Previously in this series.
1. You are either a virgin or a sad and lovely widow whose husband was lost at sea. You are spirited, but still passing ladylike.
2. Your father is away in the colonies protecting his tobacco interests, or a bumbling idiot, or a gambler. His character flaws lead to you becoming betrothed to a man you’ve never met.
3. Your dance card is filled up with the names of eligible gentlemen who are excessively unattractive.
4. You have a maiden aunt who despairs of you. You have a gaggle of sisters of marriageable age and they are all silly.
5. You are an incorrigible womanizer and you have lived in France. You are squandering your sizeable inheritance on loose women and card tables. You may very well be a pirate.
6. Your best friend is a notorious flirt and not as pretty as you. She weds a buffoon for convenience and immediately regrets her decision. Her sole ambition in life is to orchestrate a marriage for you that’s ever so slightly beneath hers.
7. A gentleman of your acquaintance once addressed you by your Christian name as he brushed his fingers against the lace filigree of your fichu. You still blush at the recollection.
8. A notorious rake catches your eye at a fashionable social function. His brocaded—though not foppishly so—waistcoat betrays his unimaginable wealth. His eyes smolder like sapphires pulled from the inferno itself. He raises his glass to you with a ravenous smile.
9. You are fluent in French, despite never having been abroad. Your profligate older brother once spent a season in Paris and came back with the clap.
10. You have a secret, potentially scandalous alter-ego, such as authoress of smutty literature or highwayman. Your true identity is under heated debate by the Ton. In your spare time you give baskets of food to the poor and practice the pianoforte and/or mandolin.
11. You are proposed marriage to by no less than three vicars every Tuesday. You refuse them with delicacy, then weep into the rosebushes on the east veranda. Your heart belongs to another.
12. A wealthy and influential harridan disapproves of you and makes sure everyone within earshot knows it. You don’t give a fig what she thinks. You flutter your fan defiantly.
13. You are dancing a quadrille with a gentleman you find despicable. He is taken aback by your wit and cheek. His devilish grin and tightly coiled arm muscles make you suddenly desirous of swooning. Your bosom heaves.
14. A certain young lady with a comely face and dazzling eyes rejects you in no uncertain terms. She haunts your thoughts by day and your dreams by night, to the extent that you can no longer delight in any of life’s joys, not even whores.
15. You are caught in a storm and contract a violent head-cold. Fearing for your life, a platonic friend of the family whisks you to his chamber and removes all your clothes with tantalizing earnestness. This is a very gentlemanly thing to do, and you shiver with longing.
16. Everything between your legs is delicately referred to as your “sex.”
17. Your nipples are like silken rose petals. The curve of your ear is like a trembling pink shell. An improbable plot device leads to you sharing a bed with a rogue whose Byronic masculinity awakens something excruciating in you.
18. Despite having less sexual experience than a house fern, you fall into throes of ecstasy at your first encounter with your lover’s erect member/manhood/scepter. He deflowers you with the utmost tenderness and it’s the best sex anyone has ever had and you do it for hours and hours.
19. Your orgasms are like an explosion of Roman candles, or an impossibly sweet bouquet of roses blossoming, or a sunburst that launches you to the heavens and carries you blissfully back down to earth on golden wings. This goes on for pages, at the end of which your lover strokes your hair and calls you “Sweeting.”
20. Oh God, you are ruined, ruined! What man will ever marry you now that you’ve cast your virtue away on the transitory caresses of a rake? You’ll have no alternative but to come out on the town or, worse, become a governess. Your best friend will be delighted.
21. After a period of uncertainty, it becomes evident that your paramour is a scoundrel no longer—his ardor for you is pure and undying, and he wants nothing more than to marry you immediately. He foreswears all his former debauchery and you congratulate yourself for changing him so thoroughly with your love. You may or may not be pregnant.
Tags: anna snyder, beauty, books, how to tell what novel you’re in, obvi some of these are to tell if you are in a novel written in the modern era ABOUT the regency era, romance novels
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“Dubious Consent and the Improbable Plot Device” is my favorite entry in the Kathleen Woodiwiss canon.
