You have just swept someone a magnificent, yet insolent, leg.
You have interrupted a game of wist to introduce the players to your ward.
You have been pronounced a social success by the greatest bitch in Paris.
An aging beauty of nearly thirty has pronounced you an original, and declares that you will keep the Duke’s interest for months, at least!
No one at this decadent court suspects you of being what you really are – sincere.
Why, the Count is sure to be there tomorrow!
You yourself cannot deny, as your enemy sweeps into the room, emeralds gleaming on his fingers, that he is a truly elegant man.
The game is more intricate than you think, my dear Armand.
The only thing flashing more violently than the diamond pin on your lavender greatcoat are your eyes!!!
Paternity is never truly in doubt because every single family has at least three highly visible traits that are present in each individual member. Who could mistake the ____ hair, the ____ brow, and the unmistakably _____ eyes of a De Lesseps?
Your mother and father are dead, or something, but you have never missed them from the first moment you laid eyes upon your rescuer, the rakehell baronet. Your entire dead family means nothing to you now that he has saved you from, I don’t know, having a job.
The ladies who had once closed their ranks to you on suspicion of your base birth now rush to celebrate you once it has been revealed you were no bastard at all, but a legitimate daughter of the Fontanelles.
There is lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart.
Literally ten hundred men are in love with you, so fresh and unused to the cynical methods of court, but you have no idea what love is, you can’t even tell when they’re chucking jewels and violets and sonnets at you that anyone has ever taken notice of you before, gutter rat that you are. Me, m’sieur? Impossible! You foolish little chit, can you not see that half of London would ransom their family fortunes for a chance at your hand in marriage?
You love the girl too much to marry her. Ironical, no?
Every item of clothing you own is named after either yourself or one of your companions. Your namesake cravat knot is bastardised by schoolboys across Europe, and you spend most of the novel sighing disdainfully at their approximations.
EVERY GEORGETTE HEYER.
EXCEPT BLACK SHEEP WHICH IS EXCELLENT AS WELL
DON’T GET ME WRONG I LOVE HER SHE IS ALL I AM READING AT THE MOMENT BUT UGH THE CORINTHIAN IS JUST ALL ABOUT THE WYNDHAM KNOT
Well, yes, that’s what makes it so great? Like the kids trying to copy it and the jealous valets and such?
I AM RATHER PARTIAL TO BLACK MOTH AND THESE OLD SHADES FOR THEIR A+ MASCULINITY TROLLING.
BUT THAT SAID YOU CAN PULL FREDDY AND HIS PERFECT CRAVATES FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.
AND MINE
FREDDY IS HANDS DOWN THE BEST HEYER HERO EVER. EVER.
MY FAVORITE MISANDRIST HEYER BOOK HAS TO BE DEVIL’S CUB. SO GODDAMN PERFECT.
Freddy, who is not “in the petticoat line” according to the Ton, but there are a line of petticoats after you, Freddy boy!
FREDDYYYY <3
Freddy. He is so modest, he would never throw his perfection in your face. He is simply there, perfectly, and would like to give you some garnets or remove you from an awkward conversation, at your convenience.
Although if you *are* going to be his fiancee after all, he’s got his eye on a set of rubies.
THERE IS NO WAY TO FAIL TO LOVE FREDDY.
(Although, on the more general topic, I’m partial to False Colours myself.)
You people just made me experience far too much joy for first thing in the morning. Freddy! AAAAAAAHHHHHH
Seriously, this is the best thing that has happened so far today. Not that the bar is that high, but…
FREDDY! <3
Why has no one thrown money at a production of Cotillion? What is the BBC even for?
Are there any movie/miniseries/TV adaptations of Heyer? Sometimes when I’m doing my semi-annual reread of all of her Regency books I amuse myself by trying to decide which one I would like to see adapted first (I agree Cotillion would be excellent), so I would be delighted to find that any of them already had been. And if not, why not? I can’t imagine that the audience for the P&P adaptation, or North & South etc, wouldn’t flock to watch them.
