The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern by Robert Morrison

The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern Reviews

• 
  K.J. Charles

  A terrific overview of the Regency. It's very easy to see the past as old-fashioned (duh) and set in stone: this is a useful corrective that focuses on it as a time of groundbreaking change, with people struggling against crushing oppression in many directions (including the weight of the past). It moves pretty briskly, touching on art, literature, science, politics, war, colonialism, orientalism, industry, the environment. That's all to the good, I'm exhausted with brick-thick tomes, and I've highlighted plenty to follow up. Very useful section on attitudes to homosexuality (Jeremy Bentham is always a valuable corrective to ideas of the past as a wholly bigoted place, though I'm really not sure we give a shit what William Beckford had to say about anything).
  
  A smooth, fast read, pacy and interesting throughout.
• 
  Mary Pagones

  “I never loved nor pretended to love her—but a man is a man--& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours—there is but one way.” At least, there is but one way if you’re Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of Mary Shelley (née Godwin) writes you fan mail. Not quite the stuff of, “She walks in beauty like the night,” perhaps, but both lines were penned by the same man.
  
  It’s unsurprising that the subtitle of Canadian academic Robert Morrison’s The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern emphasizes the Romantic poet’s seductive rather than his literary prowess. Whether Byron deserves the title of the first literary celebrity or not, his persona is equally as famous and influential as his art. There are few writers whose name—“Byronic”—can also be used as an adjective.
  
  The average American reader is likely most familiar with the Prince Regent (who gives the Regency its name) from Hugh Laurie’s iconic performance in Blackadder III, but according to Morrison, Laurie’s oafish parody is far too kind. The Regent’s womanizing and gastronomic excesses were much-parodied, but his greatest crime was his insensitivity to the oppression of the British people by their own government. One of the most notorious examples of this was Peterloo, which began as a peaceful demonstration in Manchester by radical leaders and ended with a massacre of the assembled civilians by British soldiers.
  
  The contemporary conception of the Regency may conjure up images of witty heroes sporting quizzing glasses. But the stormy period was marked by the first and only assassination of a British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, described by Morrison as “anti-French, anti-Catholic, anti-slavery, and fiercely anti-reform.” The Prime Minister’s killer John Bellingham, when demanded to explain why he had done such a thing responded, “I have been denied the redress of my grievances by Government…I have been ill-treated.” Many would have agreed with the assassin’s sentiments if not his methods. The notorious Corn Laws kept the staple foods of the working classes—bread—artificially high. Less than fifteen percent of the adult male population could vote, thanks to property ownership requirements.
  
  Despite such rampant inequality, the Regency was a time of great national pride. After all, Britain did defeat Napoleon, and Morrison writes a memorable account of what is described as “the most famous ball in history.” Held by the Duchess of Richmond for Wellington and his men, it was interrupted by the news that Napoleon had advanced into Belgium. Many troops, unwilling to end the evening of “lively music, good food, and beautiful women,” chose to “march in silk stockings and dancing pumps” rather than leave and prepare for the battle to come. The Regency was also an era of rapid industrialization and colonization. Britain was determined to ensure goods from sugar to rum to tea and opium flowed back from the colonies to satisfy Regency Britain’s unquenchable appetites.
  
  Those appetites weren’t confined to food. Regency entertainments of dice, cards, horse racing, sport (including fox hunting and boxing), as well as the sport of the bedroom (venereal disease and prostitution were rampant), are all illuminated in exquisite detail. One anecdote involves a love token given by the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb to Lord Byron that shocked even the poet (hint—it was a lock of hair, but not from the lady’s head.). Another emblematic figure is the fiery, mercurial (and self-indulgent) actor Edmund Kean. His Shylock was praised by Jane Austen herself. “I cannot imagine better acting,” she wrote, although of another famous female tragedian, she sniffed, “I took two Pocket handkerchiefs, but had very little occasion for either.”
  