My mom has copies of her books that may or may not have been stolen from the Daly City public library in 1975, and I read them in HS and didn’t have the heart to go “Uh, yeah, those are uh, pretty rapey.” when she saw I’d finished them
I read “The Flame the Flower” while doing a study of romance novels in college (and, btw, if you haven’t read “Reading the Romance,” by Janice Radway, you must – it’s a lovely ethnography of the habits of romance readers). In the first, say, 20 pages, the hero rapes the heroine – BUT IT’S OK BECAUSE HE THINKS SHE’S A PROSTITUTE. And then their romance is the compelling narrative of the rest of the book. I mean…wut.
#18 is more or less what my dissertation is about. If it’s improper to say, say it with botany. Or, in the case of Fanny Hill, say it improperly AND say it with botany.
There is an amazing TV movie adaptation of Fanny Hill. And it is absolutely terrible.
Have you read “The Signature of All Things?” ALL the botany, ALL the sex metaphors.
I feel like I would do really well in a romance novel. I can play the piano, I enjoy writing letters, I take walks, I can think of lots of euphemisms for sexual things that often use the world of nature for inspiration, and I am past mistress in the art of making snide remarks about people while artfully using my eyes for emphasis.
(Also I describe myself as “past mistress” in anything, so I’m blowing my cover as a secret 172-year-old anyway.)
Yeah, I would love to audition for a novel writer so that my “walking quickly in a dress” skills can be fully appreciated.
Regency Romances are like CRACK to me. I don’t care how predictable they are, or how purple the prose is (okay, I care a little about that. Authors, please stop making your heroines tremble and flutter and flush every time they look at the hero; it makes it sound like they have food poisoning*), I will collect them all, like Pokemon.
*Now I want to write one where the heroine feels Overwhelmed With Lust but it turns out it really IS food poisoning. I Barfed On A Scoundrel, coming to bookstores near you in 2015
I’m loling really hard in public, so thanks for that.
I know the purple prose monster is in effect when I start skimming the love scenes. Yeah, yeah, I get it, heretofore unexplored vistas of delight, etc.
Right there with you. I READ THEM ALL. But also, I skip the sex scenes sometimes due to an excess of throbbing members and such. 😀
Yeah, I prefer it when there’s only one or two sex scenes, at most, because they get boring and silly pretty quickly. And it’s all the angsty, repressed longing for sex that’s the real good stuff, anyway.
Ha ha yeah. Also, the more wacky plot twists the better, generally. I can’t stop reading them. 😀
Not into the magnificent meat wand?
Me too. I’ve read them all – wallpaper historicals, purple prosey ones, rapey old schools, mostly chaste old Silhouettes, ones set in Almackastan, queer ones, AU ones with wizards or magic chocolate pots. You name it, I’ve read it.
Almackastan. I really have to make a trek there sometime.
Don’t forget the sequel, Retching Over The Rake
I would totally read I Barfed On A Scoundrel.
I laughed out loud. Let us know when it reaches the bookstall, please. Anne Stenhouse
Theresa, I’m going to shamelessly recommend my Victorian (not Regency) romance, Echoes in Stone, in which not only does the heroine throw up in the rosebushes after kissing the hero, the hero throws up after fondling the heroine. There are reasons. She fortunately doesn’t barf ON the scroundrel, but that could’t be good for the roses.
THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED.
What is surprising is how very, very few of these apply to the works of Georgette Heyer.
My favorite Heyer book is Cotillion. Probably because I think Freddy is pretty much the greatest.
The Foundling makes me laugh and laugh. But I have re-read the Grand Sophy the most.
OH HAI IS THIS WHERE WE TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH WE LOVE GEORGETTE HEYER
I keep reading more recent Regencies hoping I will find something as entertaining and well-researched as GH (I can’t help it, I’m a trained historian, it’s a disease), only with less bigotry and much much more sex, but nothing comes close. So I happily go on GH benders and do a lot of editing in my mind.
Venetia and Damerel in Venetia = passionate, frequent, and very loud; he probably takes her shift all the way off, after the Mediterranean fashion
Kitty and Freddy Cotillion = awkward but endearing, once they figure out what goes where
Phoebe and Sylvester Sylvester = they bite each other and it’s kind of hot
Yes, don’t you find yourself mentally shrieking, “People didn’t act/dress/speak like that!” all the time in most of them?
My biggest quarrel with GH, besides the ones you mention, are her overuse of exclamation points. Her characters almost never just talk; they always exclaim. I always think it must be exhausting to talk to them.
Came to comments looking for Heyer mentions, was not disappointed. Oh Toasties, I love you.
