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Author Archives: diane

About diane

Diane Gaston is the RITA award-winning author of Historical Romance for Harlequin Historical and Mills and Boon, with books that feature the darker side of the Regency. Formerly a mental health social worker, she is happiest now when deep in the psyches of soldiers, rakes and women who don’t always act like ladies.

Christmas Shopping – Regency Style

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This weekend I finally got serious about Christmas shopping. I had good intentions of going out to the mall, but, every time I thought of what I might buy, I’d look on the internet and find the exact item with a promise for delivery by Christmas. As a result, I have done 99 per cent of my shopping all online! We’ll see how smart this was when Christmas eve rolls around. Will these vendors make good on their promises or will I have to write notes in empty boxes for my family to open on Christmas day?

This got me to thinking….What gifts would I purchase for my family if the year were 1819 and I’m shopping in London?

Guess what? I could go to the mall–The Burlington Arcade, I mean.

The Burlington Arcade is a covered shopping area behind Bond Street on what was formerly the garden of Burlington House. Lord George Cavendish, younger brother of the Duke of Devonshire owned Burlington House and wanted to do something to prevent ruffians from throwing trash and oyster shells into his garden. He hired architect Same Ware to design the arcade which had spaces for 72 enclosed shops. The arcade opened in 1819 and was an instant success. It is still the place to go for fashionable shopping in London.

By the way, in my next book, A Not So Respectable Gentleman, Leo, the hero and brother of the Diamonds of Wellbourne Manor, runs into the Burlington Arcade to escape the bad guys….

But I digress! I’m supposed to be shopping.

If I can’t find all the gifts in the Burlington Arcade, I can shop at a department store–Harding Howell and Co, which sells everything from lace and every kind of haberdashery, but also jewelry, watches, clocks, perfumery and more. Harding Howell and Co. was opened in 1807 in Pall Mall.

Between these two places, I ought to find gifts for everyone on my list.

Dear Husband: He likes gizmos. And he loves clocks. I think I’ll buy him a French clock. But he’d like a gizmo toy, too, like some kind of automaton.

Dear Daughter: She’s a music lover. I might buy her the latest piano sheet music from the music seller in the arcade although guitar is her instrument of choice these days. Maybe she’d play the harp in the Regency.

Dear Son: He’d probably want the latest in dueling pistols. Or the best hunting whip, although in this time period, his shooting would be confined to video games and his vehicle accessory would probably be a car radio or GPS.

Dear Sisters: for one I’ll have to go to Jermyn Street and buy her some fragrance from Floris. The other might like a pretty new bonnet.

Dear Friends: Oh, I know what I’d buy them. BOOKS!!! Perhaps in 1819, I’d buy them two books in one. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published in 1818. Sadly the author died in 1817, but she is our favorite author.

What gifts would you buy for friends and family if you were shopping in Regency England?

Christmas is only 6 days away. Yipes!!!! Pray for prompt UPS men!

You still have more days to enter the Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway, though. Enter daily for the best chance to win the grand prize–a Kindle Fire!

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 14 Replies

Jane Austen’s Christmas…and Birthday…and a Prize!!!

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Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775. To commemorate her birthday, each year we devote the week to celebrating her life and the wonderful books that have endured and given us countless pleasure, much inspiration, and a love of the Regency.

This week, as we have done before, we are offering a prize to one lucky commenter, to be randomly selected from comments all week long. Comment every day! We’ll announce the winner by next Monday.
The winner will have the choice of either the annotated Pride and Prejudice or the new annotated Persuasion. These are beautiful editions!
Birthdays were not the grand occasions for celebration in Jane Austen’s time as in our own, but Christmas could very well be. Jane’s Christmases often meant having visitors, and, because travel was such a difficulty, guests stayed a long time.
Gifts at Christmas were often made by loving hands, things like monogramed handkerchiefs or needle cases. There were plenty of games, however. Cards and charades and games of chess.
There might also be theatricals. As a child, Jane Austen wrote a one-act play at Christmas, about a daughter traveling to get married.
Jane also attended balls at Christmastime and, in a letter to her sister Cassandra, wrote of one:

There were twenty dances, and I danced them all without any fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much, and with so much satisfaction as I did; from my slender enjoyment of the Ashford Balls (as assemblies for dancing) I had not thought myself equal to it, but in cold weather and with few couples I fancy I could just as well dance for a week together as for half an hour. My black cap was openly admired by Mrs Lefroy, and secretly, I imagine by everybody else in the room

I wonder if acknowledgement of her birthday became lost in all these festivities and visitors? If so, it is fitting that we stop and remember it here at Risky Regencies.
Do you, or anyone you know have a birthday close to Christmas? Is it celebrated as a birthday might be the rest of the year? Or are you or they short-changed?
Remember, one lucky commenter will be selected by next Monday for her choice of the annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion.
And don’t forget that the Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday contest is still going strong. See details here.
Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 26 Replies

Christmas Pudding or Omigosh I Missed Stir Up Sunday

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Stir Up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent begins, when, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the prayers begin:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Traditionally, the prayer read at Church was supposed to remind cooks that they should mix up their Christmas pudding.