There was a dreadful adaptation of THE RELUCTANT WIDOW once. Apparently Heyer hated that adaptation so much she made her descendants promise to never sell the rights. So really we should all just pray that
COTILLION MAKES ME CRY EVERY TIME I READ IT!
I spent most of one high school year going to a badly heated, all-girl Catholic school in Dublin run by nuns (that last fact should be redundant, but in case…). Best thing that year: tiny ancient nun librarian who discovered my love of romance and recommended all her favourite Heyer novels. Decades later, I’m still full of equal parts squee and WTF.
The fact that apparently the entire world was willing and able to sit down to a cut throat game of wist or piquet is the only reason I would ever want to wind up in a regency novel. I’m on book 15 of Aubrey/Maturin it is a horrifying world and fits a bit over 75% of these.
Like seriously I would have just spent my life wandering around being a perfectly gentlemanly barrister or something and then just devolving into a font of regency-era smack talk while beating every mother fucker in England at whist. Like you can partner me with a damn empty chair I will still run a dime on yo ass.
In theory I learned to play Spades in highschool, but as I grew older I realized we were all playing whist just with a fixed trump suit. So I’m pretty confident I could be a whist sharp.
Wait, really? Because euchre isn’t a million miles away from spades and the trump suit changes each hand.
so basically Michigan would win at the Regency, good to know
yeah, whist (if wikipedia is to be believed) is basically dead simple. Every one gets a hand of thirteen, Aces high, teams of two, apparently there isn’t even bidding, it’s just a point for every trick over 6. Trump suit is just whatever the last card dealt was (which gets dealt face up to the dealer).
So yeah I’m pretty sure broad swathes of Americans could clean up.
Wait whist is basically euchre? my entire life has changed I secretly knew how to play whist
Euchre is most midwesterners’ favorite way to alienate their non-midwestern friends, by pantsing them in a card game they don’t understand.
Not that I’m a native Texan or know anything about this at all.
See also: Southern Ontario
Sincerely, someone who grew up on the west coast, lived for a few years in the midwest, and married someone from southern Ontario.
(After losing spectacularly something like 30 hands in a row, with several different partners, I no longer, as a rule, play euchre. When someone looks about and enthusiastically notices that there is a multiple of four people with nothing to do, I am the first to suggest we go play bocce ball.)
That was my first thought, too!!! Michiganders 4 lyfe.
Oh damn. I missed my chance to pitch “How to Tell if You Are in a Patrick O’Brian Novel” to Mallory and Nicole, and now it’ll never happen.
(You are playing a stringed instrument in your cabin as the ship rocks gently in calm waters. You’re chasing a French ship of the line. Rats have eaten your coffee. Someone’s getting an emergency trepanation belowdecks. There are weevils in your hardtack, but you pay them no mind, except when they furnish the occasion for an inspired pun. Someone has debauched your sloth, and you are going to have HIGH WORDS with the debaucher.)
Oh no, I missed this too, even though it is the best possible thing!
(You are delaying a military operation because you saw a curious beetle. You fear your sadistic subordinate officer will drive the crew to mutiny, but you can’t relieve him of duty because of social convention. The narrator keeps telling people that you’re a relentless womanizer, but you’re pretty sure you can count your sexual partners on one hand. Someone who didn’t know better might call you or your ship an “aged man-of-war,” but you’re both in your prime.)
“Jack and Stephen met again, almost on the very steps of the Crown. ‘Well met, brother,’ cried Jack from a little distance. Stephen considered the Commodore’s face and his gait: was he sober? ‘You look uncommon cheerful, my dear,’ he said, leading him in the direction of the Pigtail steps. ‘I wish you may not have met with some compliant young person, overwhelmed with all the gold lace upon your person.’
‘Never in life,’ said Jack. ‘Aubrey the Chaste is what I am called throughout the service.'”
A freak storm has destroyed half your ship but welded you and the rest of the crew into a cohesive unit.
There is 18 inches in the well and rising.
You have only been on land for several days and already you have lost a years wages.
