September 11, 2001
 
 
 
 

A  Few Notes About The Regency....
 

Regency Romance. You know...England, Empire gowns, Jane Austen movies? 

Okay, it isn't quite that simple. The Regency took place between 1811 and 1820, when King George III was mad and his eldest son ruled as the Prince Regent. It is a colorful period for several reasons. 

One, the French Revolution was in recent memory. The English nobility bore its lesson in mind--even as they attended their glamorous balls and otherwise indulged in conspicuous consumption, if they had it to spend. The Prince Regent certainly did, much to the distress of many. 

Second, for much of this period, until the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815, England was at war with France. France wasn't the only country Britain was at war with, for that matter...the United States declared war on Britain in 1812, and while Britain's forces were burning Buffalo, New York in 1813, Wellington was defeating the French in Spain; and the same year (1814) that Wellington defeated Napoleon in France and banished him to Elba, the British burned Washington, D.C. The British-American war ended on Christmas Eve in 1814, but Napoleon was shortly to escape Elba.... 

But it wasn't all about war. The Regency period was rich in culture as it closed in on the brink of modern times. Beethoven's music was contemporary; Rossini wrote the opera The Barber of Seville. Jane Austen's novels were published during this period, some posthumously. Also published were writings Scott, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley--ranging from The Lady of the Lake to Frankenstein. 

Assassination plots, worker unrest, smuggling, the waltz...there was lots more going on during the Regency period in England. And as evidenced by the writings of a clergyman's daughter--as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma-- there was romance. 

Jane Austen died in 1817 at the young age of 42, but her novels have lived to this day.