In my writing I like to use photography and images to help craft story locations and to inform how I imagine the characters. Here are some books that provided good location/aesthetic inspo. This list also includes a larger body of work across mediums that I was moved or inspired by, even if I am not taking conscious inspiration from it.

Art, History, and Photography:

• Sabine Rewald, Rooms With A View: The Open Window in the 19th Century (2011)
• Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home in Upper Canada (1970)
• Kim Ondaatje, Small Churches of Canada (1981)
• Joe Chowaniec, Abandoned Alberta (2020)
• David Ross, Abandoned Train Stations: Rail Stations, Yards, Signal Boxes, and Track That the World Left Behind (2022)

Other articles:

• Women and Their Work in Upper Canada
• Work of Danish Artist Vilhelm Hammershøi
• Erudite Femininity in 19th Century Art
• “The New Woman” in 19th Century painting
• Work of Canadian Artist Sophie Pemberton

Novels:

• Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel – probably my favourite novel
• Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All The Time – my second favourite novel
• Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
• Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
• Mona Awad, All’s Well
• Jo Baker, Longbourn
• Iain Reid, Foe
• Jojo Moyes, Me Before You
• Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

Films:

• Little Women (2019) – this is probably my favourite film ever
• The Beguiled
• Promising Young Woman
• Last Night In Soho
• Room
• Pride and Prejudice (2005)
• The Substance
• West Side Story (2021)
• Crimson Peak
• Moulin Rouge!
• Anything put out by Guillermo del Toro, Robert Eggers, Baz Luhrmann

Plays, Poetry, Music, & Other Media:

• Mary Oliver’s poetry, especially her collection Devotions
• Itamar Moses and David Yazbeck, Dead Outlaw
• Peter Shaffer, Equus
• Laura Wade, Posh
• Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
• Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown
• Alice Birch, Anatomy of a Suicide
• Roland Schimmelpfennig, Arabian Night
• Writing about Alan Lomax’s collection of folk songs from the rural USA
• Music Artists: Florence + The Machine, Lana Del Rey, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Vaccines, Marianas Trench, David Yazbek, Bandits on the Run, The Decemberists, Lorde, Mitski, Dave Malloy, Ingrid Michaelson.

Paintings:

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at the Window (1822)

François Marius Granet, View in the Stables of the Villa of Maecenas, Tivoli (ca. 1805-1810)

Georg Achen, Interior (1907)

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, Standgade 30 (1909)

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Sunshine in the Drawing Room, no. 4 (1910)

• There are a couple of works by Hammershøi on permanent display in the National Gallery of Canada, including this one. I’ve been to see them a few times. They are tiny! But there is something about them, especially taken together, that you really can’t stop looking at. It’s like being inside a strange dream. You wonder if you are awake.
• There is a quality of witnessing in Hammershøi’s work that I love as well. This painting in particular feels like walking into the room and waiting for the woman here to turn around, you as the viewer are unsure if you are disturbing her. Creepy but also liminal and gripping in a way that the domestic normally isn’t. Sunshine in the Drawing Room no. 1, 2, and 3 also have that quality, but the woman doesn’t appear. It’s like the artist is moving the furniture around.I love these works because they reward you for looking closely.

Martin Drolling, Interior of a Kitchen (1815)

Sophie Pemberton, Spring (1902)

• I was very fortunate to view this painting when it was on display in 2021 as part of the National Gallery of Canada’s exhibit on Canadian Impressionism and it was like being transported somewhere else. This painting is so large and so lifelike in person I was astounded. I think about it at least once a month probably.

William A. Breakspeare, The Trysting Place, Woman Leaning on a Gate (undated)