  Morrison’s work, The English Opium-Eater, was a finalist for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is thus well-qualified to address the seedier aspects of Regency life. Even for readers who shy away from history books, fearing such dry texts will bring on the need for a cool compress and a glass of Madeira, The Regency Years is great, rollicking fun. And an important one, as many of these same social and political challenges still linger on in Britain—and its former colonies—today.
• 
  Barb in Maryland

  This concise history of the Regency years is a good introduction to the era, but it suffered a few setbacks in trying to cover as much as it could.
  There were sections that hit me as just a barrage of names, with barely a sentence or two to distinguish them, especially in the first chapter(Crime, Punishment and the Pursuit of Freedom) which concentrates on crime, law and order (or the lack thereof), civil unrest.
  The second chapter, (Theaters of Entertainment) also started with more names, names, names. Actors, actresses, theater owners, venues and so on. But, once the shift to novels occurred the pace slowed and the rest of chapter 2 was a delight.
  Chapter 3 (Sexual Pastimes, Pleasures and Perversities) was quite frank and serious--not written to titillate, but to inform. (I may never again be able to read a historical romance set in this era). This is where the author also touches on the various morality, chastity, clean living, sin no more groups and their efforts to tame the level of debauchery accepted in current society.
  Chapter 4 (Expanding Empire and Waging War), which starts with Waterloo, has the best concise recount of the War of 1812 that I have read. Of course, India and China receive a quick wrap-up, as does Raffles and the founding of Singapore.
  Chapter 5 (Changing Landscapes and Ominous Signs) is a very mixed bag--changes wrought by the proliferation of factories, the improvement in the roads, the advent of railroads and other scientific advances. Travelogues and guide books also get a mention. There's a nice bit on painters Constable and Turner.
  One note on the print edition. There are no (and I do mean NO) color illustrations. All of the embedded illustrations are black & white, or graytone: etchings, engravings, etc. This works well for all of the Cruikshank political cartoons and various pencil drawings. It is, of course, a total fail when the author is describing a Thomas Lawrence society portrait or a Turner 'landscape'.
  
  All in all a worthwhile read, especially for all of the literature references and analysis. His bibliography and end notes are quite thorough and a good jumping off point for further digging.
  I have one or two nits to pick, but they're not worth mentioning here.
• 
  Shiloah

  This is an extensive, well-researched work. It included good and the bad of the era. No sugar coating. It opened my eyes to the debauchery that permeated the times. Fair warning for the chapter on the in-depth exploration of the sexual scandals and practices of the time. So much to learn about this time and it’s impact on our world today.
• 
  Diana

  Review to Come
• 
  Kathleen Flynn

  I enjoyed this book very much! A well-written and cogent account of a few crucial years in the history of Great Britain. I admire how much ground it covered, not just the usual topics of politics and war. Those but also literature, theater, sports, painting, science, technology, race relations, industrialization, class struggles, events in North America...
  
  Though I began thinking this book as if were a a guilty pleasure, because not about what I ought to be thinking about always -- namely, the Brontes -- in fact it is highly relevant. The Regency shaped the little Brontes' worldview, and the adults they became. The giants of their imaginative play as children are all here: Wellington and Napoleon, the Arctic explorers Ross and Parry, and of course Byron, looming over all of it.
• 
  Steve

  This is a book that has recently been positively reviewed in a number of places, including the ECONOMIST and other newspapers and which I picked up precisely because it focuses on such an interesting short episode of history.
  
  The prose and the prose composition are both quite excellent in this book. It puts the lie to the idea that academics cannot write and represents to me a benchmark of how to do this kind of survey. In terms of readability, it scores above Richard Holmes 2010 book AGE OF WONDER (although I think Holmes wrote ultimately the better book by a long shot). It is actually one of the best written and composed books by an academic historian that I have read in some time.
  
  The first quarter of the book in particular is a really excellent overview of the political and social structures of Regency England and is both chatty and erudite, easy to follow, and yet also rigorous and educational. I would gladly read this part again and again to get a good grip on the contours of this particular historical period.
  
