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What the devil is a Regency?

THE REGENCY (1811-1820) is a narrow period in British history when the king of England, (George III), was locked away in a padded tower because he had gone stark raving mad. (Yes, he was the one featured in the recent movie release THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE.) The mad King s eldest son, fat, fashion conscious, fun-loving George IV, took over as regent (ruler) of England. The Prince Regent loved art, architecture, food, music, females and fashion. He and his set of friends were the arbiters of taste.

KEY FIGURES who peopled the Regency include-- Napoleon, (the guy with his hand in his shirt doing God knows what!), Wellington (who whipped him witless at Waterloo), Jane Austen (the mother of Regency Romances), Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats,William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, (they liked to paint with words), Paganini , Rossini, Beethoven, Schubert (they liked to paint with sound), Blake, Turner and Constable (they liked to paint with paint). Add to these an amusing collection of bucks, blades, dandies, rogues, rakes, rapscallions, dowds, and diamonds of the first water and you can begin to taste the flavor of a Regency Romance. Bright, witty, light-hearted and customarily chaste, Regency Romances capture the fragile glitter of a fleeting and romantic moment in history.

The Regency was a brief, elegant bubble in time sandwiched between three revolutions, the American and French on one side, the Industrial on the other. It was a time stirred by the breath of change and a cast of incredible characters.

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