The third and final entry in the Regina Shober Gray [1] diary on the death of her sister Lizzie [2] turns from private grief to the public response to the news.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston,..

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The Society's Treat Rotunda was the setting Saturday for Gary Boyd Roberts's seminar marking the publication of his new book, The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants to the American Colonies, Québec, or the United States. More than thirty participants thronged the room to..

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[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 23 February 2017.]

As I complete publishing excerpts from the 1865 volume, the final year in..

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The death of the diarist’s sister Lizzie Shober [1] fills pages in her manuscript diary. [2] Here, in the second installment (of three), Mrs. Gray gathers memories and impressions of her..Continue reading →

Finishing up the generation of the Princess of Wales’s great-great-great-great-grandparents –­ as part of a review of scholarship that has become available since Richard Evans’s book, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, was published in 2007 – there is something..

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The death of the diarist’s sister Lizzie Shober [1] is the subject of three diary entries – among the longest passages in the Regina Shober Gray [2] diary, and closing out the year 1865. In..Continue reading →

Continuing my project of reviewing recent scholarship (or new databases) that might add material to Richard Evans’s 2007 book, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, I have reached the late Princess’s great-great-great-grandparents. Among them: James Brownell..

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In this entry, Regina Shober Gray [1] touches on some of the constraints she felt as a poor relation in a family with richer members. Her economies with seamstresses had repercussions for..Continue reading →

More than a decade ago I had the opportunity to edit Richard Evans’s account of the ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales. Looking now at the finished product gives me great pleasure: it seems to me both intrinsically interesting as an expansive view of one person’s..

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I was recently on holiday in London and Prague, and in the latter city I had a rather serendipitous encounter, as it seemed – but perhaps was not! While touring the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle – an impressive..

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