This year Stir Up Sunday would have been on Nov 27, so I am a week late and my pudding will not be ready for Christmas.

To us Americans, pudding is some chocolate or vanilla or banana custard-like dessert, but English pudding is a mixture of lots of different ingredients, including some grain product.

In the Regency, meats such as beef or veal could be added to sugar, raisins, sherry, lemon, orange, prunes (the dried plums that give plum pudding its name), cinnamon, cloves, brown bread, and such unfamiliar (to me) ingredients as cochineal (a food dye made from insects), suet, sack (a wine from the Canary Isles), hock (another wine), and treacle (a sugar syrup).

Into the mixture was stirred a coin (for wealth), a ring (for marriage) and a thimble (for blessedness. Each member of the family stirred the mixture and made a wish. The mixture was then boiled in a cloth for hours, and hung on a hook to dry until Christmas.

On Christmas day, the pudding was covered with warm brandy and set aflame, making it a dramatic and exciting addition to the Christmas dinner.

If you would like to make a Christmas pudding for your Christmas the Regency way, you are too late, because it has to age to get the best effect and flavor. But never fear! Modern technology comes to the rescue:

And while you are waiting for your Christmas Pudding to be ready, you can play the Harlequin Historical Author’s Holiday Giveaway, based on the Advent calendar. We started a couple days after Stir Up Sunday and are going strong until Dec 23. Enter each day for chances to win daily prizes and for the most chances to win the grand prize of a Kindle Fire. If you’ve missed some days, go back and catch up. You’ll miss some prizes but not the grand prize.

What special “pudding” (aka dessert) do you make for the holiday season?

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Thanks for the Regency

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This is Thanksgiving week and a time to be thinking of all the things for which we are grateful. I’ve had many blessings in my life. Family and friends are chief among them. I thought it would be fun to look at some “Regency” things that make me grateful.

Thank you for…..

1. Jane Austen.
Without Jane and her wonderful books would this time period be thought of as a setting for romantic historical fiction?
2. Georgette Heyer.
Heyer made the time period come alive. For Jane, the Regency (or late Georgian era, to be specific) was contemporary and it would not have occurred to her to make it part of the appeal of her books. Heyer, writing later, embraced the era and made it come alive with great wit and cleverness.
3. The Drama.
The few short years of the Regency were filled with drama, the fodder of a novelist. With a mad king, a frivolous Prince Regent, social unrest, a war with Napoleon, and even dramatic weather (the year without a summer in 1816; the last Frost Fair in 1814), few eras could compete.

4. The People.
Think of all the larger than life figures who inhabited the Regency: The Duke of Wellington, still revered as a national hero (and by me… and Kristine Hughes). The Prince Regent, almost the polar opposite of Wellington. Lord Sidmouth, the force behind the repression of social protest, Lord Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary who, at the Congress of Vienna, brought peace and order to Europe and who tragically killed himself. Literary people, like Austen, naughty Byron, Shelley, Keats, Sir Walter Scott. Personalities like Harriette Wilson and Beau Brummell. The list goes on.

5. The Beauty.
Beautiful fashions for women, starting in the late Georgian era, stopping short of the excesses of the Victorian era. Beautiful settings – Country houses, Mayfair, the Pavilion in Brighton. Romantic modes of transportation – elegant carriages pulled by matched sets of horses, racy phaetons and gigs, riding horses, ships.
I’ll stop here, although, if I took a little more time, I could probably think of more. I am very thankful that I can “live” in the Regency every day in my writing. I’m thankful that my success has afforded me the ability to keep on writing Regency romance. I’m grateful for those wonderful, loyal readers who still love books set in the Regency. You’ll see more books from me!
Here’s something for which YOU can be grateful! The Harlequin Historical Authors are again hosting a Holiday Contest. In the spirit of an Advent Calendar, there will be daily prizes and a grand prize of a Kindle Fire! More on that next week….
In the meantime, what about the Regency are you most grateful for?
And Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
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