  All this said, however, I can identify at least two great flaws in this book. The first comes from a concluding statement Morrison makes on the penultimate page:
  
  "Despite his undisputed failures, the Regent fostered a climate of intellectualism, patronage, and connoisseurship. More than any other member of the royal family either before or since, he believed that novelists, poets, singers, historians, actors, painters, musicians, scientists, architects, and engineers *mattered*, and during his Regency his well-known enthusiasm for the arts and sciences helped to energize the most extraordinary outpouring of creativity in British history." (page 304)
  
  Unfortunately, with the exception of specifically showing how the Regent pushed for the creation of the Brighton Pavilion with architect John Nash (pp 216-217), something that even Morrison concedes took money away from many other needed contemporary projects and was the subject of intense criticism from both sides of the political spectrum of the time. Beyond this episode, however, in the main text Morrison really does not focus on the Regent's specific actions in fomenting the cultural environment of the Regency. While Morrison discusses the Regent as a person at some length, and mentions how the Regent, unlike his father, enjoyed such cultural discourse, specific episodes of patronage are hard to find. The body of the text is devoted to short capsule overviews of these cultural luminaries and various cultural and social institutions involved.
  
  In the end, this survey or "cultural travelogue" works more or less, but once Morrison raises the idea of the specific aegis of the Regent at the end, it casts the entire book in a different light. In other words, had the author never brought up the Regent as the key impetus, I would have accepted the framing he does use as is. But the fact that he raises the idea of the Regent as central then makes me want the book to have better illuminated those aspects.
  
  A second problem that I encountered was the specific cultural stance of Morrison himself. Oftentimes I just didn't care for how he framed and discussed cultural issues. For instance, I find other thinkers, like Robert Crawford, who covers some of the same ground in his 2013 book ON GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH, much more congenial and interesting to me.
  
  However, a clear instance of what I found unsatisfying in Morrison's account can be found in his very uneven handling of the sex life of the poet Lord Byron (pp 142-145, 157, 169-170). Byron was then and remains today a very difficult figure to get a hold of. He was clearly bisexual to a degree unusual then and now, and without question had to leave Britain to safely explore the same-sex side of his complex sexuality. However, the key point is that Byron was clearly a sexual predator, targeting vulnerable women such as chambermaids and many of his male lovers in the Mediterranean were young teen-aged men who appear - to use the current British vernacular - to have been "rent-boys" making Byron also a sex tourist.
  
  This all makes Byron a very difficult figure to discuss and his actions are very hard to reconcile with our current moral compass. Skilled authors can use such cases to probe key and important questions but Morrison does an entirely inadequate job of addressing these concerns, particularly since Byron gets something (but not entirely) of a pass by being a cultural luminary (and cultural anarchist) while other people that Morrison does not like as much are treated much less sympathetically.
  
  This book is recommended - with caveats - to all readers of history, but especially those interested in the Regency itself. Although it has its flaws, this book serves as an excellent overview and guide.
• 
  Jessica

  Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.
  
  I really enjoyed this book! It's not an academic history of the period, but it is perfect for context. Quite frankly, it is a lot of fun! Morrison covers literature as expected, and Wellington and Napoleon and the wars of the day. He also looks at the domestic politics of the Regency, and the abolition of slavery. Low culture and high culture alike feature, not to mention the fashion of the day. Morrison has a tall order to cover the entirety of the Regency, and he does an amazing job of doing it. in. 
  
  The Regency isn't an overly long period, but there are some fascinating characters that populate it. I think what sets this book apart is that we learn about other figures of the period that are often forgotten. I also enjoy that it covers all of the UK, and even parts of the Continent and North America. It's not just focused on London or Windsor, or any one place. When I think of the Regency, I think of London and I think of Bath. But the changes that happened in the Regency also happened in Manchester and Edinburgh and Cambridge and everywhere else, and Morrison does a fantastic job at conveying that.
• 
  Nancy

  Meh. There’s nothing new here and Morrison brings no insight or spin or unifying theme, so it’s ultimately a string of anecdotes. Reasonably entertaining, but no more.
• 
  Sherwood Smith

  A sprightly tone made this general history of the Regency era an enjoyable read--funtil halfway through. It seemed to lean heavily on Paul Johnson's The Birth of the Modern... until we get to the section on literature, and then I began to wonder if Morrison was an economics prof, or an engineer. But no, he apparently teaches lit, God help his students.
  
