Inside The Sum of All Kisses - Julia Quinn

Inside The Sum of All Kisses

Book 3 in the
Smythe-Smith Quartet
  • The Patch of Green (where Daniel and Hugh fight their duel) is not a real location. I really wasn’t sure where the men would be most likely to duel, but I wanted it to sound as if there was an infamous spot everyone knew about.
  • At the outset of Chapter Two, Sarah and Honoria are talking about Gareth St. Clair, whom some of you might recognize as the hero of It’s in His Kiss. This particular scene takes place several years before Gareth meets and falls in love with Hyacinth, so he is still a single (and very eligible) gentleman at the time of Sarah and Honoria’s conversation.
  • Eloisa James fans will recognize the Duke of Kinross and Lady Edith Gilchrist, who are guests at Marcus and Honoria’s wedding. Although neither protagonist from Once Upon a Tower actually appears “on screen” in The Sum of All Kisses, both are mentioned, and Iris’s frantic search for Edie leads to some rather significant self-reflection on the part of Sarah.
  • Once again, I was unable to resist the lure of Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. My favorite novel-within-a-novel makes its fifth appearance in my books in The Sum of All Kisses. It made its debut in It’s in His Kiss as one of the books Hyacinth reads to Lady Danbury, then it became a big part of the plots of both What Happens in London and Ten Things I Love About You. I managed to work it into Just Like Heaven, as well. And now it’s a graphic novel!
  • Oranges and Lemons is an old English nursery rhyme that developed into a singing game similar to (but not exactly like) “London Bridge is Falling Down.” The lyrics refer to the bells of churches located in or near the City of London. Perhaps the most famous of these churches is St. Sepulchre-Without-Newgate, which is referred to in the rhyme as “the bells of Old Bailey” due to its location opposite London’s Central Criminal Court, commonly known as “Old Bailey.” The bells of St. Sepulchre tolled whenever a condemned man was marched from nearby Newgate Prison to the gallows for his execution. Additionally, St. Sepulchre’s bellman was responsible for ringing the a large handbell known as the Executioner’s Bell inside Newgate at midnight on the day of an execution. Today, the Executioner’s Bell resides in a glass case in St. Sepulchre’s.
Illustration captioned “ST. SEPULCHRE’S CHURCH IN 1737. (From a View by Toms.)” found in Chapter 55 of “Old and New London: Volume 2,” by Walter Thornbury (Originally published: 1878). Original illustrator unknown. Image in the public domain.
photo: Lonpicman at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Oil of Sweet Vitriol is an old-fashioned word for diethyl ether, more commonly known simply as ether. Ether is one of the oldest known anesthetics; it was first synthesized in 1540 by Valerius Cordus.
  • The wealthy usually had their newspapers ironed before they read them. This was not to eliminate wrinkles but rather to seal the ink so that it did not rub off on people’s hands.
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