She really is among the greatest of historical romance novelists (hell, she’s a great historical novelist, period). I just wish her books were a wee bit sexier.
My faves so far are probably Frederica and The Grand Sophy, but I loved that she stretched herself with A Civil Contract. Wonderful corrective to most “marriage of convenience” narratives.
I have read every single one of these in a book and I love them all so very much. You will rip my historical romance novels out of my COLD, DEAD HANDS.
Now excuse me, I’m busy desperately awaiting the arrival of Sarah MacLean’s newest book. ITS ABOUT CHASE YOU GUYS.
I AM SO SO SO EXCITED FOR THAT BOOK.
OMG ME TOOOOO
Hey Toasties, any recs for good Regencies? I would like there to be the secks as well, but well-written Regency romances are crack to me.
We started a list down below!
I screamed when I realized who Chase was. I CANT WAIT I NEEEEEEED IT
Me too!!! And then I had to go back and re-read the prior series, just to be sure, and got so happy again at the house full of women with a woman butler and a woman groom and all their brilliance.
I fought tooth and nail against reading romance for years until I read A Rogue By Any Other Name. Now I’m all in. I’m even writing romance. It’s all her fault. And tomorrow’s release is EXTREMELY EXCITING.
It’s always the shell-shaped ears, isn’t it?! When I was a tween I used to read those books and then study my own ears in the mirror to try and determine how sexy I was.
Somehow the fact the Kim Kardashian has ‘tiny ears’ has been floating to the surface of my idle internet reading recently, and now I have a wholly unexpected but strangely pleasing mashup going on.
21. You find yourself having highly improper thoughts about the new cabin boy under your command, and are confused and distressed. This will not do! Happily, young Campion is injured in a battle with your nemesis and you see the most perfect breasts in creation while tending her wounds.
I remember wondering if my nipples were “dusky rose,” which seemed to be a desirable quality in nipples. Also worked on “delicately chewing my lip,” which is apparently the most adorable way for a heroine to suggest cognitive activity, particularly deliberation. Bemoaned my lack of an alabaster neck or a pert nose. Finally resigned myself to the knowledge I’d be the bookish, consumptive best friend.
There’s a high chance they are. As many a woman who tries to find a lipstick vaguely the same colour as her lips will discover, ‘dusky rose’ can cover anything from pale pink to mauve with tangents of brown and grey.
This is perfect. Does anyone have recommendations for good Regency romance novels? Asking for a friend.
DO I EVER. Some authors to start with: Julia Quinn, Tessa Dare, Courtney Milan (her stuff is technically Victorian, I think, but it doesn’t make much difference, plot-wise. Plus she has awesome feminist heroines and diverse heroes), Loretta Chase, Laura Kinsale, Sarah MacLean, and I’ll stop there before I get out of hand.
I support all of these.
Yes yes yes. Also, if you want some serious angsting and feelings, Sherry Thomas. And I have a big soft spot for the Pennyroyal Green series by Julie Anne Long.
Where would you start, with Sherry Thomas?
My three favorites, in no particular order, are:
Not Quite a Husband (divorced couple, heroine is a surgeon- late Victorian actually, and they are traveling across India)
His at Night (she uses marriage as a way to escape abuse at home, he resents her, not knowing why it was so important- also, he is pretending to have brain damage to aid his spying)
Private Arrangements (estranged married couple, she wants to move on, she schemed in the past).
I’m less a fan of her newer series, that starts with Beguiling the Beauty- only one of those heroes managed to redeem himself in my eyes.
Thank you!
Oooh, I love stories set in India.
Lol, pretending-to-have-brain-damage is always pretty great.
And I love unconventional love stories, like people who are already married and didn’t just meet!
You should definitely check these out, then! For me, at least, Not Quite a Husband had the biggest punch to my heart, where I was actually feeling physically in pain for a bit, but they do all have the requisite happy ending. If you are similarly prone to sharing all the feelings with book characters, I would advise stocking up on chocolate before diving in.
Yes, yes and yes. Also Lisa Kleypas especially the Wallflowers series.
That’s who I was forgetting! I’m almost ashamed of how much I love Devil In Winter, because St. Vincent is the woooorst, but I do. I love it so much.
Courtney Milan is my favourite, and is totally worth reading even if it’s Victorian. I appreciate a romance novelist not afraid to work in some pretty strong social justice stuff into her work, especially because she’s talented enough to make it unambiguous without being preachy.