You can not understand the trouble people have distinguishing between a ship, a boat and a boat that has merely been ship-rigged.
You find your self grinning with pleasure at the sight of a taught foretopstunsl.
ps The debauched sloth is one of my favorites.
Forgive me for indulging in Toast cliche, but MY PEOPLE
All is not yet lost: you have the weather-gage. But you won’t have it for long at this rate. Lose not a minute, for all love!
The barometer is dropping this is good news.
The barometer is dropping this is bad news.
No amount of drunkenness, insubordination, or eavesdropping is enough to get the captain’s steward in trouble.
You brag to sailors from another ship that your crew doesn’t have a surgeon, but a physician. They are suitably impressed.
Space is tight on this voyage, so you only brought a dozen hams, eight live geese, and your body weight in wine. Even though you and the first lieutenant live twenty feet apart, you are constantly inviting each other to dinner.
You have anachronistically modern views on every political subject except, oddly, abortion.
You are topping it the knob.
It is vitally important that you be able to fire a cannon three times in five minutes.
>You have anachronistically modern views on every political subject except, oddly, abortion.
Maturin does not consider abortion a political subject but a medical one. He has period-typical views of many subjects, including hand-washing before surgery, and the use of mercury in treating syphilis.
You totally killed it with that pun about dog-watches in the gunroom the other night.
You take laudanum with the same regularity and enthusiasm that your descendants will one day drink Diet Coke.
Nothing helps you find your center in stressful times quite like a solemn public reading of The Articles of War.
You refer to the commodore of the Brest blockade as “Beckett with the Good Cannonball Paint-Job (But No Skill At Gunnery)” behind his back.
I just love you all so much. I thought I was the only young-ish woman I knew who had read all the Aubrey-Maturin novels and loved them. I hope I meet you all again someday, in some other grimy internet bar, or in meatspace.
ps I often find myself under the gun at work, and have to check myself from saying “It’s the Devil to pay and no pitch hot!”
Doo say it. Do. Mostly people will give you a _wide berth_ afterwards. If they don’t, cry “Kiss me, Hardy!”
One of my favorite oases from These Modern Times is the Aubrey/Maturin Appreciation facebook group, which appears to be mostly comprised of older dudes who post things in nautical slang would totally do Napoleonic naval reenactments if they had extra money and the time to travel with regularity to the eastern seaboard.
There are lots of cute videos of sloths captioned with “Pass the word for the doctor,” videos of that one cruise ship pitching in heavy seas, titled “Rough seas for the barky, eh mates?”, and photo collections of old ships somebody’s vacation. These guys could do a whole guest issue of Dad Magazine. It would be like SI’s Swimsuit Issue, except: Dad Magazine, Old Boats Special Edition.
Oh my goodness, my dad (who was a big Patrick O’Brian fan — although I was the one who introduced him to Patrick O’Brian in the first place!) would have LOVED that. I’m checking out that group forthwith.
You covet a voucher to Almack’s, as will your daughter and your daughter’s daughter.
Almack’s is eternal.
There is lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart.
SO MANY HEROES. STILL A GREAT TROPE.
guys i just love romance novels so much
Every single Regency-era romance novel trope is my favorite thing in the world
me too me too me toooooooo
wait I thought the lace and disdain was for the heroine
Still going to get the Canadian Heraldic Authority to design me a coat of arms based on that description.
Same. And I have such a soft spot for Regency Romances. I don’t care that they’re mostly set in some Alt History version of England or that I’d probably hate most of the characters irl.
Likewise, and this is why I do paranormal historical. Because I get things as right as plausible but at the end of the day, fuck it, there’s magic, I am not realistically portraying sexism and zero indoor plumbing.
Wait, did you write “No Proper Lady”? I love that book! Please tell me you’re that Isabel Cooper, because that would be awesome.
Aw, thanks! I am, and very glad to hear you liked it!
This is so great, I love that threads like these always contain awesome book recs, and particularly if it leads to an opportunity to simultaneously buy a great book and lead to profit for a toastie!
I already have the disdain; maybe I need some lace?
