Back to Top

Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Regency Police Raid

Updated on by

Inspired by discussion on various loops and at History Hoydens…

The London residence of the Duke of S– was raided by the Regency Police and a large number of items, including a quantity of white powder in the kitchen, was seized. The Duke is subject to various offenses covered by the Regency Anachronism Act.

Mayfair, London

Sirs,

I wish to complain about the recent Regency Police raid on my property. My household is in an uproar and I have scarcely been able to escape to my usual dens of vice for entertainment. I wish to know the whereabouts of various items of clothing and, frankly, since the baking powder and whiskey were seized, breakfasts have been hell.

My mistress skulks around the house, furious that her red silk nightgown and her gown with the tiny buttons down the back, both of which we enjoyed immensely, have been taken. I am immensely distressed that, barring extraordinary circumstances and an appeal to the courts, I cannot propose marriage to her, which I wish to do following more mutual psychological torture to prove that I am indeed worthy of her.

My housemaid, who has lost the prestige of opening the front door wearing a black silk gown and white cap, skulks downstairs in her shift. Furthermore, my formerly doddering butler, who had forty years lopped off his age, seems more interested in exploring the fleshpots of London than attending to household duties.

On the other hand I must commend the police for removing all of my skintight breeches which means that for the first time in years I can sit when clothed, and do not split them every time I ride. You need not return these, or the implement (the “can opener”) which was necessary to their removal. My thanks also for reminding me that there is a war on, and I believe I have some younger brothers involved therein; also for the reminder that if they return pathetically scarred in mind and body, my fraternal advice will be to get over it.

The business of the shirts, however, is problematic. Since they all opened the wrong way, to my astonishment, and naturally I own no nightshirts, I am to all intents completely unclothed in my house. Despite assurance that I am now properly heroic, I find the continual attentions of my mistress exhausting. Following your advice, I am applying lemon juice daily to remove the tan and allowing my chest hair to grow back.

I remain, sirs, your most obdt. servt.,
Slut

What else did the Regency Police seize?

A Damned Good Contest continues; enter to win Jane and the Damned stuff!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 13 Replies

Almost Waterloo, almost history

Updated on by

It’s the eve of the Battle of Waterloo and we Riskies have been discussing offlist whether we should the battle again or not. The topic is both finite and infinite; there is so much material but for me it comes down to one fact that I wrote about here a couple of years ago here

Today I’m talking about the ordinary soldiers, the kids who signed up for the king’s shilling out of patriotism, were fooled by unscrupulous recruiters, or because they had so few options … One in four soldiers died that June day in 1815. Read more

Forget the ball and the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon and the dashing uniforms. One in four.

And that got me thinking about how we distill and sort historical information as writers and readers. What does the Regency represent to us?

For instance it’s a period of fashion and elegance, fabulous clothes, gorgeous architecture and interior design. Yet the simplicity and gorgeous drape we associate with gowns of the period really belongs to an earlier era, well before the Regency proper (1811-1820), as does most of the classic Georgian architecture. Consider the evolution of fashion from this 1795 gown (right) to the fussiness of the 1822 one (left).

We also associate the period with a certain amount of freedom and glamor and the Romantics–except by the 18-teens it wasn’t a great time to be a poet, particularly a poet of radical leanings. Shelley and Byron fled the country, but more because of their scandalous personal lives than their writing (except their lives and writing and political beliefs were bound together).

Their friend Leigh Hunt, journalist and co-founder of the Examiner, a periodical that mixed radical politics and the arts, was imprisoned for two years in 1813 for saying rude, if true, things about Prinny.

In addition, Lord Liverpool’s government passed some extraordinarily repressive legislation cutting down on civil liberties as a result of the uproar that followed the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, when local militia cut down a peaceful demonstration in Manchester. As a sidenote, the city is seeking a more permanent tribute on the site, as reported by the Guardian:

One of the lasting memorials of Peterloo crosses the former site of St Peter’s Fields daily, tucked under the arms of passers-by or downloaded to their computers and iPods.

It is the Guardian itself, which was founded by a group of moderate Manchester reformers as a direct result of the massacre, when it became clear that demonstrations and direct action were not going to change the government’s mind on widening the vote.

