Mary Jo Hoffman

Sep 19, 2024 | the-history-girls.blogspot.com | Mary Jo Hoffman

Among us, we cover every period from Classical times to World War II. Individual, entertaining, sometimes provocative: on this weekly blog on Fridays we'll share our thoughts on writing, research, reviews, and all aspects of our work. We love what we do and we want to talk about it.

Jul 25, 2024 | the-history-girls.blogspot.com | Mary Jo Hoffman

Angelica Paintress of Minds, my novel about the eighteenth -century artist Angelica Kauffman, was published by The Barbican Press in 2020. Publication was carefully timed to coincide with an exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy. Then Covid happened and the exhibition, together with so much else, was cancelled. So you can imagine how delighted I was when this excellent show opened at the Royal Academy in March. I particularly admire her portraits and self -portraits.

Mar 17, 2024 | lancasteronline.com | Mary Jo Hoffman

We regularly drove past a beautiful garden. I was fascinated with the tripod forms supporting plants. I later learned they’re pole beans. So neatly placed and obediently growing on those forms, they must be worth all that extra work, I thought. So that year, when picking what we’d grow at our house, I suggested pole beans. We could get a piece of lattice and use it against the porch posts. We have a grouping of three posts forming the corner on our back porch.

Mar 7, 2024 | the-history-girls.blogspot.com | Mary Jo Hoffman

Think of Henry Vlll and what picture floats into yoir mind? Or Thomas Cromwell, or Thomas More? The likely answer is an image painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, a German-Swiss Master who spent more than a third of his life in England and weathered the stresses of the king's marriages, religious reforms and and the many shocks that Tudor England was heir to. In fact you can't really think of the Tudors at all without the man who became known as the King's Painter.

Sep 7, 2023 | the-history-girls.blogspot.com | Mary Jo Hoffman

You might know Christina Hardyment from her books of popular sociology (Dream Babies; The Future of the Family; From Mangle to Microwave) or literary biographies (Malory: the Life and Tmes of King Arthur's Chronicler; The World of Arthur Ransome). She has also written more generally on Literature (Writing the Thames; Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings). Now to add to this eclectic mix, she has started a trilogy of historical novels about Alice Chaucer.