I totally checked out the ebook of “The Duchess War” from the library two days ago and finished it today. It’s so good! I now have the other two books in that series on hold. I especially appreciated the believable sexytimes. The first time, not so awesome, they talk about it, and communicate about what feels good, and then it’s so much better!
Oh yay! The Heiress Effect is my favourite of the novels. Be sure to check out the related novellas if you can get them! A Kiss for Midwinter is my favourite romance book ever (it’s Courtney’s ode to birth control and sex ed and the heroine is Minerva’s best friend Lydia!) and The Governess Affair is good too (it’s Oliver’s parents’ story, with Robert’s father as the villain)
Laura Kinsale’s “Flowers from the Storm” is a treatise on a romance novel done right. Oh my God.
If there was ever a romance novel that deserves to be made into a sweeping BBC miniseries, it’s that one.
OH MY GOD YES
I actually listened to it on audiobook and OH MY GOD I think it’s even better as an audiobook. The narrator is SO PERFECT. I think Christian and Maddie come across better when they’re being read to you.
Actually, I’ve listened to most of her books on audio and I love it. Especially Lessons in French.
Lessons in French! THE BULL! Oh.
Ooooh, I’ll have to find the audiobook! As well as the rest of her works.
Alas, my library doesn’t carry any of her audiobooks except Lessons in French. Where do you get yours?
I was lucky and won five Audible codes from Laura for her books. So that’s where all of mine are from. I will say that they really are all worth the money, but I’m sure you can find them elsewhere as well.
I’m taking notes on everything in this thread, because I’ve read about three of Courtney Milan’s books in the last year, and I’m completely obsessed with them. I’d never read a romance novel before!
I am a ride or die Tessa Dare fan. The Spindle Cove series is my jam.
Spindle Cove is the BEST.
The last one might be my favorite EVER.
Mine too! It was so funny (and HOT. Dare can write one hell of a sex scene.)
I might have broken my rule of only getting romances from the e-lending program at the library (in order to not go bankrupt) but I totally preordered the next castles ever after book because the first one was neeeeearly as good as Spindle Cove and I have my hopes up.
BRB, rereading the first castles because it was SO GOOD.
Holy shit, that role-playing scene? KILLED. ME.
If your friend is interested in any tropes in particular, I bet this thread could easily generate a custom list.
Lisa Kleypas is also good.
Everything above, plus Untie My Heart by Judith Ivory. The heroine is a sturdily built country lass turned con artist turned shepherd, and the hero is a decadent duke (or something) who has just returned from living in Russia.
ALSO- if you like spies, Joanna Bourne.
I like several of Meredith Duran’s — The Duke’s Shadow has shockingly good treatment of serious things like a historical Indian revolution, war crimes, and PTSD. I also really like A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal, because it’s about stolen children and culture shock. Finally, Your Wicked Heart is an adorable novella.
She writes quite well, but unfortunately there is the trope of “zomg amazing first experience with sex and the men know so much more than me about my own body.”
Sarah MacLean for sure.
If we can veer Victorian, I adore Courtney Milan. And on the off chance you want your Victorian romance to mingle with your paranormal romance, Kristen Callihan.
I am reading Kristen Callihan RIGHT NOW. So good.
Ahhh I just read the most recent one, love me some Darkest London.
Meredith Duran’s Written on Your Skin is I think my favorite romance novel ever — totally nerdy/awesome heroine (whom, ahem, I may overidentify with in her actual valid concern about not getting sexed enough), Egyptology, and a male hero whose journey basically is all about giving up his noble savior complex.
Also absolutely second Courtney Milan (second favorite romance novel: The Duchess War, which is basically the same as Written on Your Skin but with chess, a secret crossdressing past, and trade strikes), Sherry Thomas, Tessa Dare, Joanna Bourne, and Sarah MacLean (though I think her quality has varied a little, but when she is on, she is ON).
Would also add Cecilia Grant, who has awesome characters and also allows them to actually suffer the social consequences of their romantic actions, which I appreciate.
I was trying to remember Cecilia Grant! And speaking of Egyptology, Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase- brainy heroine and her hunky, less brainy hired muscle who follows her lead.
Ceclia Grant’s A Lady Awakened is delightful! Courtney Milan is the best (favorite romance novel: The Countess Conspiracy, it’s my catnip), and Maya Rodale’s What a Wallflower Wants (different from the Wallflower series by Lisa Kleypas mentioned above).
