Dew of the Sea Costume History, Theology & Thoughts

 Dear readers, I wrote this short story as an exercise for my current Creative Writing Diploma. Enjoy!  - Grace Bertram :)  The year is 1892, a small town in England. Belinda Benson had always loved to read. There were just so many books in the world, so many worlds to escape into, so many adventures to embark on through the written word. It was difficult to put them down once they were picked up and even harder to pick a favourite. Belinda’s family had always known she was a bookworm and her father had jokingly predicted she was destined to be a librarian. Which, consequently, became her dream. As she grew up, she began to know more and more that providing people with literature was the best service she could give, the best pastime she could encourage, the best use of her time. Besides, as a librarian, she could read and read until she knew everything. Until she could recommend the most famous novels on the classics shelves, the most gripping thrillers or...

 Hi there, Grace Bertram here. I thought I might provide a brief explanation of why I chose the name Grace Bertram as my pseudonym on this blog.  So we have a family friend, who collects antiques and upon a family visit several years ago, he noticed I was interested in the Victorian writing desk he'd collected. While he was showing us the desk (and I was enraptured), he picked up a small bag that contained a hand-written game: Shakespearean cards.  My imagination was instantly kindled. Who was it that put the effort and time in to create this fabulous game and why did they do it? They must have been full of expertise when it comes to literature, because the game consisted of 40 Shakespearean cards, each containing a quote from a play by Shakespeare. It was all hand-written,  beautiful cursive. And there were pink cards and white cards with an instruction/rules-of-the-game card, explaining the pink cards were for the ladies and the white for the gentlemen. The aim of ...