#regency london

[sincerethoughtsblog]

Benedict Bridgerton talking about his Soulmate 😩

[hopelesslyinlovegirl]

gorgeous gorgeous girls skipped Bridgerton s1 and just watched s2 for the tension between Miss Sharma and Lord Bridgerton so true

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

Okay so based on my reading of The Viscount Who Loved Me, I'm concluding that Bridgerton ALSO is suffering from the same problem that my 50 cent regency romance novel that I got a few months back did: namely that it's supposed to be set during The Season (TM), but is set in the middle of summer.

Guys I cannot stress this enough

SPRING IS NOT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON, ITS THE END.

The titular "season" is not summer, but winter.

The season runs from October to about May. You spent the summer months at your country estate where you would have dinner parties, balls and garden parties etc.

And then when it got cold and the days got short and you couldn't enjoy your grounds anymore you and everyone else flocked to the crowded warmth of the city which afforded evening entertainments (assembly balls, theatre, opera and ballet, musicales etc) for those long winter nights.

Regency romance writers, GET IT RIGHT.

~edit~

The season did originally begin in October and end in May, however by the Regency the timing HAD shifted somewhat later, starting in January and ending with the Summer Recess of Parliament anywhere from June to August, as the fashionable set would find living in London in Summer too hot, humid, crowded, and smelly.

[lesleyannemcleod]

Hanover Square Rooms

[folklorelake]

love you more than you love art

[aestheticworld99]

"Walking on an empty street wishing you were waltzing with your enemy in the late 1800’s"

Requested by anon

Find request here

[elizabeth-against-the-universe]

The fact that Thomas goes to London is no surprise considering his social class. I think London was the most populated city in Europe in his time as it was in the 1 million number. I wonder what London was like in the regency? The only method of transport that would be available to him to get to London is carriage. 

The Regency era was the time when George IV took over as Prince Regent, because his father, George III, was suffering from mental illness, and was unable to rule. (Side note - The 4 Georges (Born 2 Rule) from Horrible Histories, starring Ben, Mat, Simon and Jim is a bop, definitely go give it a watch on YouTube!) 

George III died in 1820, and it was when George IV became king that he decided to do a lot of architectural work to the London residences. After six years of being king, George IV decided that Carlton House, just up the road from the place then known as Buckingham House, no longer suited his needs as king, and so John Nash, a famous architect (who may be an ancestor of mine!), worked on renovating Buckingham House into the palace that we know today. Though George IV never saw the end of the renovation and no royal lived in Buckingham palace until 1837, when Victoria became queen. 

Gas lighting came to London when Thomas was still alive, beginning with Westminster Bridge in 1813. Regent’s Canal, beginning construction in 1812 (another John Nash project) was opened in 1816. And in 1819, Burlington Arcade, the first shopping arcade, was opened, making way for the shopping centres and malls we know today. 

In 1800 there were 1million residents in London, and that number only grew, and in 1815 there were 1.4million people living in London. 

In relation to Thomas, travelling to London would have been completely normal, because that’s where everyone was; it was the heart of the country. Thinking back to Bill (the 2015 film by The Six Idiots), William Shakespeare moved to London because of how there were more opportunities for him there. A lot of people nowadays move to London for better work opportunities, and so it is no surprise that an upper class poet would travel into London to meet with publishers back in the early 1800′s. 

Though, if Button House, in Hertfordshire (just north of London), was a 3 day ride from where he lived, London would’ve been quite a trek too! (Probably a 2 day ride!). It’s fantastic how much quicker we can travel to places nowadays, we can get to any country on Earth in a day or less, and we can travel across the UK on land by car in less than a day! (Apparently it will take 15hours to drive from John O’Groats to Land’s End, probably the two furthest mainland points of the UK, and even with stoppages for food, bathroom breaks and stretching, it would still be less than a day if you switch drivers regularly!) 

[j-august]

New story in The Dark

The February issue of The Dark is out, containing

“The Crying Bride” by Carrie Laben “The Little Beast” by Octavia Cade (reprint) “The Red Forest” by Angela Slatter (reprint)

and also "Butterflies and Hurricanes", a new short story of mine about demon conjuring in Regency London:

The calling cards arrived with the morning milk. Three quarters of an hour later, as told by the clock that discarded eight minutes every day and gained it back with interest when a certain word was spoken, two gentlemen took their seats in the clean brown parlour...