Mrs. Hurst Dancing & Other Scenes from Regency Life 1812-23 (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Gordon Minjay (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (December 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312551290
• ISBN-13: 978-0312551292
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,533,915 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A charming look backwards --, February 19, 2001

By	kellytwo "kellytwo" (cleveland hts, ohio) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

For an illuminating look at any period of history, contemporary artists are a remarkable source of such information. Mrs. Hurst Dancing (the title taken from one of the sketches in this charming book) will open the doors to the English Regency period, especially the years 1812-1823.

Diana Sperling was born in 1791 and lived with her parents, brothers and sister at Dynes Hall near Halstead in Essex. Until she married in 1834, she indulged her quite considerable sketching and water-coloring talent in delightful vignettes of every day life. Sadly, she seems never to have painted after her marriage.

This loving and sometimes humorous glimpse of day to day family life displays sister Isabella rolling off her donkey (which was apparently a frequent happening) to brother Harry tumbling off his colt. The informal sketches also illustrate the family while dining, playing chess or charades and hanging wallpaper, yet also spending a good bit of time in the outdoors, engaging in donkey races or riding parties, and admiring those members of the military who visited in the area. They also walked a good deal, in the mud and the rain and even the snow. Diana captures her friends and family at play and at work; at home and elsewhere.

The paintings were kept by Diana in her sketchbook, as she painted them, on the right-hand page; the left was used for comments and captions. Seventy of them are reproduced in this book in their actual size, somewhat larger than miniatures, but certainly not large in scale. Most of them are 5½ by 6½ or 5½ by 7 inches. There are a few which have obviously been cut from another page and glued down. While most of the captions are in her own handwriting, there are a few written by another, with explanatory additions by Gordon Mingay.

In some fashion, the two sketchbooks came to be in the possession of a distant relative, a Miss Silver. She, in turn, gave them to her lifelong friends, Mr. and Mrs. Neville Ollerenshaw of Chichester. Those of us who love the Regency era have cause to be grateful to the Ollerenshaws for not only maintaining their treasure but being willing to share it with the rest of us.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating glimpse of Regency life, October 27, 2003

By	L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The pictures in this enchanting book will be a revelation to anyone who only knows about life in the Regency period from reading, say the novels of Jane Austen, whose young ladies lead very decorous lives. It is clear from Diana Sperling's books that some young ladies at least enjoyed a greater variety of occupations than sewing and playing the pianoforte. This book is full of marvellous pictures of Diana and her sisters riding donkeys and horses (and falling off them), getting stuck in the mud while out walking, digging up plants in the garden, fishing, bathing in the river, and doing all sorts of things. One of my favourite pictur4es shows them trying to get a horse up a steep embankment, one pulling on the reins from above, the other two pushing the horse from below. Diana Sperling's drawings are sheer delight, with the distinctive little spindly figures, and her wonderful eye for humorous detail. Anyone at all interested in Regency life is bound to be fascinated by this marvellous book.