I used to be totally disdainful of romance, then actually read a few and realized it is the BEST.
Seconded on SO MANY of the above mentioned (especially Courtney Milan because SO MANY AWESOME LADIES YOU GUYS. FREE. JUST, FREE). Other authors I love: Elizabeth Hoyt (her books are more the Georgian era, but it doesn’t really matter), Lauren Willig, MARY BALOGH (the Slightly series, I can’t even), and Eva Ibbotson’s romances (more WWI/WWII era, but lovely nonetheless).
Also, if you want to go a little outside the genre, I highly recommend Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories. The first one is an admitted re-telling of Pride and Prejudice with Magic, but each of the sequels keep getting better and better. The newest one (Valour and Vanity) is a freaking HEIST NOVEL. SO AMAZING.
Oh, Hoyt and Balogh! I went on a Maiden Lane binge last month and read all (seven?) of them in a weekend.
Did you read the Balogh Simply series? I spent about two weeks rereading the Slightly-s and the Simply-s and had just a glorious time.
Also, love Maiden Lane.
And, I might need to re-evaluate the Glamourist books because I was a little bored by the first one but a heist story? I’m a sucker for that shit.
Yes, I’ve read pretty much all of Balogh’s books (except some of her older ones). I’m really enjoying the Survivor series so far- especially The Arrangement (I’m a sucker for when the heroine discovers her own abilities outside of her awful family).
Yeah, the first Glamourist book is super meh, but they get SO GOOD. The second is a spy novel, the third is a political book and the fourth is a heist. Once Kowal got away from the Austen plots, she really came into her own.
I thought The Arrangement was wonderful.
I just added the other Glamourist books to my holds list at the library ebooks site. Yay!
Your friend should check out Grace Burrowes. Love her writing style.
Early Carla Kelly, esp. _The Wedding Journey_ and _The Lady’s Companion_. Her characters are rarely diamonds/rakes/nobles, they have moral concerns, they can be actually imperiled by the rakes and/or nobles, but the books have all the relationship development and happily ever after that regencies have. Her late works are Mormon stories, also good but a different genre.
Jude Morgan, esp. _Indiscretion_. Better than average prose, witty characters.
_Longbourne_.
Enthusiastically second Carla Kelly. Each book is a perfect gem.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to Courtney Milan and Lauren Willig, who in addition to writing cracking good stories with badass lady heroines are GENUINELY LOVELY WOMEN. Did a podcast with them which you can hear here:
What makes lawyers great romance novelists?
From my article: “There’s a horrible stereotype of both the romance writer and the romance reader as somehow undereducated and unprofessional, when in fact there are a number of incredibly well-educated professional women who have chosen to leave their other careers and go into writing romance,” says author Lauren Willig, who sold her first novel, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, when she was a 1L at Harvard Law School. “I got that in law school only from one person, a guy in my section who was not the brightest dish in the drawer. When the news got out about the book deal—and I published under my own name, so it was all over the place—he said, ‘Oh, so you’re writing one of these sex books,’ and I said, ‘No, no, it’s a romance novel, there’s a difference!’ And then I graduated magna cum laude and he didn’t get honors, and he stopped being quite so snarky.”
Grace Burrowes (who I also see recommended here) also participated, and was a delight, but I haven’t read her books personally.
p.s. Don’t blow my cover to my employers, you guys. Keep [my username] secret, keep it safe.
I love the entire series of Flower Spy books, although I think I’m one or two behind now.
Agree with other recs.
Also, Amanda Quick, especially 90s era single word titles, like Ravished.
Beverly Jenkins – she writes mostly American set historicals in the Regency and Victorian eras. Plus some with pirates.
Darlene Marshall – start with Sea Swept. It has pirates. And a woman surgeon.
In a similar vein to Carla Kelly, Edith Layten’s regencies are being rereleased. These were written in the 80s and 90s and have a lower heat level and slower pacing than today’s regencies and they are so good!
ANNE GRACIE, she is SO good and she writes wit and charm and LADIES HELPING LADIES while shining some very pointed lights on things like “career options for young women who were gently raised: not that great” and “child abuse definitely happened within families and was neatly ignored for the most part”
Indiscretion by Jude Morgan. Brilliant.