The government’s reaction was to pass legislation in addition to the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the Six Acts of 1819:

  • Training Prevention Act or Unlawful Drilling limited any sort of military training to local jurisdictions, punishable by transportation.
  • Seizure of Arms Act gave local magistrates the authority to search any private property for weapons and to arrest the owners.
  • Misdemeanors Act reduced opportunities for bail and allowed for speedier court processing.
  • Seditious Meetings Prevention Act made meetings of fifty or more people illegal unless authorized by a sheriff or magistrate.
  • Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act. If Hunt had libeled Prinny in 1819 he could have been sentenced to fourteen years transportation.
  • Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act imposed taxes on publications that published opinion in addition to those that published news, and publishers were required to post a bond for their behavior.

Yikes. Not exactly the land of the free.

How do you reconcile the historical truth with the fantasy when you’re reading or writing?

I’m blogging today at Supernatural Underground and giving away ARCs of Jane and the Damned as prizes, and there’s a Damned Good Contest on my site, plus various excerpts etc. Check it out!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Replies

Wonders of the Internet

Updated on by

My husband the music expert is currently amusing himself with this book, Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time, by Nicholas Slonimsky. On the cover, GB Shaw wields his mighty weapon and Beethoven receives a direct hit.

It makes for some fascinating and cringeworthy reading. Here, for instance, is a Viennese critic’s comment from 1804:

Beethoven’s Second Symphony is a crass monser, a hideous writhing, wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.

More animal symbolism from a Paris critic of 1810:

Beethoven, who is often bizarre and baroque, takes at times the majestic flight of an eagle, and then creeps in rocky pathways… He seems to harbor together doves and crocodiles.

Whereas The Harmonium, London, in 1823, took this no-nonsense approach:

Opinions are much divided concerning the merits of the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven, though very few venture to deny that it is much too long.

And moving right along, in my Internet search for more music criticism articles, I ended up here, which is appropriate in a way:

By 1815 London had expanded beyond its medieval walls and the populace had grown to 1.4 million. People began to generate waste at an unprecedented rate. [italics mine]

Now I don’t believe the author of the article, Night-Soil Men, the Human Waste Collectors of Georgian London, meant that, uh, personal production increased, although that was certainly the first thought that came to my mind. Anyway, read the article for everything you always wanted to know on this topic. Isn’t the internet a wonder?

I’d also like to direct you to a fabulous site, Georgian London, a terrific, smart, well-researched resource. I was thrilled to learn that the site owner, Lucy Inglis, will be speaking at the RNA Conference in July, on “Trades for 18th-century women.” Can’t wait! And I’m speaking on a panel about writing for UK and US markets.

I expect you’ve seen the news about the discovery of the world’s oldest shoe (5,500 years old, found in Armenia).

And since I’m encouraging explorations online, please drop by my website to read an excerpt from Jane and the Damned.

What strange internet searches have you performed recently? Where did you start? Where did you end up?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Replies

Sweet Tarts

Updated on by

Today is my critique group day, so I thought I’d write about them. We’re called the Tarts because we meet at a La Madeleine restaurant (we occupy a large table at the back and try not to talk too loudly about each other’s sex scenes) and one time the restaurant had a promotion along the lines of Try our delicious little French tarts. So naturally we had to adopt the name.

We’re all published now but when I joined the group ten years ago (aargh! ten years!) none of us were. Our numbers have fluctuated over the years but now we’re down to the basic foursome. We know a lot about each other and a lot about each other’s writing and we’ve cheered each other on as we negotiated the path of bumps and turns, luck, and skill that led to publication. And we write different subgenres so it’s interesting that we function well as a critique group. But let me introduce you (in alphabetical order):

Kate Dolan. Kate is an awesome powerwriting force. She writes Regencies for Cerridwen, mysteries as K.D. Hays, kids’ books, you name it. She’s also a living history interpreter and something of an expert on colonial Maryland history.

Christie Kelley. Chris writes Regencies for Kensington although when I first joined the group she was writing Westerns. She’s smart and productive and the best plotter I know.

Kathy Love. Yes, it’s really her name. She was writing vamps when no one else was and now her urban fantasy series depict paranormal creatures living side by side with unwitting mortals.

