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Monthly Archives: June 2006


I’ve just returned from a trip to the Midwest–Minnesota, to be exact–and am grumpy, fairly wrinkled, and just a bit stinky. Not to mention weary. To the bone.

In other words, if I were looking for Prince Charming–or in Regency terms, the Duke of Charming–I would probably yell at him because he hadn’t brought me my coffee just the way I like.

Yet so many Regency heroes and heroines take off on a vast journey and manage to fall in love. Without an airplane! Or a Northwest snack box (only $3!). How do they do it? I love road romances, even though I would make an awful heroine in one; in fact, on the plane I was sneaking pages of Georgette Heyer‘s Sylvester, which takes the hero and heroine to France and back again (I’m assuming they come back, I haven’t finished it yet).

Some of my favorite Regencies are, in fact, road romances (click here for the link to AAR’s Special Title Listings of Cabin and Road Romances). Here is a partial listing of some of the ones I’ve loved.

Tallie’s Knight (2001) by Anne Gracie
Sprig Muslin (1956) by Georgette Heyer
Sylvester: or The Wicked Uncle (1957) by Georgette Heyer
Miss Billings Treads the Boards (1993) by Carla Kelly
Miss Chartley’s Guided Tour (1989) by Carla Kelly
Miss Whittier Makes a List (1994) by Carla Kelly
Summer Campaign (1989) by Carla Kelly
The Wedding Journey (2002) by Carla Kelly
With This Ring (1997) by Carla Kelly

Carla Kelly seems to love taking her characters on the road–and really, how better to make two people who in a normal situation would never come in contact with each other fall in love? Throw in an adventure, usually involving a child or a lost or stolen inheritance, and all bets are off. But the romance is on!

Could you see yourself spending eight hours in a jostling carriage traveling over country roads with your loved one and a precocious child? Or your loved one and an irascible old lady and her pug? How about if you were abducted by said loved one in pursuit of some lost or stolen treasure?

Do you like road romances? Which are your favorites?

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Posted in Reading, Regency, Writing | Tagged | 9 Replies

In my occasional–very occasional series of great commuter reads, here’s a book that I don’t think is in print in the States, but is well worth going on to Amazon.co.uk to find. It’s by Philippa Gregory (who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl).

A Respectable Trade is about the lives of people caught up in the slave trade. It’s set in Bristol, one of the English cities whose wealth was built on the trade before business moved to Liverpool. The heroine, Frances, marries merchant Josiah Cole, who decides it’s time to move up in the world now he has a wife with social skills and connections–and also, because in his way, he cares about her and wants her to equal any other fine Bristol lady. And one of his plans to get rich is to import and train slaves for the English market. Frances realizes she can’t pretend to herself how her husband’s money is made, and can’t deny the slaves their humanity. It’s a book that is as harrowing and painful, and as full of ambiguities, as the period in history itself.

What Philippa Gregory does with her characters is astonishing. Even Josiah, the slave trader, is someone you can’t stop yourself feeling sorry for as you see him plunge toward total financial disaster, betrayed by the elite traders of Bristol from whom he so desperately craves acceptance. And Frances’ growing conscience and her awareness that her slaves are more than commodities or savages are wonderfully done.

It is, too, an amazing love story, although not a romance. One of the slaves Frances sets to train is Mehuru, formerly a priest in the African kingdom of Yaruba. Frances has just asked him how, in his country, a man would tell the woman he loved that she was beautiful:

“A man would tell her that he wanted her as his wife,” Mehuru said simply. “He would not tell her that she looked as well as another woman. What would that mean? He would not tell her that she was enjoyable–like a statue or a picture. He would tell her that he longed to lie with her. He would tell her that he would have no peace until she was in his arms, until she was beneath him, beside him, on top of him, until her mouth was his lake for drinking, and her body was his garden. Desire is not about ‘beauty,’ as if a woman as a work of art. Desire is about having a woman, because she can be as plain as an earthenware pot and still make you sick with longing for her.”