Also, the Duchess War by Courtney Milan is free on Kindle right now (and at many other e-book outlets, apparently), if you needed an easy starting point…
Lots of great suggestions already, but I’ll add Rose Lerner–a criminally overlooked author! In for a Penny and A Lily Among Thorns are some of the best Regencies I’ve ever read. Also Jennifer Ashley’s The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie (Victorian, I think?). I heartily second Meredith Duran, Courtney Milan, Loretta Chase, Eloisa James, Tessa Dare, and Elizabeth Hoyt.
For the ur-example of the genre, Georgette Heyer (The Grand Sophy is a great place to start). That being said, it’s not sexy if that’s what she’s looking for. Her books are actually tonally similar to Jane Austen and vaunted for historical accuracy. Like so accurate, used in Regency England history classes.
That being said, they’re fun! Just no sex!
21) You have been forcibly engaged to a 65 year old gouty and possibly syphilitic lecher who only wants you for either a)the enormous dowry you come with or b)your enormous bosoms, which make up for your complete lack of dowry/scandalous parentage. Your terrible family tells you how lucky you are.
See also: How to tell if you’ve been married to a Tudor.
9. You are fluent in French, despite never having been abroad. Your profligate older brother once spent a season in Paris and came back with the clap.
ophelia, is that you?
(this is a response to EnchiladaTaco)
For some reason I can’t really pinpoint, for me it’s Frederica. I think probably because of everything _except_ the romance aspect. But basically, I go through spates of simply gorging on Heyer for a month or so, plowing through everything I can get my hands on (which now, thanks to ebooks, is the whole oeuvre, and I can carry them all on my Kindle and simply move on from one to another without even having to get up and walk over to the bookcase). And then I’m done for a year or so. I’ve never really liked any other Regency author.
Frederica is my second favorite. The romance is definitely NOT the high point of that book (like, it’s barely there), but I find it deeply enjoyable to read. Same with Arabella.
23. Your beloved cousin/sister/brother is on the cusp of becoming engaged to an insufferable, infuriating, irresistible rogue/seductress. In your attempts to prevent the match, you end up married to this terrible(y attractive) person.
I’m embarrassed by how much number 13 excited me.
I'm embarrassed by how much number 13 excited me.
That's who I was forgetting! I'm almost ashamed of how much I love Devil In Winter, because St. Vincent is the woooorst, but I do. I love it so much.
And Eloisa James. Especially, When Beauty Tamed the Beast. She based the hero on Hugh Laurey’s depiction of House and I lurrrrve it.
You are a hellion who cannot be tamed; you ride bareback and hunt with your brothers and stand up to the Scottish Highlander/Widower of Means/French Rake who comes to take you away. You get married, but he learns to respect your wild ways.
In the sequel about your daughter you have become an old prude who wears dresses up to her neck, spends most of her time in the chapel, and moralizes to the youngsters.
As an impressionable tween I once read a Regency romance novel in which the heroine described the hero’s balls as “two swan’s eggs in a black nest” and I have never gotten over it.
Then again, it involved time-traveling back to ancient Roman times, so I guess it wasn’t a proper Regency romance after all.
This sounds crazy. And wonderful. Much like everything else I read in the genre. 🙂
I pray this person had never seen a swan’s egg. Because dude.
omg I totally read that book. She never did spell the Latin names correctly.
I am pretty sure I read that book. And if it’s the author I think it was her books were pretty much all cracktastic.
Oh my god. I read that book.
Oh my god, I am the worst person, because #13 is like my favourite, favourite romance plot.
No way, own it! People who hate each other, want to do each other, but really are wildly into each other is what romance escapism is all about.
18 is everything, and I would like 15 to be slash.
But there are two 19s???
I can’t think of an exact match, but here are a few m/m Regencies that sort of fit the bill.
An Improper Holiday by KA Mitchell – holiday house party and irrc, an ice skating accident.
False Colors by Alex Beecroft – swoon worthy bathing / seduction scene in this epic Georgian age of sail romance.
The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by KJ Charles in the anthology Another Place in Time – lovely (and hot) rif on the “a wastrel lost everything in a card game and now I must marry a reprehensible rake” trope.
Anything by Ava March
#14 Heroes that have slept around a lot, including with prostitutes, seem pretty common in historical romances and I can only think of a couple of them that mention condoms. It’s amazing there isn’t a hell of a lot more syphilis in romance novels.
Nah. That’s only the older lecher who needs to marry a virgin to cure it. Heroes all have a legendary immune system.
“Your bosom heaves.”