  How many errors on each page? Stupid errors. For example, his intimation that Darcy in Pride and Prejudice was based on Byron. Um, no, Byron was maybe five years old when Austen wrote the first draft of P&P. In fact, Morrison's assertions about Byron being the first "bad boy" of literature ignores Lovelace in Clarissa--Lord Rochester during Charles II's reign, and for that matter, Byron's line "There was a laughing Devil in his sneer" would not have been nearly as potent without the influence of Milton's suave and witty devil in Paradise Lost. Handsome bad buys were a staple of literature well before Byron tried to live the life of one as well as write them. (And Rochester did it better.)
  
  There was a heavy emphasis on Frankenstein, as if this were the only work of the period Morrison had studied. I began to mistrust his assertions in the remainder of the book because of these howlers, in spite of the impressive bibliography at the back.
  
  I wish I had not paid for this clunker.
• 
  Anita Pomerantz

  DNF
  
  Wow, this book was really truly boring despite the great title. I could read about three pages before falling asleep. Highly recommended for insomniacs.
  
  I think this is the 5th book in my life that I have DNF'd . . .but seriously, I think it would take me a year to read the 300 pages at the rate I was going. TOO MANY names with no explanation of who the people were . . .
• 
  fatma

  2.5 stars
  
  not a bad book; just not the book for me.
• 
  Tom Schulte

  This is an excellent history of the brief and pivotal time of British History that was The Regency. Such characters as the inspiring roue Lord Byron, dandy
  Beau Brummell, and the insightful writer Mary Shelley all acted under a dissolute and distracted Regent during a time when Britain reigned supreme after finally coming out over France and before the disruptive industrialization of The Victorian Era.
  
  Arranged almost as much topically as chronologically, if feels like this book could be opened and read anywhere. The author seems a bit more excited about literature and the impact and works of Jane Austen, Byron, Shelley (both of them) get some detailed analysis.
  
  [I received an ARC to review this]
• 
  Marks54

  This book concerns the period from 1811-1820, between the time when King George III was incapacitated/insane and his eventual death in 1820, when he was succeeded by King George IV, who ruled England as the Prince Regent before eventually succeeding to the throne. This is a brief period of time and what could happen in Britain over such a brief period??? Hmm... Well Napoleon was defeated, and then defeated again. The beginnings of industrialization were apparent, along with protests against it and the initial stirrings for political reform. More generally, Morrison argues that the Regency years were a pivotal intermediary between traditional monarchical Britain and the start of Modern Britain and the Victorian Era in the 19th century. There is lots of cultural activity going on in Britain during this period and a surprising number of names are dropped, including many very well known ones, including Jane Austen, John Keats, Walter Scott, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and artists J.M.W. Turner and John Constable.
  
  Morrison is very learned and a fine writer. This is engaging history that makes one want to read more and even plan a trip to the Lake District, providing that Britain does not fall into the sea due to Brexit, which I suspect it will not. But ... history is about continuities and the Regency Years overlap strongly with what came before and after. It is a good read but I am not sure I am convinced.
  
  The best case for the book was picked up by the author but could have been emphasized even more. So this is more a quibble about emphasis rather than a criticism. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818 and Morrison notes that it is arguably one of the most important novels of the Regency Period. The story has been overshadowed by the movie and its many variants, but the story encapsulates many of the most interesting conflicts and tensions of the Regency years and is very different from the various stereotypes of the monster that most of us have come to know. Seeing the story today and knowing the historical context is worthwhile and enlightening.
• 
  Holly

  I really appreciated Morrison's analyses of Austen and the novel. I also wish more context had been provided at times--at times it felt like reading a book about, say, the 1960s in the United States with only the briefest references to World War II. It also needed stronger editing--there were some terrible sentences and way too many commas. Still, this was completely worth my time, and I'm glad to have read it.
• 
  Crissy

  I really enjoyed this historical fiction book by my prof from Queen's, Prof. Morrison! Every page made me feel like I was back in one of his classes!
  