Kate Poole. Kate, sorry, I can’t find your website (did it get eaten?), whose debut historical The Anchor and the Storm came out a couple of years ago and she has another Ellora’s Cave book coming out… soon.

So how do we function as a critique group? First, friendship does not conflict with our opinions on each other’s work. We’re not so used to each other’s writing that we don’t have anything to say about it or can’t view it with a critical eye, which I think is great. (My rule of thumb has always been that if the majority of the group says something doesn’t work, I change it. Usually.) We make a lot of jokes. Halfway through we stop to eat, of course, some delicious French tarts. So we’re not all business but we do get a lot of work done. If we’re not talking about our current mss. we talk about future plots. We have various areas of expertise, within and outside writing.

Do you have a community that’s related to writing, or reading, or any other interest? Tell us about it! And what do you think its Regency equivalent would be?

Visit a great new blog by HarperCollins paranormal authors, Supernatural Underground (and on Facebook too). Check us out! We’re having our official launch June 1 with giveaways and fun stuff.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Replies

Contest Reincarnation, Cover, Confession, Excerpt

Updated on by

I have been waiting so long to show you the fabulous cover for Jane and the Damned (October, 2010) and here it is! I hope you love it as much as I do.

Last week I announced a contest on Twitter for a giveaway of the ARC (Advanced Reading Copies) of the book. It was a massive failure. Twitter would not play nice with my hashtag and I know it was retweeted–my thanks to all who did so–so I’m inviting you to enter again. But this time I am not using Twitter. Twitter, you let me down. You are my Wickham, my Willoughby, my ruination. If you were my footman I’d fire you without a reference. If you were my relative I’d cut you off without a penny.

So go to the contact page on my website, fill out the form, put ARC in the subject line, and away we go. I’ll take entries until Sunday May 23 at midnight, EST, and I’m giving away three copies. Good luck!

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“I am come here to take the cure,” she said, her resistance ebbing away.

“A cadaver can not take any sort of cure, my dear Miss Austen, and that is what you’ll be soon enough. It’s a delicate matter, the cure; you must be strong enough to withstand the poison of the waters—for such it is to us—yet the stronger you are the more difficult and painful the cure will become.”

“What is it to you? Why will you not leave me alone?” She hated herself for the whimper in her voice.

He pushed her into a chair. He stood over her, hands moving to the buttons of his coat. “My honor, as one of my kind, demands it, Miss Austen. This Mr. Smith abandoned you, a most dishonorable act, and it is my duty, honor, and privilege to do what he should have.” He shrugged the coat from his shoulders and let it fall.

“But what about me? My family fear me and rush me to take the cure. Your honor, frankly, is no business of mine. No one asks me what I want … I ….” Her voice faded away as Luke unbuttoned his shirt cuff. He raised his wrist to his mouth and breathed upon it, then showed her the blue veins against his pale skin.

“I cannot,” she said faintly. “Please, sir, do not…”

“My name is Luke.” He bent and held his wrist to her lips. “Your canines extend. We call it en sanglant. You cannot help yourself. You feel pain but that’s only because it is a new sensation. With time you’ll recognize the condition of en sanglant as a sign of desire, of need, of the pleasure you’ll anticipate—oh, I beg your pardon, you are the daughter of a clergyman; I doubt you’ll appreciate the—”

“Hold your tongue!” She grabbed his wrist and bit, hard.

“Ouch! A little more finesse, Jane, but no matter, you’ll learn.”

Through a mouthful of blood she growled—yes, Jane Austen, the cultured and respectable daughter of the Austen family growled, and then laughed messily.

And the taste—like lightning, like the way she felt once, in another life, when the words flowed and she laughed aloud at her own cleverness and the delicious interplay of her characters.

As for the confession… I wrote down to the wire last week on a book that I’d been telling myself was “almost finished” and which suddenly assumed a life of its own. It became fifteen thousand words longer than I anticipated (I write short usually) and I wrote that, and more, in the last week. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting and I shall never do it again.

When was the last time you played fast and loose with a deadline or other commitment? Do you have any confessions to make? Make them here!

There’s a new blog in town featuring HarperCollins paranormal authors, Supernatural Underground and a Facebook page. Check us out! We’re having our official launch June 1 with giveaways and fun stuff.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Replies