I have a new book out in paperback and ebook. Shipwrecked with the Captain is Book 2 in my Governess Swap series.
Here is the back cover blurb:
“All she remembers…
…is feeling safe in his arms! Shipwrecked governess Claire Tilson wakes in Captain Lucien Roper’s arms—with amnesia! Her handsome rescuer believes she’s a member of the aristocracy he detests, yet he risks all to see her “home,” where she learns she’s betrothed to a wealthy stranger. Claire is convinced she doesn’t belong here…and Lucien is the only man she trusts to uncover her past and claim her future!”
Part of Shipwrecked with the Captain takes place in Bath, that beautiful Georgian city where Jane Austen lived and set two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. I visited Bath in 2017 with my friend Kristine Hughes Patrone of Number One London tours, and it was wonderful to walk the same streets and see the same sights as Jane Austen. It was also a treat to make my hero and heroine walk those streets and visit all the important Bath sights.
Like the Royal Crescent
Or Bath Abbey
Shipwrecked with the Captain is available in paperback or ebook from online vendors in North America and in UK bookstores.
March is Women’s History Month (in the U.S.). It’s also National Reading Month and National Nutrition Month. I thought of writing about how these can be related. (Reading feeds our minds, and how about reading about women? And writing about them, of course.) But instead, let’s talk about real heroines of the Regency period. (See giveaway details at the end.)
Wikipedia lists fifty-three “Women of the Regency Era” who have their own pages. They range from the obvious (Jane Austen) to the notorious (Harriet Wilson) to the questionable (Princess Caraboo). But rather than list them here, or try to even scratch the surface of this topic, I’d like to invite you to chime in with your favorite candidates. Who were the real heroines of our period?
I would hold that merely existing in the period isn’t enough. What qualities do we expect heroines to demonstrate? Courage, for one, I’m sure you’d agree –no matter what time period she lives in. Certainly in real Regency heroines, courage was necessary to pursue any course outside of normal expectations. Tenacity is another one I am sure was needed just to live any kind of satisfying life as a woman in the early 19th century. What else? And who comes to your mind?
Let’s think about the various ways in which women could be “significant”.
Which of these women contributed to the betterment of society, or added to the
knowledge or literacy of our world? Or gave their support (sometimes invisibly)
to men who accomplished significant things? What other ways did they make
impacts?
And also, I would make a distinction between fame and significance. Certainly Lady Emma Hamilton’s beauty and choices made her infamous in her own time and famous even today. Do you think she made the best life out of the limited choices she had? Does she belong on the list of significant women?
Mary Wollstonecraft
I’ll start, offering Mary Wollstonecraft. While she lived almost too early to be included, she was only 38 when she died in childbirth, producing the daughter who would become Mary Shelley. That was in 1797, five years after she published her Rights of Women. Can you imagine what her life might have been like, or what controversies she might have stirred up, if she had lived on into the full Regency era? And I would say she gave us a daughter who also became a significant woman of the Regency.
Perhaps I’ll print the names on Wikipedia’s list a bit later this month, after we’ve had some time to discuss this topic. I wonder how many of them we can come up with on our own, and how many we’ll feel can be classified as heroines?
I’ll even offer this: a free ebook to one commenter, either chosen randomly or if one person stands out as offering the most interesting response, by the end of March. Offering a book feels right during National Reading Month!!
Hi, everyone. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been missing the Riskies while dealing with an eye issue that has been flaring up off and on since last May and taking longer to heal each time. I won’t go into details, but I have dry eyes and something additional going on in the right which several good cornea specialists I’ve seen haven’t been able to treat to their satisfaction, though I’ve been slowly getting better. I have an appointment in early April with one of the top experts in dry eye and related conditions, and I’m hopeful that she will figure this out–and how to keep it from happening again.
In the meantime, I’m trying some general health changes (like taking fish oil pills) that may help and can’t hurt. I’m also trying to get better about resting my eyes–as soon as they feel better, I start overdoing.
Since the left eye works OK, I can drive, read, write, work on the computer, etc… The problem is with how long I can do these things. Even covered by the patch, the right eye is somehow trying to focus along with the left and starts to hurt after about 10-15 minutes of eye-intensive activity. Which means I now set a timer, work in 10 minute spurts followed by as much as 30 minutes of rest. Not great for an writer and avid reader!
