Social History

Flouncing: July 1834

Vive la Flounce! A comic piece in the form of a letter to the Editor of the Star newspaper of July 24, 1834, on the islands' peculiar custom of 'flouncing,' or affiancing, by a visiting wit who called himself 'Time-killer;' and a description of flouncing in Alderney, from Captain Wood's Subaltern Officer, published in 1825. The pictures are from Cruickshank's Sketchbook of 1834-6, part of the Priaulx Library's extensive collection of work by this illustrator.

A letter to his aunt: April 1834

From the Star of April 28th, 1834. A light-hearted letter to the Editor, purportedly to his aunt, from a frequent correspondent to the newspaper, a military officer resident on the island who went by the name of 'Time-Killer,' with his observations on houses, high society, and the behaviour and looks of Guernsey ladies and gentlemen. The illustration is from Cruikshank's 1834 My Sketchbook, part of the extensive collection held by the Library.

Peter Paul Dobree on Cadiz, Spanish ladies, and politics, 1811

A letter from Peter Paul Dobrée, (1782-1825), who was born in Guernsey and became Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University in 1823. In 1811 he had visited 'Don Pedro' (Peter Carey) Tupper, the Guernsey-born and immensely wealthy British consul in Valencia. The illustration of Cadiz is from Sir John Carr's Descriptive travels in the southern and eastern parts of Spain and the Balearic isles, in the year 1809, London: 1811, in the Library collection.

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