Thanksgiving service at St Paul’s (7 July).
The Regent holds a grand fête at Carlton House in honour of the Duke of Wellington (21 July).
George Stephenson builds the first working steam locomotive (25 July).
The official Peace celebrations begin in Hyde Park (1 August).
Princess Caroline departs England for an extended tour of Europe.
The Congress of Vienna begins (1 November).
England and America sign the Treaty of Ghent (24 December).
Scott publishes Waverley.
Byron publishes The Corsair.
Wordsworth publishes The Excursion.
The Shelleys leave England.
Edmund Kean appears as Shylock in his debut at Drury Lane.
Cricket is played for the first time by the MCC at Lord’s.
1815: Napoleon escapes from Elba.
Napoleon arrives in France (1 March).
Louis XVIII flees from Paris (19 March).
The Hundred Days begins with Napoleon’s entry into Paris (20 March).
The Corn Law is passed (23 March).
Anti-Corn Law riots in London (March).
An alliance is formed between Britain, Prussia, Russia and Austria to fight against Napoleon (25 March).
Otto von Bismarck born (1 April).
Anthony Trollope born (24 April).
The Congress of Vienna begins (9 June).
The Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels (15 June).
The Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras (16 June).
Wellington’s army defeats Napoleon’s troops at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June).
The Congress of Vienna ends (19 June).
Napoleon abdicates (22 June).
The Allies enter Paris (7 July).
Louis XVIII returns to Paris (8 July).
Napoleon is banished to St Helena (17 August).
Humphrey Davy invents the safety lamp for miners.
John Macadam’s road-construction technique is adopted in England.
John Nash begins the renovation of the Brighton Pavilion.
Scott publishes Guy Mannering.
John Macadam publishes The Present State of Roadmaking.
Lord Byron marries Ann Isabella Milbanke.
The Apothecaries Act is passed making it illegal for unqualified apothecaries to practise medicine.
1816: Charlotte Brontë born (21 April).
Princess Charlotte marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (2 May).
Beau Brummell leaves England for exile in France (17 May).
Richard Brinsley Sheridan dies (17 July).
Spa Fields Riots (2 December).
The Elgin Marbles are bought by the British Museum.
The Duke of Clarence’s mistress, Mrs Jordan, dies.
The Corn Law riots; wheat again approaches famine prices.
Austen’s Emma published; it is dedicated, by invitation, to the Prince Regent.
William Cobbett publishes his famous Twopenny Trash.
John Keats publishes his sonnet ‘On Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (December).
Coleridge publishes Christabel and Other Poems.
Coleridge publishes Kubla Khan.
Shelley publishes Alastor.
Scott publishes Old Mortality and The Antiquary.
1817: The Prince Regent is shot at while returning from the opening of Parliament (28 January).
Habeas Corpus is suspended (4 March).
James Monroe becomes fifth president of the US (4 March).
Madame de Staël dies (14 July).
Jane Austen dies (18 July).
Princess Charlotte dies in child-bed (6 November).
Keats publishes his Poems.
Coleridge publishes Biographia Literaria.
Thomas Love Peacock publishes Melincourt.
Blackwood’s Magazine founded.
The Scotsman founded.
1818: Habeas Corpus restored (31 January).
Matthew ‘Monk’ Lewis dies (14 May).
William, Duke of Clarence, marries Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.
Edward, Duke of Kent, marries Victoria Mary Louisa, widow of the Prince of Leiningen.
Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, marries Augusta of Hesse-Cassel.
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.
Scott publishes Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian.
Keats publishes Endymion.
Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion published posthumously.
Thomas Bowdler publishes his ‘sanitised’ Shakespeare.
1819: Princess Alexandrina Victoria (later Queen Victoria) is born to the Duke and Duchess of Kent (24 May).
The Peterloo Massacre at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester (16 August).
James Watt dies at Heathfield aged eighty-three (19 August).
Albert, Prince Consort to Queen Victoria born (26 August).
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) born (22 November).
British Parliament passes the Six Acts (17 December).
Byron publishes Don Juan.
Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale.
Scott publishes Ivanhoe.
1820: George III dies at Windsor (29 January).
The Prince Regent is proclaimed King George IV at Carlton House (31 January).
The Cato Street conspirators arrested while planning to murder the Cabinet (23 February).
Five of the Cato Street conspirators executed (1 May).
George IV’s wife, Queen Caroline, returns to England from Europe.
Queen Caroline’s trial for adultery (June).
Bill of Pains and Penalties against George IV’s wife, Queen Caroline, introduced into Parliament (6 July).
Bill against Queen Caroline fails.
Shelley publishes Prometheus Unbound.
Keats publishes Isabella and Other Poems.
Keats sails for Italy.
1821: Napoleon dies (5 May).
George IV’s coronation at Westminster Abbey (19 July).
Queen Caroline is refused admittance to the Abbey.
Queen Caroline dies (7 August).
Pierce Egan publishes Life in London.
Thomas Malthus publishes Principles of Political Economy.
John Constable exhibits The Hay Wain.
Keats dies.
1830: George IV dies (26 June).
Appendix 5
Reading about the Regency and Where Next?
Aiken Hodge, Jane, Passion and Principle: The Loves and Lives of Regency Women, John Murray, London, 1996.
Aiken Hodge, Jane, The Private World of Georgette Heyer, Heinemann, London, 1984.
Austen Jane, Jane Austen’s Selected Letters, Vivien Jones (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994.
Austen, Jane, My Dear Cassandra, Penelope Hughes-Hallett (ed.), Collins & Brown, London, 1991.
Bovill, E. W., English Country Life 1780–1830, Oxford University Press, London, 1962.
Burgess, Anthony, Coaching Days of England, Paul Elek, London, 1966.
Burnett, T. A. J., The Rise and Fall of a Regency Dandy: the Life and Times of Scrope Berdmore Davies, Murray, London, 1981.
Burton, Elizabeth, The Georgians at Home, Arrow Books, London, 1973.
Cecil, David, A Portrait of Jane Austen, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1980.
Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis, Handbook of English Costume in the 19th Century, Faber and Faber, London, 1973.
David, Saul, Prince of Pleasure, Abacus, London, 1999.
Egan, Pierce, Life in London, John Camden Hotten, London, 1821.
Ford, John, Prizefighting: The Age of Regency Boximania, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1971.
Fullerton, Susannah, Jane Austen and Crime, Jane Austen Society of Australia, Sydney, 2004.
Girouard, Mark, Life in the English Country House, A Social and Architectural History, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979.
Gronow, Captain, Selections from the Reminiscences of Captain Gronow
, Nicholas Bentley, ed., The Folio Society, London, 1977.
Hibbert, Christopher, George IV: Prince of Wales, Readers Union, Newton Abbott, 1972.
Hibbert, Christopher, George IV: Regent and King, Allen Lane, London, 1975.
Hughes, Kristine, The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811 to 1901, Writer’s Digest Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1998.
Jago, Lucy, Regency House Party, Time Warner Books, London, 2004.
Laudermilk, Sharon and Teresa L. Hamlin, The Regency Companion, Garland Publishing, New York, 1989.
Laver, James, The Age of Illusion, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1972.
Laver, James, Costumes Through the Ages, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963.
Margetson, Stella, Regency London, Cassell & Company, London, 1971.
Palmer, Alan, The Life and Times of George IV, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1972.
Plumb, J. H., Georgian Delights, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1980.
Pool, Daniel, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Touchstone Books, New York, 1993.
Porter, Roy and Dorothy, Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth-century England, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989.
Priestley, J. B., The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency, Heinemann, London, 1969.
Quennell, Marjorie and C. H. B., A History of Everyday Things in England Volume III: 1733–1851, B. T. Batsford, London, 1961.
Reid, J. C., Bucks and Bruisers: Pierce Egan and Regency England, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1971.
Roberts, Henry D., A History of the Royal Pavilion Brighton, Country Life Limited, London, 1939.
