Zabdiel Boylston, in my dreams
No portrait of Zabdiel Boylston survives, but this is how I like to imagine him…
Read MoreLady Mary: Beauty and Brutality
Richardson’s 1726 portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in her Turkish robes hides her smallpox scars but paints in slavery…
Read MoreThe Turkish Bath by Ingres
Ingres’s painting of luxuriant nudity began as an awareness of absence. As a young man, the painter read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s dream of unscarred skin…
Read MoreHow I Came to Write about Smallpox
I’m often asked how I came to write about smallpox. I found Lady Mary in a literary footnote fantasizing about Circassian slaves…
Read MoreSmallpox: the “Speckled Monster”
Smallpox was a hideous disease that made its victims unrecognizably monstrous, and many died in agony. The terror it fueled was intense…
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About My Blog
Occasional musings about stories, history, art, ideas, and the adventures of a writer's life...
