FANDYLIONS + DROP 4?!
Mabel & Madeline announce NEW BOOKS!!!!!
Hello darlings,
Welcome to July! It feels like we’ve had to give everything we have to get to this point. Tears were shed, ankles were sprained, 1776 was called, sweat was sweat, and, most importantly, books were made. Yes, that’s right! This month we completed the finishing touches on our next two books and we’re happy to announce they are coming soon! Thank you to everyone who helped along the way, especially to our dear and beloved book designer Emily Ezquerro, who is a genius and a hero!
In honor of our new books, which are perhaps our most special yet, we are thrilled to announce a new subscription tier on Substack.
INTRODUCING THE FANDYLIONS
For the low, low cost of $250 per year, you can officially call yourself a Fandylion!
What is a Fandylion? Something between a dandylion and a mandylion, a Fandylion is a founding member of the Mandylion Inner Circle, an ICON committed to the cause of reimagining the nineteenth century. Fandylions are devoted, kind, and very, very smart. They are not afraid of freaky facts or old books. They like their history served CUTE and SUBVERSIVE.
What do I get as a Fandylion? Everything. Beside bragging rights, you’ll also get books! Your subscription includes
Access to each of our Substack posts, including everything below the paywall
Access to monthly bonus episodes of 1-800-1800
First dibs on every new Mandylion book, fresh and hot off the press, sent directly to your door. Each package includes a handwritten thank you note, because that’s the right thing to do!
Special, exclusive Mandylion updates and invites you’re not going to want to miss ;)
How do I become a Fandylion? Hit the button below and subscribe!
What are your new books anyway? I thought you’d never ask. Let me introduce you to your new best friends!! And if you’re not ready to commit to a perfect life as a Fandylion, preorder your copies on our site!
LOVE DAYS
Ettie Stettheimer bares all in Love Days, inviting us into the Stettheimer family’s salon of avant-garde artists. Meet Ettie’s alter ego, Susanna Moore, a ravishing Greek scholar. Susanna has no trouble deciphering arcane texts, but when it comes to matters of the heart, she’s lost in translation. Her desire for love, knowledge, and the company of great artists takes her from New York to Berlin to Capri to Paris. She can only run from herself for so long. . . .
This is the book for you if…
You’re a world class flirt.
Your husband’s touch turns you to ice.
You’re not an artist, but a muse.
It’s all Greek to you.
Henrietta “Ettie” Stettheimer (1875-1955) was a writer and one of the “Stetties,” a trio of artistic sisters who lived between Europe and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With Carrie, the architect of an elaborate dollhouse, and Florine, a painter whose iconoclastic canvases have made their way into the modernist canon, Ettie hosted a salon frequented by the day’s avant garde. In a time when it was still unusual for women to pursue higher education, Ettie graduated from Barnard College in 1896, received a master’s degree at Columbia in 1898, and earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1908. Ettie published two novels, Philosophy: An Autobiographical Fragment and Love Days, under the pseudonym “Henrie Waste.”
THE STORY OF AVIS
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps paints a tragic portrait of Avis, a would-be artist whose promising career is subsumed by the obligations of marital life. Against the backdrop of the Civil War, Avis battles her conflicting desires: life with the man she loves or the pursuit of artistic greatness. Ultimately, instead of paints and palettes, Avis fills her days with thoughts of doilies and daycare. Following Avis’s struggles to balance her passion with her duties, Phelps proves that artistic ambition is not extinguished by love, but slowly eroded by the constraints of nineteenth-century womanhood.
This is the book for you if…
You have the soul of an artist.
You are in an aura gap relationship.
Your daughter scares you.
You are as enigmatic as the sphinx.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911) was an incorrigible reformer, advocating at various points for dress reform, feminism, social reform, temperance, and an end to the practice of vivisection. In 1874, she penned a rousing call for women to burn their corsets, anticipating the bra-burning feminists of the following century. Her writing career began at 19, when she published a short story about the Civil War titled “A Sacrifice Consumed” in Harper’s Magazine. During her lifetime, she authored 57 volumes of fiction, poetry, and essays. She is perhaps best remembered for the trilogy of Spiritualist novels that she published in the wake of the Civil War—the first of which, The Gates Ajar, had sold 180,000 copies in the US and England by 1900.
THRILLINGGGGG