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Bartholomew Fair

Although some fairs had started to die out, some still provided popular entertainment in the Regency. You may have heard of Bartholomew Fair, which took place in London in September, or Scarborough Fair, which occurred in Scarborough, Yorkshire, around the same time (although it closed for good in 1788). Both were among a group of several “charter” fairs, established by Royal charter centuries before our period. Like most of them, they combined sales of things like cloth, rugs, or farm tools with entertainment like games, puppets, acrobats, rides, and dancing. You can see the swings in the image below. A few fairs still go on! So we’ll try to replicate one at the Historical Romance Retreat.

Greeting Cards

Did you know that the first British pre-printed greeting cards were valentines and not Christmas cards? Before the late Georgian era, people were sending elaborate hand-made valentines, with actual fabric lace and ribbons and other pretty trimmings. In 1797, a book was even released to provide unpoetical gentlemen with valentine sentiments: The Young Man’s Valentine Writer. In fact, handmade valentines out-sold pre-printed ones until the Victorian age began. It’s no wonder, when artists like Elizabeth Knipe Cobbold were creating intricate cut paper valentines with their own hand-written poetry, like this one on my Pinterest Guide to Regency valentines.

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Regency Tidbit

Lady Diana Harper, the heroine in my new Designing Debutantes series, is statuesque (which I always wanted to be, but I’m too short). In her case, it means she’s not only tall but shapely. We have many misconceptions about history, but one of the biggest ones is that people were, as a general rule, thinner than we are. As Loretta Chase pointed out in a talk at a writer’s conference, we look at period garments and think, “Oh, how thin they were. Look at how small their waists were.” We extrapolate from that to assume that all Regency women were that small. What we don’t consider is that the gowns most often kept by women were their debut or wedding gowns, which come from periods in our lives when we’re at our smallest. Their everyday gowns were repurposed to make them more fashionable or handed down to the servants, who handed them down to the rag and bone shops. So we don’t get as many examples of the typical gowns of a matron. But all you have to do is look at a few satirical prints from the period to see plenty of women of all sizes, with big bottoms or thick waists or small breasts. (Check out this famous one by Thomas Rowlandson.) People are people, regardless of the historical period.

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