In my head is Anne Shirley’s voice saying… and he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart dot tumblr dot com
There’s no length limit on usernames that I can find on tumblr, so in theory someone really could have that username.
Now I want to check to see if it’s taken.
For some reason, this is The One, this is the piece that made me realize that we only have another week.
Me too! It’s so Toast-like in its perfection.
You *gasp* think you may actually be falling in love with your husband. WHAT will the Ton say?
More importantly, will you ever find out what the Ton are/is?
Or at least how it’s pronounced?
This we can do! It’s pronounced “Tone” or at least that’s what I was told.
Well shoot I’ve been saying it like “Bon Ton” the department store, rhymes with “bon bon”.
I’ve been saying “ten” just because i assumed it had to have some obnoxious made-up pronunciation.
I misread that you had written “bon bon” as “bon ton” and I was super pleased with that. But bon bon makes more sense.
I generally pronounce it “Tawn” because that way, however it’s pronounced I’m half right and half wrong.
I thought you would say it frenchly.
whaaat? i’ve been pronouncing it ‘tun’, like the ton weight! (I mean, in my head, when I read, it’s not a phrase you ever have to say out loud)
samesss
I feel I should reiterate here that I have no certainty here, I am merely reporting what I was told by a reasonable authority.
I’ve always believe it to be halfway between “tone” and “ton,” with more of an “aw” sound than an “oh” or “uh.”
I think it’s supposed to be one of those English-using-French-words things so who knows how they said it at the time.
The “Ton” is my favorite thing ever because it’s in every post-Regency era novel about the Regency and is NEVER ACTUALLY MENTIONED in any actual Regency novel. It’s perfect. (And I’ve always just pronounced it “tun” like the unit of weight.)
People often say of you that you’re quite a beauty “when you’re in looks”, but you aren’t actually sure when that is, so you just mostly try to hide behind your lace fan.
Your complexion is the number one feature men compliment you on.
You are never quite sure if this a genuine compliment or a subtle insult to everything else about you.
it’s when you’re in bloom. when your bloom has gone off, things are dire 🙁
HONESTLY WHAT DOES THIS MEAN THOUGH.
(and was it saying that you don’t have any disease/acne scars? Or just talking about regular aging?)
You spend a lot of time describing your outfit in greater detail that anyone needs, because the author put a lot of effort into researching it and wants everyone to know that she knows the difference between short stays and transitional stays. It doesn’t seem to occur to the author or editor that this is unnecessary information that is slowing down the story.
Alternatively:
You spend a lot of time flouncing around in a Victorian corset because the author didn’t bother to do any research at all. Your editor is a man who doesn’t know that there have ever been underthings other than bras and corsets. He hopes one day to edit “real” literature about middle age professors and their affairs with students.
For book 1, the author made period appropriate undergarments for the cover shoot (and will casually mention her unusually historically accurate cover on every romance blog she frequents).
Your gender presentation and even identity are 100% socially constructed and easily changed, but your class identity was fixed at the moment of conception and you will never be able to dissimulate it.
Honestly, this is every book: “Paternity is never truly in doubt because every single family has at least three highly visible traits that are present in each individual member. Who could mistake the ____ hair, the ____ brow, and the unmistakably _____ eyes of a De Lesseps?”
Wasn’t there one where paternity is resolved on the basis of a particularly distinctive sneeze?
Not only does your face display your paternity, it also shows your character. Everybody (or everybody who’s paying attention) knows you’re kind, or clever, or greedy, or treacherous. Not that there’s any point in being treacherous when you’re obviously the villain.
You are the only beloved child of a wealthy widower Baron and recently presented at Court, but the author also insists on writing you into scenes where you defeat a gang of marauders with Shaolin techniques you learned from the house’s dashing yet mysterious footman Min Lee, who came into service in the House when Father returned from his time in the Orient with the Regiment.
Oh, and the reason the toughs were after you is because they wanted to steal the Analytical Engine you’ve been building in the attic and writing papers for the Royal Society about, under the pen name “Dr. Elphias Fitzgerald”. What calumnies lurk in the drowsy lanes of Herefordshire!
