprehensive, if necessarily succinct, picture of the changing role of women in the 1920s, of which education was a part.

Running Wild: College Students in the 1920s

Concerned with American colleges and mostly on what students in the 1920s revolutionised rather than what it was common, this is an article that gives a vivid image of colleges if possibly a bit single-minded.
Besides, American colleges were indeed a significant step in the creation of a youth awareness in the 1920s, which would never fade in later decades.

Jazz Age Cthulhu
by Jennifer Brozek, Orrin Grey and A.D. Cahill

Three new novelettes inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, set against the background of the Roaring Twenties.

Journey to Kansas City, the “Paris of the Plains,” a city of glamor and sin where cults, secret societies and music intermingle.

Visit Assam, India, where a British dilettante wakes up one morning covered in bruises and welts, with a dead man in her bed and no memory of what happened in the last 24 hours. Her only clue is a trashed invitation to the exclusive Black Ram Club.

Relax on the resort island of Pomptinia, an Italian enclave of wealthy socialites, expats and intellectuals. But beware – the sea conceals dark secrets.

Fiction by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill and Orrin Grey.

 

 

I expect to see quite a few exhibite dedicated to the 1920s in the next few years. This one it’s going to be up in Cleveland.

And this one will be held in Genua (I hope I’ll be able to go). It’s in some way a follow up to the Art Deco exhibit of a couple of years ago.

Sarah Plugs Her Own Stuff

How do you explain that the more I try to do, and the less I feel like accomplish?

After my working schedule has finally settled down in November, I was expecting to write a lot more. And I suppose I did. I prepared almost two months worth of my serial, and I wrote quite a few articles for Medium. Still, I would have like to have finished the serial and to write every day for Medium.

I know, I’m never happy.

But all the same!

In case you haven’t seen my serial yet, you can read the first five episodes here.

It’s a very lose Snow White retelling set in 1920s Germany. We’re coming to a point in the serial were things start to move, so come along!

Medium is a journey, let me tell you. I’m still experimenting with topis, and I see there’s a lot to experiment with. Some topics were totally wrong for that platform. Other responded quite well. I’m happy Tolkien is one of those. I plan to write a lot more about my favourite author there.

 

NaNoWriMo, Acknowledging Our Limits and Becoming a More Thoughtful Author

This year I had to renounce NaNoWriMo almost from the beginning. Between preparing my serial for the blog, and trying to establish a routine on Medium, I really couldn’t manage. And it’s something I’m very sorry about, but I’m trying to see the positive in it. Here are my thoughts.

I’m Going on an Adventure… Again!

During the last year, I read both The History of the Hobbit by John D. Rateliff and The History of The Lord of the Rings by Christopher Tolkien with my Tolkien reading group. It was only natural that at the end we’d read the books again.
I’m challenging myself to blog about it every day… well, almost every day.

We Can’t Be Inspired for 30 Days in a Row

I’m always quite surprised how many writers think that writing is a matter of inspiration, which is why they believe it is quite impossible to face a challenge like NaNoWriMo. One cannot be inspired every day. Which I agree with. That’s precisely why, when it comes to trying to be professional without writing, we should not rely on inspiration at all.