Rutherford, Jessica M. F., The Royal Pavilion: The Palace of George IV, Brighton Arts and Leisure Services, 1995.
Sheppard, Francis, London 1808–1870: The Infernal Wen, Secker & Warburg, London, 1971.
Sitwell, Osbert and Margaret Barton, Brighton, Faber and Faber, London, 1935.
Stuart, Dorothy Margaret, Regency Roundabout, Macmillan, London, 1943.
Summerson, John, Georgian London, Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1988.
Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1963.
Walrond, Sallie, Looking at Carriages, J. A. Allen, London, 1957.
Watkin, David, The Royal Interiors of Regency England: From Watercolours First Published by W. H. Pyne in 1817–1820, Dent, London, 1984.
Watkins, Susan, Jane Austen’s Town and Country Style, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990.
White, Reginald James, Life in Regency England, Putnam, New York, 1963.
Wilson, Harriette, Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs, Century Publishing Co., London, 1985.
WHERE NEXT?
Sally Houghton’s excellent Georgette Heyer website: www.georgetteheyer.com
The Georgian Index: www.georgianindex.net
The Republic of Pemberley: www.pemberley.com
Jessamyn’s Regency Pages: www.songsmyth.com
Cathy Decker’s Regency page has a host of great links: hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/reg.html
The Heyer list: www.heyerlist.org
The Regency Collection: www.homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley /Regency.html
Appendix 6
Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels
Regency Buck (1935)
It is in regrettable circumstances that beautiful Judith Taverner and her brother Peregrine first encounter Julian St John Audley. The man, they both agree, is an insufferably arrogant dandy. But unfortunately for them, he is also the Fifth Earl of Worth, a friend of the Regent and, quite by chance, their legal guardian…
An Infamous Army (1937)
In 1815, beneath the aegis of the Army of Occupation, Brussels is the gayest town in Europe. And the widow Lady Barbara Childe, renowned for being as outrageous as she is beautiful, is at the centre of all that is fashionable and light-hearted. When she meets Charles Audley, the elegant and handsome aide-de-camp to the great Duke of Wellington himself, her joie de vivre knows no bounds—until the eve of the fateful Battle of Waterloo…
The Spanish Bride (1940)
Shot-proof, fever-proof and a veteran campaigner at the age of twenty-five, Brigade-Major Harry Smith is reputed to be the luckiest man in Lord Wellington’s army. Yet at the siege of Badajos, his friends foretell the ruin of his career. When Harry meets the defenceless Juana, a fiery passion consumes him. Under the banner of honour and with the selfsame ardour he so frequently displays in battle, he dives headlong into marriage. In his beautiful child bride he finds a kindred spirit, and a temper to match. But for Juana, a long year of war must follow.
The Corinthian (1940)
The only question which hangs over the life of Sir Richard Wyndham, notable whip, dandy and Corinthian, is one of marriage. On the eve of making the most momentous decision of his life, he is on his way home, a little the worse for drink, when he chances upon a beautiful young fugitive climbing out of a window by means of knotted sheets—and so finds a perfect opportunity for his own escape.
Friday’s Child (1944)
Rejected by Miss Milborne, the Incomparable, for his unsteadiness of character, wild Lord Sheringham flies back to London in a rage, bent on avenging Fate. Vowing to marry the first woman to cross his way, who should he see but Hero Wantage, the young and charmingly unsophisticated girl who has loved him since childhood…
The Reluctant Widow (1946)
Stepping into the wrong carriage in a Sussex village, Elinor Rochdale is swept up in a thrilling and dangerous adventure. Overnight the would-be governess becomes mistress of a ruined estate and partner in a secret conspiracy to save a family’s name. By midnight she is a bride, by dawn a widow.
The Foundling (1948)
The shy young Duke of Sale has never known his parents; instead, His Grace Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware (Gilly for short) has endured twenty-four years of rigorous mollycoddling from his uncle and valet. But his natural diffidence conceals a rebellious spirit. So when Gilly hears of Belinda, the beautiful foundling who appears to be blackmailing his cousin, he absconds with glee. Only he has no sooner entered his new and dangerous world than he is plunged into a frenzy of intrigue, kidnap and adventure.