  This book covers pretty much every topic you could think of to do with the Regency so you really get a great sense of the historical time period and all the historical figures feel like living and breathing people you can relate to. I love the little tidbits he includes--for example, he tells us that according to the leading courtesan of the day, Wellington was pretty boring in bed. These are the kinds of details you want to know in historical fiction.
  
  Even though it's historical fiction, it's very readable and entertaining. The writing is fantastic. Would recommend 100% ! Five thumbs up!!
• 
  Emily

  I read so many things set during the Regency period, I thought it was high time I learned something about it. This book was a nice overview of different aspects of that 9-year period: the art, military history, scientific and technological advances, and the society. A lot happened during that time, and the names of many of the major influencers of the time are still recognized today—Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Beau Brummell, Charles Babbage, John Constable, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, etc.
  The author doesn’t spend a ton of time with any subtopics of the broader topics mentioned in each chapter heading. Judging by his notes in the back of the book, each of these have been covered in more depth in other books. For me, it was just what I was looking for to get a feel for the time period and some context for the novels I read.
  The Regent, later George IV, was not a popular or much-admired guy, but I liked this summary the author gave of him in the end.
  

  Despite his undisputed failures, the Regent fostered a climate of intellectualism, patronage, and connoisseurship. More than any other member of the royal family either before or since, he believed that novelists, poets, singers, historians, actors, painters, musicians, scientists, architects, and engineers mattered, and during his Regency his well-known enthusiasm for the arts and sciences helped to energize the most extraordinary outpouring of creativity in British history.

  
  
  Recommended for Regency period newbies like I am. If you’re already an expert on this biz, or if you’re looking for an in-depth look at a specific aspect or person from this period, it won’t be as satisfying.
• 
  Brian Willis

  This is really a great book that I nearly gave 5 stars. Morrison really seems to cover all of the social, cultural, and even a fair amount of political events in England from 1810 through 1820. We learn what the Regency was with a profile of the future George IV, we get many anecdotes and profiles of crime and punishment during this time, a look at sexual practices, pursuits, and proclivities, entertainment (theatre, drinking, games, cultural events amongst others), and then finally, the overview of worldwide events that propelled Britain to the forefront of the world, including a nice account of Waterloo, as well as the various economic and imperial entanglements during this decade. Finally, Morrison details the emerging concerns - environmental and economic-social - of the Industrial Revolution as well as the first efforts at the railroad. If you want a great overview of this decade, Morrison's book is the best in a while. Breezy yet in depth without overwhelming, it is an illuminating read even if you know some things about the Regency.
• 
  Alex

  Really enjoyed this!! Very informative but told in an entertaining and highly readable style that made it a real pleasure to read! I really liked how each chapter focused on a different aspect of Regency life and how the different figures of the day played a role. By the end, I was definitely thoroughly convinced that this period has set the stage for the modern world as we know it!
  I really enjoyed reading about the people of the Regency that I have studied before (this definitely took me back to some of my best university days!) like Jane Austen, Mary and Percy Shelley, Byron, all the classics and some that I didn't know before like Beau Brummell was one of my personal favourites too! Highly recommend!
• 
  Emily Davies (libraryofcalliope)

  The Regency period refers to the rule of George IV as Prince Regent before he was officially crowned king upon the death of his father. It spanned approximately 9 years from 1811 to 1820, a fairly influential and important decade featuring a variety of events from the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein and Byron’s Don Juan to the Peterloo massacre, the Luddite Riots, Robert Owen’s New Lanark experiments with socialism and the end of the Napoleonic wars. British society was changing as it headed for the new Victorian age with huge strides being made in medicine, technology and industry but also contained huge levels of inequality and colonial expansionism. Morrison provides a whistle stop tour of the main ideas and events of the time which works as an excellent introduction to the period. It’s very readable especially considering how much content is packed in here. I really enjoyed this book and it’s discussions of the shifting society and priorities is done mostly sensitively and Morrison takes great care to trace the events’ impacts on society today. Definitely a good starting point for someone interested in this period.
  
