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The WebHermit's Opinionated Guide to
"The" Regency (1811 - 1820)
Anybody remember King George III of England? No? Shame on you if you are a citizen of the United States! This fellow was "our" King George ... the last monarch of those English colonies that occupied mid-North America in the late 18th century (the fellow who was on the receiving end of the Declaration of Independence in 1776).
Well, a handful of colonies declaring themselves independent wasn't the only problem George had ... not even close. Without going into gory details, let's just that George had ... um ... spells ... when his mind took a vacation from his body. By 1811, when King George III was in his early 70s, the spells were running into each other to the point where The Powers That Be in the English government appointed his son George, Prince of Wales, as Regent. He remained Regent until the death of his father in 1820, when he ascended the English throne as George IV. The Prince Regent wasn't exactly a child in 1811, by the way ... he was about 48, with a bad marriage and a nearly grown daughter.
The unusually well-educated (for a monarch) Prince Regent apparently didn't inspire a lot of awe, as people sometimes referred to him as "Prinny"! He spent his wealth lavishly and his time in pursuit of pleasure, always including much food and drink, in an endless round of social engagements and ... well ... womanizing. The relatively tiny number of ruling class members swirled in society with him, following rigid rules of conduct, dress, and manner while managing to rise above small events such as the Napoleonic wars; horrendous slums; and the rise of a strong middle class, the Industrial Revolution, and resulting labor unrest.
They watched Edmund Kean star in Shakespeare's plays; attended Rossini's new opera, "The Barber of Seville"; viewed the paintings of Constable, Lawrence, and Turner; and argued and exclaimed over the Elgin Marbles. They read the poetry of Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth; the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott; the scientific fiction of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein's Monster"; and the amusing, insightful contemporary novels of a person only revealed to be ... <sharp intakes of breath all round> ... a woman on the death of Jane Austen in 1817.
The center of their universe, though, was The Season ... starting in March usually, with the opening of Parliament, and ending in June when the heat in the city became oppressive and the wealthy went to their country estates for relief. The other three seasons were used as recovery and preparation time. <g>
And what exactly happened during The Season? Young women made their debuts (the original "coming out") ... officially declaring themselves on the hunt for a suitable husband. (Don't be hard on them. They really didn't have many options.) During the day, women visited each other and shopped for the latest fashions to wear to the fancy balls, theatre, and opera. Men spent time in their men-only clubs, courted ladies, manfully pursued sporting events, visited bawdy houses, and occasionally attended to the business of managing their estates.
A Regency Romance, then, is set during this decade-or-so of change and excitement. It concentrates on personal relationships that occur within the restriction of Regency dress, manners, speech, and conventions ... but this restriction does not make for dull stories! They emphasize witty conversation held in sharp, formal language; sexual tension drawn with passion and humor (but relatively little explicit sex); and plots centering on the relationship of the heroine and hero rather than on monumental events. Despite what current standards would call a sexist, restrictive environment, women and men stand fairly equally - no wispy heroines or wimpy heroes here. The best of these stories recall the witty, romantic movie comedies of the 1930s and 40s.
The Webhermit thinks of Regencies as the sonnets of genre fiction. The art is in how inventive the writer becomes within the boundaries of the form. Do a search on the Web for Regency Romance; there are dozens of sites devoted to the genre and to the historic period. Lose yourself in the fantasy of the period. Enjoy!
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