Category: British history
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Tart Treats
In summer months, fruit desserts are always colorful and delicious, and one of my favorites is the tart, making me ponder its history and how available they were during the Regency. They were often found on the table for special days and included among the desserts, though I did not find them listed in the…
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Unusual Regency Hobbies
Shoe making, graveyard picnics, and anthropomorphic taxidermy…just a day in the life of the Regency and Victorian upper class.
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The Prince Regent’s Gift
Jane Austen, born barely three weeks before the publication of Common Sense, was most assuredly a child of the Enlightenment. &&&& Thomas Paine &&&& George Augustus Frederick, eldest child and heir to George III, was also a child of the Enlightenment. He was born in 1762, at a time when his tutors would have been…
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Drinking like a Regency Buck
What if you were praised for drinking lots of alcohol? In Regency England, you could be! Well… if you were a wealthy man. Nowadays, we think that immoderate drinking is a sign of weakness. However, back in the 1800s, it was often considered to be something between a neutral trait and, in some circles, a…
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‘To Bay or Not to Bay’: Did Shakespeare Talk Country?
When I was in college, the drama department at the University of Arkansas wanted to do a bang-up job on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Over the summer, they sent the actor playing the lead role off to study proper enunciation. He returned with an impeccable rendition, but no one anticipated the disconnect for the audience caused by…
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Royalties and The Weight of Paper – Jane Austen’s Relationship with her London Publishers
Jane Austen, a renowned novelist, faced financial struggles due to early 19th-century publishing practices and gender biases. Despite limited success, her works like Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice critiqued societal norms and paved the way for future generations of female authors.
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The Wonders of the Royal Menagerie
So many books set in the Regency mention the Royal Menagerie that I could not resist learning how close my imagination and other authors are to the real deal. What I did not realize was that there were two places to see exotic animals in London. The Tower of London housed animals for much of…
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The Woman Who Left England-and Convention-Far Behind
What if Elizabeth Bennet had never married Mr. Darcy? What if, instead, she packed a few essentials, headed off to the Middle East, donned turbans and pantaloons, read ancient prophecies, and hosted Bedouin chieftains in a mountaintop fortress? Of course our favorite fictional heroine never did that. But Lady Hester Stanhope, a real life contemporary…
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Fillin’ the Pudding-House!: Regency Slang
Your personal dictionary of Regency slang
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Oxford for Dissenters?
One often associates religious conflicts of the past with earlier ages than the Regency (grisly persecutions of the Tudor era come up in the collective imagination fairly frequently). However, Jane Austen’s contemporaries who were Catholics or Dissenters (or, on one occasion, students from the Muslim Persia!) could come up against rather solid obstacles when it…