This could also mean I’m cleaning the house, sadly.
I just got done reading a series set in the 1830s (I want to say it was by Lorraine Heath? Someone who started with an L, but I don’t think it was Loretta Chase) and the clothing descriptions were SO nuts it sent me down a rabbit hole of research where I discovered that apparently people lost their fool minds re: lady’s fashions between1830 and 1845 or so. SO MANY LAYERS. SUCH POOFY SLEEVES. Everything that could possibly be trimmed, rick racked, covered in lace, or embroidered did not escape unscathed.
Also, I can now identify to within about five years women’s clothing choices between 1760 and 1880 or so. And they say romance novels aren’t educational.
But Loretta Chase recently released one of the Dressmakers books, and they’re just drenched in clothing talk.
Oh yes. Carla Kelly has a heroine choose a schlubby doctor instead of a charming rake partly because the doctor is a virgin. This is mostly for religion’s sake, but he is very conscious of the risks of disease.
“20. Oh God, you are ruined, ruined! What man will ever marry you now that you’ve cast your virtue away on the transitory caresses of a rake? You’ll have no alternative but to come out on the town or, worse, become a governess. Your best friend will be delighted.”
Unless your name is Clarissa: you become supremely disillusioned at the utter shitty-ness of everyone EXCEPT your best friend… and you die.
Have you read Mary Jo Putney’s three Silk books? Silk and Shadows, Silk and Secrets, and Veils of Silk. They’re set in India, Iran, Bokhara. Time-wise it’s more early Victorian than Regency, but the angst and sexual tension levels are delicious!
Have you read the River of No Return by Bee Ridgway? It’s a delightful genre mash-up whose “one genre to rule them all” is Regency Romance. (It’s also got mystery, time travel, and historical fiction mixed in.) I’m biased, since my favorite professor wrote it, but it’s really entertaining. Knowing her, it’s probably also very well-researched.
Write all of these into one novel NOW or I will faint, displaying a scintillating flash of silk stocking.
Your wastrel father / brother / uncle gambles away your family fortune / ancestral home / virginity.
The Duran you're talking about is Bound by Your Touch, actually. Lydia, the heroine, is a paean nerd girls everywhere and I love her to death.
Okay, you guys. This is what I need, and if anyone can provide it, Toasties can.
I need lesbian historical romance. I mean, fine, Sarah Waters, I reread Fingersmith semi-regularly, great. But at a certain point, a lady runs out of Sarah Waters novels. Also, honestly, I’m looking for something fluffier. Where’s the book where the cross-dressing genderqueer pirate captures the beautiful maiden and they fall in love? Or the one where the young lady of quality, sixteen and just about to leave the schoolroom, and her nineteen-year-old governess from a family whose fortunes have sadly fallen, begin to have deep conversations over their watercolours and then discover, to their horror and delight, that they can think of nothing but each other? The one where Anne de Bourgh and Charlotte Lucas seek comfort and respite from their wretched lives in each other’s arms? These books have got to exist. If they exist, and their authors know how to use standard English punctuation marks, I will buy them. I will buy them all, so show them to me!
seconded
I think Courtney Milan had a lesbian couple as a secondary plot in one of her novels? I think the Suffragette Scandal. One of her heroines also lived with two aunts who were implied to be a couple. It’s tiny crumbs, I know.
I haven’t gotten to the Suffragette Scandal yet, but I did notice the two aunts in Milan’s earlier book. It’s great that they exist. But I’m still looking for those characters as the protagonists. Basically, I want the fluffiness and never-was beautiful world of Regency romance without pesky and unnecessary Men as main characters.
Apparently Heather Rose Jones’s Daughter of Mystery is lesbian Ruritanian romance, with imaginary kingdoms and swashbuckling. I should read that now.
Yes, the beta couple in The Suffragette Scandal are two women and it was so goddamn delightful that I really, really want Courtney to write a book with an alpha lesbian couple.
Really, I don’t think I know of any. I’ve seen plenty of M/M historical romances, but no F/F. Which is weird. because it would ostensibly be easier for two women in that time period to live together as Good Friends than two men. SOMEONE WRITE THIS PLEASE.
PEMBROKE PARK by Michelle Martin, published 1986, Naiad Press. Don’t know if it’s still in print, but it’s a delightful Lesbian Regency novel.
Awesome. Thank you for the pointer.