This is why I’ve been largely off the blog and off Facebook. I need to save my eyes for mundane things like paying bills, working on taxes, and filling out financial aid paperwork.
Anything left I’m trying to devote mostly to writing–which is progressing slowly. I’ve thought about trying dictation software, but I have a messy writing process–crappy first drafts and lots of rearranging and rewriting. I’m not sure there’s a way to use dictation software that way, or if I’d need to change my process so the messy parts happen in my head and then I can dictate the cleaner result. For now, I’m just accepting slow progress and hoping for healing. (People have recovered from conditions like this, but it takes time.)
In the meantime, things that are helping me stay sane are audiobooks and music. I’ve taken up the piano again, and since I’m starting with pieces I used to play, there’s little reading required. I’ve also recently unpacked my classical CDs and have been finding all sorts of forgotten treasures amongst them. I’ve been playing some of my favorites as a way to wind down before going to bed, since gratitude journaling and Zen doodling are out for now.
Here’s an example of the sort of piece I like to listen to before bed and a great piece for Anglophiles–“The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughn Williams, performed by the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, with Iona Brown as the violin soloist and Neville Marriner conducting. It’s just what I need, reminding me of walks I took through the English countryside years ago.
Do you have favorite pieces of music that help you through rough patches? Please share.
I wrote the original of this blog post six years ago, almost to the day. Even though today it reached near 60 degrees F in Northern Virginia, last week we were in the teens and the midwest had reached record lows. So this blog post seemed very apropos! Here it is (with minor editing):
We’ve just been through a very cold patch of winter here in Northern Virginia, with snow and ice and below freezing temperatures. Parts of the US had been seeing even worse. So bundling up and keeping warm have been on my mind these days.
I searched “winter” on the Regency Encyclopedia, and came up with What To Wear In Winter in The Regency.
From A Lady of Distinction – Regency Etiquette, the Mirror of Graces (1811) R.L. Shep Publications (1997)
Satin, Genoa velvet, Indian silks and kerseymere may all be fashioned into as becoming an apparel for the slender figure as for the more en bon point and the warmth they afford is highly needful to preserve health during the cold and damps of winter.
The mantle or cottage-cloak should never be worn by females exceeding a moderate en bon point and we should recommend their winter garbs to be formed of double sarsenet or fine Merina cloth, rather than velvets, which (except black) give an appearance of increased size to the wearer.
Red Morocco, scarlet, and those very vivid hues cannot be worn with any propriety until winter, when the color of the mantle or pelisse may sanction its fullness.
I love the emphasis on looking slim! Some things never change. And look how similar the colors are to what we wear in winter. I love the rich deep colors of winter clothing.
From Buck, Anne M. – Contrib to The Regency Era 1810-1830 The Connoisseur Period Guide (1958)
White muslin was for the whole period pre-eminent for morning wear. Only in the months of mid-winter did the hardy Englishwoman abandon it for silk, poplin or wool.
Nothing sets the dress of 1800-20 so much apart from the style before and the style which followed as the scarcity of the underwear beneath it. A chemise of linen, long, reaching well below the knee; light flexible stays; a petticoat, cotton in warm weather, fine flannel in winter; and then the gown or slip. Many of the muslin gowns were worn over a silk slip.
Straw bonnets were worn during the summer months for walking, Leghorn or fine Dunstable straw, usually plainly trimmed. Fashionable for all the summers of 1815-30, they remained comparatively plain even in the years of excessive trimming. In winter black velvet replaced them.
Black velvet hats sound divine! And note how the lady was supposed to wear as little underwear as possible! Hearty Englishwoman, indeed!
From Cunnington, C. Willett – English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century Dover reprint of 1937 original (1990)
The summer pelisse was unlined, the winter pelisse was lined.
And more on undergarments by Cunnington, C. Willett & Phillis – The History of Underclothes Dover (1992)
The petticoat was made of cotton, cambric, linen or for winter, sometimes fine flannel.
The idea of “fine flannel” underwear sounds lovely on a cold, damp day!
De Courtais, Georgine – Women’s Hats, Headdresses and Hairstyles Dover Publications (2006) says
In winter caps and hats (1800-1810) were often trimmed with fur to match similar edging on robes and coats, but a wide range of materials was used both for the hats and for their trimmings.
I love the fur trimmings. Now we can do this in faux fur and still be animal-friendly! And washable!