Where can I read this?
Ditto. Also maybe Min Lee’s secret memoirs?
You need to get on this stat!
Your crippling wastrel alcoholism will be instantly cured by the love of a good woman.
It’ll cure your rampant womanizing, too.
But prob not the herpes.
Man, this took me back to age 13 when I was trapped in my grandmother’s house in boiling-hot Arizona with nothing to do but read one after another of the 1,000 regency romance paperbacks she’s been amassing since the 30’s or 40’s. They were all the same and after the third or fourth one, I realized that every single one ended in the lovers’ first kiss or – sometimes – there was a kiss 3/4s of the way through and the book ended with an engagement. None of them were the interesting kind of romance novel (like, with sex). It was so disappointing. But I didn’t have internet access, and I hadn’t brought any books of my own, so I just read those suckers. One. After. Another.
One of the formative trials in my life, honestly.
I had a similar experience with Louis L’Amour.
It was shattering.
Genre paperbacks are truly amazing in their ability to be practically indistinguishable from one another. Often times they will even cycle through the same couple of names and places, as if mystery stories only take place in small coastal towns in New England with lots of women named Betty, and all Westerns are in Colorado (but never spill over into Kansas or up to Montana) and feature an inordinate amount of men named Clint.
Honestly, by the age of 13 I had learned to hate sunlight, physical activity, revealing clothing, and interacting with other humans. What I’m saying is that you have described my ideal summer.
I started plowing through my mom’s harlequin novels when I was about 14 or so, and I also quickly realized they all had the same plot. You could predict almost to the page number when they’d have sex the first time.
When I was “secretly” reading all of my mother’s paperbacks and as many as I could sneak out of the library when I was about 11, I used to judge whether a romance was good or not by whether the couple had sex by page 100.
“Fontanelles,” snerk.
There was a man at the Starbucks I went to yesterday afternoon and he had a Byronic profile and an alabaster brow with curly brown hair falling across it. I thought of all of my Toasties.
I went to school with one such Byron, but he has an Amish beard now and it is soooo tragic. (And I love beards)
I almost never use this phrase but it’s the one that came to mind: fuckin’ a man.
PS Why are they doing this to us? What’s wrong with not looking like a fur trapper?
A friend of a friend is engaged to a man who looks like a picture of napoleon that has been squashed in so he’s about a third narrower. With the appropriate haircut and all
“What to do when you come across a Regency hero in a modern coffee shop.”
“The game is more intricate than you think, my dear Armand,” make me chortle while eating my sad desk lunch. There’s always an Armand. ALWAYS. I’m going to just start randomly saying that to people.
This appears to be entirely about Georgette Heyer’s _These Old Shades_, which, though it’s my favorite too, is George II/Louis XV, not Regency.
Georgian trolling with Mallory Ortberg…
I’ve never been called a troll before. It feels so appropriate that my first time would be a Georgette Heyer post. I might as well be at Almack’s.
oh no, I wasn’t directing that at you! It’s a running joke that whenever Mallory (regularly) gets a detail like this wrong, she must be *actually* deliberately trolling (in the sense of baiting) all of us pedants.
(I apologize for doing the explain the joke thing)
something something embroidery spindling a tea cozy
Anything vaguely 17 something is Regency enough.
well, everyone knows that The Regency is everything between 1770 and 1845. Georgians? What Georgians?
I have gotten reviews using the term “Regency” for my books, which take place in the 1880s. Nice people and all, but.
Also, and do NOT get me started on Georgian vs Regency London attractions.
I hope this doesn’t come off as crass self-promotion, but I feel it Relevant to the Interests of many on this thread that the Old School Romance Discussion Group is about to cover Georgette Heyer’s Devil’s Cub as its book of the month (with a side helping of These Old Shades)! We will use the term “Action Fop” ad nauseam. https://www.facebook.com/EKingstonBooks/posts/157…
“Action Fop” is great, and somehow brings to mind Eddie Izzard’s self-description as an Executive Transvestite.