OMG someone who’s read Pembroke Park! This book made a deep impression on me as a youngster. My wife and I like to crack each other up by whispering “at last” in each other’s ears.
I liked Patience and Sarah by Isobel Miller. It’s set in 19th C Connecticut and western NY.
I haven’t read this one yet, but it was recommended on autostraddle. Taming The Wolff, by Del Robertson – woman pirate captures a ship with a beautiful Lady on board and romance happens. (http://www.autostraddle.com/read-a-fcking-ebook-lesbian-romance-under-5-dollars-190809/ )
The publisher Bold Strokes Books may also have some.
It is weird that there aren’t more ff historical romances.
Thank you! Both of these sound promising. (Do I know you from LJ/DW? I’m rymenhild.)
*makes note of untapped market potential*
Okay, I’m in the middle of writing a semi-humorous dark fantasy in which the fluffy lesbians are only a side plot, but let me get back to you on this.
This is a TV series and not a romance novel, but the Canadian show Strange Empire (western set in 1869 Alberta) has a young female doctor (one of the four central characters) falling in love with a character who I’m pretty sure will be revealed to be a cross-dressing cowboy (played by Joanne Boland).
Meredith Duran's entire backlist is amazing, especially At Your Pleasure. It's not exactly a Regency, being set in 1715, but it uses the political and religious tensions of the time to marvelous effect. It doesn't matter, though, all her books are varying degrees of excellent.
The Wyckerley trilogy by Partricia Gaffney is also excellent, but it comes with (many, many) caveats: the second book features a hero who really is the villain for the first half of the book. The second half of the book is his redemption arc, which may or may not work for you, depending on how corrupt your like your noblemen.
Joanna Bourne writes excellent, atypical Regency novels, extra SPYJINKS on the side. I would suggest skipping the first two books in the Spymasters series (I wanted to charbroil the hero of the first one, and the second one drags and drags and drags), but the rest are made of magic and ridiculous metaphors and bristling with (deeply symbolic) knives. SO GOOD.
And Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale has the most whakadoo premise in the world–white ninja weds the Victorian miss he met while stashing stolen goods in her room and they end up fending off his dubious "business partners" in Hawaii. It's better than it sounds, I swear.
You have a bizarrely anachronistic love of both Buddhism and jogging, which provide excuses for you to spend time outdoors in your smallclothes, pectoral muscles gleaming in the sunlight.
WOULD LIKE TO SUBMIT APPLICATION FOR # 5 AND POSSIBLY #10, CONCURRENTLY
Uh oh. I think I wrote one of these.
Completed title: How To Tell If You Are In a Regency Romance Novel Not Written by Georgette Heyer.
Oh yes indeed. So sad they so many people think she is the same as the sort that REALLY wrote the points in the last half . Sigh.
OMG I KNOW that one! It’s ENSLAVED by Virginia Henley! The queen of bawdy, purple prose!
Great post, Anna. There’s also a group of young ladies whose brothers squander everything and this forces them into marriage with the biggest non-reformed rake in the district. then of course, they reform him and he reforms the brothers and the dead papa is canonized and…
Anne Stenhouse
Seriously, this is me – how did you know? My bosom isn’t large enough to heave, but I am otherwise described spot on. I adore regency novels!!
Your name is Gryphon, Ransom, or Steele
check out Sidney Padua on fashions of the 1830s. COMPLETELY INSANE. Everything in 1830s London was a little nuts; Padua seems to be writing satire and hten there’s six dense footnotes explaining that no, that really happened, _in Parliament_. So delicious.
I have definitely written a few of those. I LOVE romamce tropes 🙂
PEMBROKE PARK was certainly a lot more fun than WELL OF LONELINESS![g] Michelle Martin was one of my favorite Regency authors before I stumbled across this gem. THE ADVENTURERS is a great “chicks in breeches” novel.
Such is my life. Thank you so much now I must be helped into my time traveling carriage and return to 1812 forthwith
Such is my life. Thank you so much now I must be helped into my time traveling carriage and return to 1812 forthwith
If you don’t already know about Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, get thee to their site: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com
I would like to be a rake with a heart
I died laughing at 9! My ghost would like to know if anyone can recommend something with 15? I have yet to encounter that and it’s clearly time to take my fate in my own hands (or put it into your hands or whatever’s appropariate)! Gotta love Regency romance <3
I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to read a regency romance book. Huh, wonder how that happened… 🙂