• 
  Emilia McFerren

  This was both an entertaining and informative overview of the Regency. I finished the book with a more wholistic understanding of the period and what it set up for the following era (as well as our current one). The structure and writing of the book kept me far more interested than I’d expected. Would recommend to anyone who loves the period or wants to learn more about this specific moment in British history.
• 
  Maria

  A breezy and informative history of the era in which Jane Austen, my favorite author, lived. My least favorite chapter was about war--battles bore me--though I learned something new about the War of 1812: it was the impetus for westward expansion and hastened the end of native American culture. I really liked how Morrison tied up every chapter with its impact on our modern times.
• 
  Melissa

  A rather short book to try and cover all the parts of the ten years of the official Regency during end of George III’s life. The author does provide a critical view of unjust policies regarding the poor, racism, slavery, and colonialism/globalism so it definitely isn’t a “Rah Rah Britain” book. It just didn’t seem to read very easily.
• 
  Brenton

  A nicely written, well-read, amiable history of the 1810s. A bit lurid at times, weak on philosophy and religion (from my perspective), but a free Audible book which I enjoyed. What I realize I really need is a book called "A Social History of the Regency Years Connected to the Authors Brenton Loves."
• 
  A Home Library - Book Reviews

  If you’re a Jane Austen fan or just into history in general, I think you’d really like “The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern” by Dr. Robert Morrison, a notable scholar of the Regency years. You may also recognize his work from the annotated version of Persuasion by JA (2011) or a biography of Thomas De Quincey.
  
  The book I’m suggesting is one of my favorite Regency overviews by far. For some reason, I always thought that newer books coming out tend to favor the Victorian and post-war histories of Britain, but there’s no objective truth to that. When this book came out in 2019, I was super excited to read it. Here’s some more about what you could expect from it:
  
  “The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted during the earlier Regency period (1811–1820) when the profligate Prince of Wales—the future king George IV—succeeded his father. Around the Prince Regent surged a society of contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. Capturing the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of artists—the Shelleys, Austen, Keats, Byron, Turner—scientists and inventors—Stevenson, Davy, Faraday—and a cast of dissident journalists, military leaders, and fashionistas, Robert Morrison captivatingly illuminates the ways this period shaped the modern world.”
  
  This book is presented as one meant for any reader which any variant of interest in the subjects. Throughout, the author links history to popular literature of the time.
  
  In my view, the contents can best be described in themes. Some of those (in my view) are:
  
  — Crime: “underclass”, duels, violence, policing/prison, politics + revolutionaries
  
  — Entertainment & Art: theatre, comedy/tragedy, shopping, fairs, food, galleries, novels
  
  — Intimacy: gender roles + constraints, relationships, passion, Lord Byron, poetry, homosexuality
  
  — Empire & War: Napoleon, Wellington, travel, India, opium, trade, slavery
  
  — Change & Transformation: invention/science, industrial cities, infrastructure expansion.
  
  Currently has 3.89 stars w/ 600 ratings on GR.
• 
  Susan

  I am a great reader of Jane Austen, so this
  cultural history of the Regency in England was very enjoyable to read. It is filled with fascinating details and everyday history facts and my favorite author is very much there! It brings attention to all the cross currents and even startling contradictions of the period.
• 
  Nadine in California

  I have a fascination with everyday life in the European Enlightenment, and this scratched the itch in a very readable way. Its approach is not from the ground up, through the eyes of people of various classes, but rather it looks at social, political and economic life by devoting chapters to things like sex, the theater, politics, war, etc.