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From Feb. 5, 1811, when George, Prince of Wales, was sworn in as regent, to Jan. 31, 1820, when he was proclaimed king of England. So why do you sometimes hear “Regency Era” used to describe the years 1780 to 1830 in English history (we call it the “extended Regency”)?
The answer is simple: the Regency was a transitional era in British history. There was a war going on (and the French Revolution), which changed politics immeasurably. It took place within the larger Industrial Revolution: steam engines, trains, power looms were all invented or perfected then. Fashions changed dramatically to the classic Greek and Roman-inspired designs with the columnar skirts for women and the Beau Brummel silhouette for men.
In society, those years were dominated by the high living aristocrats who made up the ton (shorthand for the French phrase, le bon ton, or “the fashionable”). They lived a life of reckless disregard for consequences, which was easy to do when they were also the ruling class, many of whom were peers or peers’ families, i.e., lords and ladies of the Realm. At the same time, the middle classes were on the rise, and the working class began revolting against the unfair conditions they were expected to work in.
Writers Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Mary and Percy Shelley, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott; artists William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, and Goya; and musicians Beethoven, Schubert, and later, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Chopin all rose to prominence as Romanticists, abandoning Classical methods and subjects.
Hester Bateman ran a silversmith company for thirty years. Ada Byron is credited with writing the first “computer program,” long before there were computers. Lady Hester Stanhope was a world traveler and adventurer who lived among the Arabs for a while and headed up an archeological expedition to Syria in 1815. As an unmarried woman. Fossil hunter Mary Anning found the first complete skeleton of a Plesiosaurus. Eleanor Coade invented Coadestone and made it a highly sought after medium for sculpture and buildings.
This was the Regency. This time of turmoil, drama, creativity, and invention makes it a rich period to write in. So, is it any wonder that romance writers and readers love the Regency?
*Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Public Domain or CC0 or my own