Is this self-promotion because you want us to join in?? I will friend you on Facebook/join your group so fast it’ll make your head spin…
All are welcome, save for the mansplainer who showed up one time. I fully trust you are not he.
Your carriage criss-crosses England faster than a steam locamotive. You are beset by highwayman at least twice during the journey.
You wish to make a love match, even though it is quite unfashionable.
You are known as a merry widow but you are secretly a virgin.
Your step-father is high in the instep and does not approve of you.
Your rake hell guardian just gambled away your inheritance / family home / virginity.
(The Toast makes me feel that my Misspent Youth was not actually misspent. I will miss this SO MUCH).
I know; this particular post is making me preemptively miss The Toast so dearly.
Guys, if you’re looking for a good Regency book DO NOT READ “Love, Lies, and Spies.” It came out last year I think? I just read it for my book club and I literally wanted to crawl out of my skin the prose was so bad. Stay away.
I just deleted this from my Kindle with a firmness. I didn’t have as strong a reaction to the prose but I was going, “Whyfore was this billed to me as YA it was CLEARLY a rather cut-rate Regency romance. Ughhh.”
I like good Regency romances (Loretta Chase WHO’S WITH MEEEE) but when I’m reading a YA, I want it to be YA.
There’s a lot of Regency romance style books being billed as YA lately, or at least it seems that way to me. Has anyone else whose reading Venn diagram overlaps similarly noticed this?
Loretta Chase 4evr!
Your speech patterns are 50% BBC newsreader, 48% US prime-time soap character, and 2% deliberate archaisms that shew forth with period authenticity.
You have an improbable backstory that justifies your wildly anachronistic ideas and behavior.
I’ve forgotten the name of it, but I know somebody here can help me: eldest son returns to England after spending time abroad in order to complete his childhood arranged marriage (they were married by proxy while he was gone, so now she’s actually the duchess?), where he studied under wise men who taught him the value of daily jogging (Africa) and The Middle Way (India). He goes jogging every day in his smallclothes, and his mother has a fit. He discovers that his mother hasn’t paid any bills in forever, and the house is desperately in need of modernized plumbing. He and his wife-but-maybe-we’ll-get-an-annulment-from-the-Regent have sex in the hot tub he’s made by running water pipes past the kitchen to an unused cistern. I could look up the title of the book when I get home from work, but this is more fun.
Ah, the Jogging Buddhist Duke.
Are you sure you didn’t just make this up? Because WHAT?
No, it’s really a thing. I could not possibly make this up. I also couldn’t forget the plot of the book, despite forgetting the names of the characters, the name of the author, and the title itself, because it is a batshit pile of batshit (that needs to be shoveled out by night-soil men because the house reeks of sewage).
And the other one in that series where the Duchess-to-Be invents being an interior designer! Oh, Eloisa James…
By the way, people who like Eloisa, do you also like Amanda Cross (not RR, but also genre– mystery– and also by a pseudonymous author-who’s-actually-an-Ivy-League-professor)? So, so good.
If nobody can ID this for you, hie you to Smart Bitches Trashy Books. They have a regular feature called Help a Bitch Out where people send in descriptions exactly like this and the commenters try to identify it for the reader. (So many of them start with “I read this in my grandmother’s bathroom when I was twelve and I got found out and it got taken away and I have to know how it ennnnnnnnnds.” They have an astonishing success rate.
I actually have it in my bedroom, so I just have to go through my box o’ trashy romances.
Eloisa James is the writer. It’s one of the Duchess books. When the Duke Returns, I believe.
And it is every bit as bonkers as your description suggests. The duchess is also extraordinarily beautiful, of course!
Yes, that’s it! Thank you. The duchess is not only beautiful, but unaware of her overwhelming beauty and how she makes the duke’s loins ache with lust that he thought he’d learned to control through years of study and self-discipline.
I love how often Getting Blueballs is a trope of hetero romances. It’s just…!! I mean, terrible in all the best ways. Makes hetero/woman-man love look terrible to anyone who’s never experienced it. So terrible.
