So you’re thinking about - or perhaps already planning on! - welcoming a new life into the world, but you’re not sure how a baby will fit into your novel. Well, dear reader, wonder no more.

1. Babies are an adorable and efficient way to make sure your relationship with your husband is running as smoothly as possible. Telling him you’re pregnant or taking your delicately conditioned self on a reckless horseback

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Lindsey Palka's previous work for The Toast can be found here. This post was brought to you by Caitlin.

If you’ve spent any time at all perusing antique jewelry sales or online estate auctions, you’ve probably stumbled across—and been creeped out by—some Victorian hair jewelry. But come back! Don’t be creeped out. It’s not creepy at all—it’s actually an incredibly interesting type of jewelry that teaches us a lot about the

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This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates. Said gentleman-scholar has re-upped his donation, so keep pitching me, academics longing for freedom.

In the mid-1890s, two Victorian writers made a bet over which one of them could create a more frightening literary monster. The

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This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates.  Jilly Gagnon last wrote for The Toast about The Surreal Housewives. I think every generation assumes, to some extent, that it is the first to invent real depravity. Yes, we have evidence that as far back…

This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates. We also have more of his gargantuan donation left, so continue pitching me your 18th and 19th century trash fiction stories. I first came across Lady Audley’s Secret when I was going through a weird, obsessive…

This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates. We also have more of his gargantuan donation left, so continue pitching me your 18th and 19th century trash fiction stories. I feel like pop culture has a real love/hate relationship with Victorians—or at least with the…

There are some idioms in this great big English language of ours that sound a great deal more exciting than they have any right to be. "The Angel in the House" is one of them. You've almost certainly heard of it, even if it's not a phrase you find occasion to regularly deploy; you're on a website for excitable and bookish women. The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the…