An amazing, thoughtful, moving book. Get hold of it.

…and I’m desperately holding onto sanity.

This painting by John Linnell depicts “Lady Torrens and her Family” (1820). Linnell wrote “There Lady Torrens, in the most exemplary manner educated her six children to the admiration of all who witnessed the harmony & happiness with which her family was conducted…”

This level of serenity and harmony is actually what I strive for–and even often achieve, in my own family. But at transitions like this first week of the kiddos home, it isn’t easy. I can’t help thinking that Lady Torrens (in addition to having servants help her with household cares) wasn’t also trying to write a book.

Frankly, I’m a creature of habit, and changing schedules disorient and stress me out. I try hard to balance things, but crafting that balance requires different strategies at different seasons and different ages. Until it’s all figured out, my muse sulks somewhere complaining that I love the children more than her. And the fact is, they do come first, but until I get the schedule down that allows me some writing time, I feel like I go a little crazier every day.

In the past, I’ve relied on a few weeks of summer camp to get me some clear writing time (and the kids love them, too, so there’s no guilt). Other weeks, though, I need to scrounge writing time here and there. In the past I’ve had trouble getting my darlings to leave me alone while writing. Their definition of an emergency is a bit different from mine (I do not consider losing a doll’s glasses an emergency).

But I have to say this week is going better. For two days now they have actually left me alone for an hour each morning. Perhaps it was my paraphrasing Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter’s mentor, who cautions the students at Hogwarts “…the third floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death.”

Anyone else out there trying to rebalance life with kiddos at home? Any tips and tricks that work for you?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Romantic Times Best Regency Romance of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

Georgette Heyer. Frequently imitated, never duplicated. Yes, other authors have done wonderful things, splendid, hilarious, beautiful things — but these are their own wonderful things. No one can replicate Heyer’s touch, Heyer’s style, and the wise do not try.

So . . . what are your favorite Georgette Heyer books?

By the way, I love this question. I’ve heard at least twenty different novels listed on “favorites” lists. Some crop up a lot, some crop up rarely, but it seems no one’s list of Heyer favorites is exactly the same as anyone else’s.

Do you like her early, 18th-century books, full of masquerades and highwaymen and Scarlet Pimpernel-influenced escapades? These Old Shades, Powder and Patch, The Masqueraders, The Convenient Marriage? Or do you like just some of these, and not others?

Do you like her more serious romances? Her more farcical ones?

Do you prefer her alpha males (such as the heroes in Venetia and Regency Buck) or her more sensitive men (such as the heroes in Cotillion or The Foundling)?

Have you read Heyer’s mysteries? Her modern novels? If so, do you like them at all?

How about her more historical works, such as Royal Escape and The Conquerer? Or do you prefer to stick to her Georgian and Regency fiction?

So — what are your favorite Heyers? All opinions welcome!

Cara
Cara Kingwww.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — Booksellers’ Best Finalist for Best Regency of 2005!

The weekend of June 17 I was in Alabama for my high school reunion. I lived at Fort McClellan, Alabama, those years, an army post that closed about five years ago and is now being rejuvenated into a very nice community. My friend Barbara and I visited the neighborhood where we used to live, a neighborhood that is now a historic site, Historic Buckner Circle (just like Chatsworth!). here is a picture of my house and a view of the neighborhood:

Barbara and I attended Jacksonville High School. Our high school building has been demolished, but the town of Jacksonville is very unchanged. We went into a used bookstore in town and look what I found!

It is a book I didn’t own, too. But I own it now.

We also killed time one day at an antique shop and I found this:
It is, of course, a print of the famous Gainsborough portrait of one of my favorite historic figures, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I have not taken it out of its frame to see if it is an original engraving, but most likely it is a reproduction. In any event, I happily bought it. She looks so beautiful.

The moral of this story is, never pass up a book store or an antique store. You never know what you’ll find.
But I’ll bet you all knew that already.
Cheers,
Diane

Posted in Reading, Regency, Research | Tagged | 5 Replies