And they’re always so angry about it! Curse that enchanting sprite, etc.
Hahaha! It’s true. Hilarious!
But also: what does this say about hetero rape/domestic abuse culture, etc
But then also again: i am still laughing about the silliness of blue balls, so.
It says that hetero relationship standards are all kinds of fucked up. But also that blue balls are stupid. Dude, yes, you’re on fire with passion. Let go of your issues and take care of that on your own, like a normal person.
For real!!! ugh! Thank yew!! So true.
Either take a real cold shower, as recommended by the original Boy Scout Handbook, or just go to your room and jerk off (like, as you say, a normal person).
Nobody needs to hear about you furiously writing erotic poetry out on the moors with the World’s Largest Hard-On (TM) and/or Bluest Balls (TM) or whatever and then trying to slip same poetry into some poor woman’s breakfast tray (I assume). She needs to eat her breakfast, not vomit it up.
ffs
The cold shower never does the trick, though, and there’s still all the resentment (maybe resentment is also stored in the testes?)
“maybe resentment is also stored in the testes” !!! BAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA accurate
Of course cold showers don’t do the trick; they were thought up the turn of the last century when people thought masturbation was a health hazard! I just bring it up b/c it’s hilarious that they thought it was a health hazard, much like the people who did (and still do) bring up blue balls. It’s just…they’re the same people! And suggesting non-working solutions to further frustrate them would be so vindictive and so on point, imo.
No, I mean in-universe. The hero grits his teeth and suffers through cold baths, hard work, and unpleasant thoughts of his mother, but he cannot rid himself of this damnable hunger for that…that woman. How does she not see the effect she has on him? What it does to him to see her blah blah blah etc.
Oh, I know. I mean, I see. But I don’t see the point of giving advice to fictional characters. Giving pretend advice to hypothetical real men is much more realistic (i say, laughing at myself)
See, telling fictional men to go masturbate comes with exactly 0% that they’ll then start leering at me while giving me information about their masturbatory habits.
Weeeell, yes, true. I’ve actually had that happen to me in person, as well. The trick is to start crying, publicly. Then they apologize. Then you tell the school counselor, who gets the guy into trouble. But in the Regency you couldn’t tell anybody a man had blue balls for you or they’d blame you for being a hussy. That wouldna been so bad though, maybe, cuz you could be a spinster living alone with your cats and books and tea in a house provided by the parents of the man who tarnished you?
You could tell people he’d spoken to you in a rough and ungentlemanly fashion, though, if he told you he had blue balls.
Ah! True! True.
Or just set fire to his house, since I’d be more the mad-lady-in-the-tower-type, if I’m being honest with myself and I hope I am.
Just too witches
I feel like I’d really like to be the quitly salty, low-key shade-throwing witty Eliza Bennet type in a Regency novel, but really I’m not super sure that’s true. But then is the setting fire to men b/c they locked you in a tower thing more of a fantasy than reality? #important questions
I mean, setting fire to men who imprison women has a fairly low incidence rate, historically, so I’m comfortable calling it a fantasy.
Well but I was talking in-universe. Referencin’ a certain imprisoned wife who sets fire to a certain house in Jane Eyre, and also the trope within literature of that era all the way back to before Chaucer of mad-women-in-attics being misandrists
Poor Bertha. And poor us, since we keep changing levels of reality.
Heheheh! It’s a problem in all fanworks, to be sure
They really never did Bertha justice, they really didn’t
she was too witches for all of them
Hah. Came here to say the same thing. One of her Desperate Duchess books. That whole series was pretty crazy pants but I think the sewer scenes from this book were the craziest.
They are forever blazoned in my memory.
That is so horrifically horrible sounding that I must read it.
I actually really enjoyed it. A friend gave me a whole box full of trashy romance novels when she moved, and that was my favorite of them all.
