Regency Romance Novels

Could it be Jane Austen? Most readers of Regency novels have read her books, certainly Pride and Prejudice. That is one of my favourites, definitely, and I've read it several times.

Jane didn't write many books, but the ones she did write have lasted all these years and are still popular, with Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma being the most popular.

What I love about Jane Austen's books is that they were written as contemporary romance novels, just as we would write romance novels set during the twenty-first century. 

She lived those times, but can you imagine living those times? Would you like to be one of the Bennett sisters, with no greater ambition in life than to get married and it didn't really matter who to, as long as he had a good income. Remember Mrs Bennett wanting her highly intelligent daughter to marry the ridiculously silly Mr Collins?

You know what struck me most, watching the television series with Colin firth - really, after seeing him come out of the river in his wet shirt, who wants to see any other version? Well, apart from that, it was the furniture. They all sat on dead straight upright chairs, all the time. No lounging about in armchairs or sofas.

The Regency period in Great Britain saw a time when the Prince Regent, later King George IV, ruled in place of his father, King George III. Most people know about the madness of that King, how his episodes of complete insanity rendered him unfit to rule, but his son was a glutton and drunkard, who loved to spend lavishly and apparently spent his wedding night with his head in the fireplace.

In 1785, he married Maria Fitzherbert, secretly. The marriage was invalid, because Maria was a Roman Catholic and at the time, it was unlawful for anyone in the line of succession to the throne to marry a Catholic. It was also unlawful for the heir to the throne to wed without the consent of the monarch, which George did not have. 

Currently there is one member of the royal family who gave up his place in the line of succession in order to marry a Roman Catholic.

His marriage to Caroline of Brunswick must have been consummated, since they couple had a daughter, Charlotte. Princess Caroline went to Italy after her birth, having refused several times to agree to a divorce. It seems the couple despised each other, with George declaring that his wife stank. I think it more likely that he was the smelly one.

When Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, her mother learned of it from a passing courier, since her husband did not bother to write and inform her of their daughter's death.

George IV was not a popular monarch and nobody mourned him much. There were many caricatures of George during his lifetime as popular magazines of the time loved to mock him.

Yet this Regency period is a time which romance novels depict as elegant and gracious. Again, it was an elegant time for the wealthy, who spent a lot of time taking the spa waters in Bath and other places and the London season went on for a hundred days and nights.

This was a time when the daughters of the nobility were presented at court, dressed in white gowns and paraded in the hope of attracting the right man and procuring a good marriage.