Two Dresses in Parramatta and a Book about Domestic Life

Stockholm, 22 January 1846. My own beloved Augusta! Thank you, thank you, my good friend for your last letter, even though I had to wait quite some time to get it. But I will not scold you, only thank you so much for your last letter. I should probably start by thanking you for your good wishes for the new year. I thank you for […]

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Augusta’s friend Lotten and her little cousin Minna in St. Barths

Did Augusta know anything about the Caribbean island, St. Barths? Saint Barthélemy, or St. Barths, was a Swedish colony between 1784 and 1878. Augusta’s friend Lotten would have had good reasons to know about the island… I am still reading the letters from Charlotte “Lottten” Westman to Augusta. Augusta and Lotten had been friends in Stockholm while attending private girl’s schools in 1842-1845. When Augusta […]

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A Winter Funeral in Umeå

In my last blog, I wrote about Augusta’s friend Lotten and her family. I mentioned that her grandfather, the famous pharmacist, Carl Johan Fredrik (CJF) Plageman, had moved to northern Sweden with his second wife, Eva Sofia. On a wintry day in 1853, she died. Letters from CJF Plagemann to his daughter, Dorothea, who lived in Stockholm, describe all the details of the funeral and […]

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Mrs Edgren and her School for Girls

Lotten Westman’s Letter to Augusta, Stockholm, 18 December 1845. “Lucky Augusta who gets letters from Mrs. Edgren! Greet her a thousand times from me. Tell her that I still worship her as warmly as when I said goodbye to her for the last time, and when I start talking about them, it is always an inexhaustible topic and at those times, I forget both time […]

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