Eloisa James is a hoot! ❤️
I just did, on the basis of this conversation, and it really is everything it’s cracked up to be (except there was no hot-tub scene, which honestly was the main reason I read it because Regency Hot Tub Time Machine Romance)
(I hope you’re still getting this, but since you’re anonymous, idk)
The hot tub scene is actually from another Eloisa James (Duchess in Love), which features almost the same plot, but with slightly different incidental details, and also in the Regency.
Ok, the hot tub scene is actually from Duchess in Love, which is marginally less batshit (although it does feature a gaslighting boyfriend, so CW on that).
Because of Regency romances, I still think “amused” is one of the most romantic expressions (especially in grey eyes) and the arching of one (eye)brow the epitome of wit.
When I was a boy I practiced my eyebrow-arching in the mirror every evening before bed.
I now have a prematurely lined brow and a vast arsenal of supercilious expressions.
It’s not as useful as I’d hoped.
You could get a job in Bath leading one of those Jane Austen tours.
My singular goal in life is now to be declared a social success by the greatest bitch in Paris.
1. ursine
2. trapezial
3. prehensile
The De Lesseps were a singular lineage, indeed.
it took me a few seconds to realize what this is in reply to, but when i figured it out, i laughed so hard i got a cramp. thank you!
Have the De Lesseps relatives across the pond? Mayhap in Innsmouth or Arkham?
As a romance novelist, editor, and reader, I can confirm this is all deliciously accurate.
You have ritual afternoon tea every day, even though the Duchess of Bedford won’t popularize that for another 30 years. You also call it high tea, even though it’s low tea.
You riffraff, you.
where does one find a great list of recommendations for these books??
I remember immensely enjoying (and feeling v. guilty about reading) in high-school, The Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig, but after a few more in her series I quit it in a pique of conscience because Sex.
say, if one were now older & wished to backslide back into this genre though, where should I start? 😉
Oh no, what sins did the Pink Carnation series eventually commit? There are still some I haven’t read.
hahaha I just remember there being Wedded Sex but it was actually described, and very hot, and that was of course Bad.
I got to the Black Tulip one and then gave them up & haven’t gone back to them, but I want to go back and catch up on them? Given that I read them in early high-school I don’t remember their literary quality, I remember them being good, but I also read all the great British works then too, so my internal literary thermometer is all thrown off. 😛
Oh, ok. Good.
Take a look at http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/. They’ll steer ya right!
Here’s my favorite best of romance list – http://www.npr.org/2015/07/29/426731847/happy-eve…
It’s a curated list of reader favorites and it’s an excellent overview of the genre. Read the samples and reviews though – not even the biggest romance fan likes all 100 books on the list.
As someone pointed out above, almost all of these appear basically as written in Georgette Heyer’s THESE OLD SHADES.
Also, what Heyer novels are as laugh-out-loud funny as “The Grand Sophy?”
Very few. Frederica is my 2nd in line, followed by Sylvester. 🙂
Sprig Muslin, The Foundling, Friday’s Child, False Colours, and Cotillion all have considerable humor and wit.
But nothing I’ve ever read is as funny as The Grand Sophie.
…until the anti-semitism rears up, at least.
Ah, Gigi, only the most beautiful emeralds contain that miracle of elusive blue.
You know the difference between a roquelaure and a sillabub.
You have been pronounced a social success by the greatest bitch in Paris.
The only thing flashing more violently than the diamond pin on your lavender greatcoat are your eyes!!!
There is lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart.
#lifegoals right there
If, however, you like romance, check out Courtney Milan. Good to reads, and a great one to follow on Twitter.
You have taken a job not befitting your station. Or you have suddenly been elevated far above your station. One or the other.
I came to this post late and can’t stop turning every comment orange, because y’all are the BEST. I love historic romance and this is all true and beautiful and good.
You want a regency book that’s refreshingly not this? Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It also has a very nice recent adaptation.
You’ve been in very good looks since Michaelmas. I recommend the use of Gowens, constant use of Gowens. It’s carried Mrs. Clays freckles clean away!
Wait… have you read A Second Match by Emma Lange, or is this really the plot of every regency novel?