S05.26: Dueling in Romance with Chels: Duels are Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Pistols at dawn, y’all! We’re talking about duels today — what they are, why they exist, who fights them, their rules and why they’re so darn sexy when they are really just silly. We’re taking our twenty paces alongside Chels_ebooks, one of our favorite BookTokkers, who has a longstanding love of old school romances and their covers, and a substack that you should subscribe to immediately. Of course, we’re talking TikTok, too. This one is long and fun and full of book recs, so strap in!
Notes
We are thrilled to welcome Chels, the Reigning Monarch of Bodice Ripper TikTok, to the show today. You can also follow them on twitter and subscribe to their substack, The Loose Cravat. In concert with this episode, Chels wrote an essay called Duel, Interrupted: The Underlying Homoeroticism in historical romance's favorite pasttime.
Wondering about those TikTok hit pieces we mentioned? Read the ones from British GQand London Review of Books. It’s a few years old, but this Wall Street Journal video is a great look at the mysterious TikTok algorithm and how quickly it will rabbit hole you, and a more recent piece from Vox about TikTok’s recent promises to become more transparent, and another one from The Verge about how TikTok suppresses content from disabled users.
The relationship between BookTok and bookselling is complex and difficult to parse because of the lack of transparency around book sales. Check out Where Is All the Book Data by Melanie Walsh, as well as how book-buying habits changed during the pandemic.
Deloping is bad, actually! So If you’d like to learn more about duels, Chels recommends Pistols at Dawn by Richard Hopton and The Duel: A History of Duelling by Robert Baldick. Jen recommends this article about dueling from JSTOR Daily, or this one about American dueling in the Smithsonian, which led her to the Code Duello as one example for the rules of dueling.
Speaking of moral panics, JSTOR Daily has a list of them! I told you it was a good site!
Deuling in pop culture: check out The Duelists by Ridley Scott, this famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and of course, Hamilton.
For some real historical duels, check out: The billiards balls duel, The topless lady duelers in Austria, additional ladies being badass, Humphrey Howarth the naked dueler, and Burr and Hamilton. Senator Brooks caning Senator Sumner on the Senate floor is another thing entirely.
Finally, check out this page from Loretta Chase’s website which describes and links to several videos about the Singing bird pistols from Lord Lovedon’s Duel.
Books With Duels
Other Books Mentioned
Sponsors
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Target
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Juniper Butterworth, author of Shipwrecked: Being a tale of true love, magic & goats
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