And for the gentleman, from Kelly, Ian – Beau Brummell, The Ultimate Man of Style Free Press (2006)
Brummell also ordered surtouts or greatcoats from Schweitzer and Davidson for winter wear. They were significantly heavier garments, so much so that they were noted in the weighing books at (wine merchants) Berry Brothers. Made out of even heavier worsteds and “Norwich stuff” – another feltlike beaten wool – they were still exquisitely cut and molded.
Yum!!!
What is your favorite winter garment?
I like the wool scarf and plaid gloves I bought in Scotland while on Number One London’s Scottish Retreat.
Have any of you already seen movie director Peter Jackson’s
magnificent documentary about World War I, “They Shall Not Grow Old”? Today it
is opening in 500 more theaters around the US after the preliminary viewings
have been so well-received. What, you may ask, does this film have to do with
the Regency? Bear with me.
My hubby and I went out in gusty minus 15 degree wind chills
earlier in January to view this film, and I have to tell you, it is
unforgettable. Jackson and his production teams delved through 100 hours of
old, grainy film footage shot at varying speeds on hand-reeled cameras and 600
hours of oral history recordings made available by the British Imperial War
Museum to pull together this amazing experience. By choosing a narrowly focused
story and using every modern film and computer technique available to enhance
the material, they truly captured an indelible, brilliantly rendered experience
of being on the front lines in France
during The Great War.
My brain always seems to pull things into a Regency frame of
reference, and I felt that this film also captured a sense of what war in the
Regency period would also have felt like. It probably captures it for any time,
but the differences in technology between WWI and more recent wars are legion.
What struck me is that WWI’s ground war was probably the
last that still somewhat resembled what wars had been like through history up
to that point. In WWI, vehicles were still pulled by horses, and many officers
still were mounted. Artillery cannon may have been more accurate and had a
longer range, but the experience of loading and firing them (and receiving
fire) had not changed much in 100 years. Infantry still used rifles with fixed
bayonets. The misery of life in the trenches had not changed much, either.
The Napoleonic conflicts were just about as long past then
as WWI is to us today. Jackson’s
film does not try to capture the very different experiences of the air or sea
parts of the Great War, where the technology differences would be more
significant. But to me, the images of men trying to release a heavily-loaded team-drawn
wagon from deep mud, or of the cannons rocking back when they fire, or simply
of men waiting for battle, could have been pulled from Napoleonic France with
very little added imagination.
Waterloo, by William Holmes Sullivan
Britain was at war with France from 1793-1815. There were impacts at home that may or may not inform the background of our Regency stories. The reality of men coming home wounded, or men who never made it home, of news events that people talked about, all form an underpinning to the era. Four of my Regency romances all feature heroes who served in the war, and in three of those, the effects of the war are deeply integral to the story.
Even impacts after the war, when the influx of soldiers coming home led to unemployment and other social problems, can figure in our stories, as a mere mention in passing or as an important part of plot or character.
Jackson’s film, at the end, shows exactly those same kinds of problems
faced by the returning soldiers from WWI. We like to think the lack of
gratitude or awareness was not as bad at the end of the Napoleonic Wars
–people in Britain did fear the Little General might come right to their
shores. Also, the population was not as huge, and every class felt some
effect of war, whether it was the aristocratic families whose younger
sons were officers, or the poor whose sons risked life and limb for the
promise of pay. In WWI, the threat to Great Britain was perhaps not as
vivid as it was before, or after. One soldier in Jackson’s film who was
able to return to his old job after fighting in the war recalls being
asked, “Where’ve you been, mate? Workin’ nights?”
I recommend this film to you, for a greater understanding of what the background of war can mean to our characters, and so to enrich our own storytelling. If it isn’t at a theater near you, it is also available online, at: https://tinyurl.com/y9ae3w2r . But the large screen version will be far more affecting, and it also includes a separate, fascinating short film about how Jackson made this amazing documentary. (Just be patient through the first few minutes.)
But be prepared –it isn’t pretty, and it is very moving. I
managed not to cry until the end, but when the song Jackson chose for the credits began to play,
I lost it. My paternal grandfather served in France during WWI (in the American
army) and he used to sing that song all the time when I was a child. Hinkey-dinky-parlez-vous is embedded in
my family memories. Although I must add, NOT most of the verses I heard sung
for Jackson’s
film!!
Have you seen the film? Do you think the similarities & emotion translate across 100 years of time to the Regency period? What do you think about the background of war in Regency romances?