Arabella (1949)
An enchanting debutante and the eldest daughter of an impoverished country parson, Arabella embarks on her first London season. Armed with beauty, virtue and a benevolent godmother (as well as a notoriously impetuous temper) she quickly runs afoul of Robert Beaumaris, the most eligible Nonpareil of the day. When he accuses her of being yet another pretty female after his wealth, Arabella allows herself to be provoked—into a deceitful charade that might have quite unexpected consequences…
The Grand Sophy (1950)
When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on diplomatic business, he leaves his only daughter Sophy with his sister’s family, the Ombersleys, in Berkeley Square. Upon her arrival, Sophy is bemused to see her cousins in a sad tangle. The heartless and tyrannical Charles is betrothed to a pedantic bluestocking almost as tiresome as himself; Cecilia is besotted with a beautiful but feather-brained poet; and Hubert has fallen foul of a moneylender. It looks as though the grand Sophy has arrived just in time to sort them out, but she hasn’t reckoned with Charles, the Ombersley heir, who has only one thought—to marry her off and rid the family of her meddlesome ways…
The Quiet Gentleman (1951)
When Gervase Frant, Seventh Earl of St Erth, returns at last from Waterloo to his family seat at Stanyon, he enjoys a less than welcome homecoming. Only Theo, a cousin even quieter than himself, is there to greet him—and when he meets his stepmother and young half-brother he detects open disappointment that he survived the wars. The dangers of the Lincolnshire countryside could never be more unexpected…
Cotillion (1953)
The three great-nephews of cantankerous Mr Penicuik know better than to ignore his summons, especially when it concerns the bestowal of his fortune. The wily old ge
ntleman has hatched an outrageous plan for his adopted daughter’s future and his own amusement: his fortune will be Kitty’s dowry. But while the beaus are scrambling for her hand, Kitty counters with her own inventive, if daring, scheme: a sham engagement that should help keep wedlock at bay…
The Toll-Gate (1954)
Captain John Staple’s exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet Crazy Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the huge, adventure-loving Captain. But when he finds himself lost and benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering days suddenly pale away beside an adventure—and romance—of a lifetime.
Bath Tangle (1955)
The Earl of Spenborough had always been noted for his eccentricity. Leaving a widow younger than his own daughter Serena was one thing, but leaving his fortune to the trusteeship of the Marquis of Rotherham—the one man the same daughter had jilted—was quite another. In a tangle of marriage and manners the like of which even Regency Bath has rarely seen, Lady Serena finds herself involved with her lovely young stepmother, Lord Rotherham and her own childhood sweetheart.
Sprig Muslin (1956)
Finding so young and pretty a girl as Amanda wandering unattended, Sir Gareth Ludlow knows it is his duty as a man of honour to restore her to her family. But it is to prove no easy task for the Corinthian. His captive in Sprig Muslin has more than her rapturous good looks and bandboxes to aid her—she is also possessed of a runaway imagination…
April Lady (1957)
When the new Lady Cardross begins to fill her days with fashion and frivolity, the Earl has to wonder whether she did really only marry him for his money, as his family so helpfully suggests. And now Nell doesn’t dare tell him the truth. What with the concern over his wife’s heart and pocket, sorting out her brother’s scrapes and trying to prevent his own half-sister from eloping, it is no wonder that the much-tried Earl almost misses the opportunity to smooth the path of true love in his marriage…
Sylvester (1957)
Endowed with rank, wealth and elegance, Sylvester, Duke of Salford, has decided to travel to Wiltshire to discover if the Hon. Phoebe Marlow will meet his exacting requirements for a bride. If he doesn’t expect to meet a tongue-tied stripling in need of both manners and conduct, he is even more intrigued when his visit causes Phoebe to flee her home. They meet again on the road to London, where her carriage has come to grief in the snow. Yet Phoebe, already caught in one imbroglio, now knows she could soon be well deep in another…
Georgette Heyer's Regency World Page 29