If you’ve been in Romancelandia for longer than twenty minutes, you have probably noticed that the Regency reigns supreme when it comes to historicals. (Yes, for the purposes of romance settings, we’ll consider “long Regency” books to be Regency – that is, books set from around 1795 to the coronation of Victoria in 1837, despite the actual Regency-regency only lasting from 1811-1820). It’s the go-to era for a historical setting, giving us the Ton, Almack’s, the empire waisted gown, the Napoleonic wars, Gunter’s frozen ices licked in slow motion by Regé-Jean Page in Bridgerton…
Where was I, again?
Right. The Regency rules. But what is our SECOND favorite UK historical setting?
Time for a SETTING SMACKDOWN!
Don’t let the pastels fool you – these Neoclassical legends are gladiators through and through! IN THE BLUE CORNER, wearing powdered wigs and panniers, weighing in at thirty-seven Desert Isle Keepers and counting, and starring the kind of Chippendales with four legs, not two, it’s… THE GEORGIAN ERA!
Top reads of the Georgian era include Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series, Jo Beverley’s Malloren series, Stella Riley’s Rockliffe series, and the inimitable, unstoppable, many-times-imitated-but-never-duplicated saga Outlander.
But they’re up against some mighty difficult contenders.
Lasting sixty-four years, from 1837-1901, this contender has served up some of our favorite Gothic tales and least favorite misadventures in imperialism. Bringing everything from the sewing machine to the automobile, from the London Underground to the transatlantic telegraph, in the Red Corner, it’s…. THE VICTORIAN ERA!
The spooky gaslight of the Victorians lends itself to some grittier collections, like K.J. Charles’s Sins of the Cities series, Meredith Duran’s Rules for the Reckless, and Courtney Milan’s Brothers Sinister. Sherry Thomas has a number of delicious Victorian books (including, conveniently, Delicious), but we can only give her romance smackdown credit for ones like the Fitzhugh Trilogy that are non-steampunk/fantastical and are genre romances. Sorry, Charlotte Holmes – maybe in the mystery round!
The Georgian era was the heyday of highwaymen. Laura Kinsale’s exiled ex-highwayman S.T. Maitland, the Prince of Midnight, will sweep you off your feet, and Marsha Canham’s Pale Moon Rider, featuring Captain Starlight, will carry you away.
Adventure, says the Victorian era? We have Alissa Johnson’s spy road romance A Dangerous Deceit and and the long-beloved Silk and Secrets by Mary Jo Putney.
Gothic often says Victorian, such as Mimi Matthews’s A Convenient Fiction. But if you’re thinking about a Gothic Georgian (and a time travel one at that!) Susanna Kearsley’s The Rose Garden may be just what you wanted!
After so many rounds, we’re going to have to settle this bout on points. What say you, readers? Which era wins it for you? And which books have we left out?
I'm a history geek and educator, and I've lived in five different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. In addition to the usual subgenres, I'm partial to YA, Sci-fi/Fantasy, and graphic novels. I love to cook.
Georgian is pulling ahead! That era is up by five votes!
I haven’t seen a mention of Eloisa James Desperate Duchesses series. It was a Georgian departure for her.
This was a fun post, I like this format.
I really like both eras so this was a tough choice, but I think Victorian has a slight edge for me.
I can’t answer the poll because I love them both! I’m a fan of both the Maiden Lane series by Hoyt and K.J. Charles Sins of the Cities and I refuse to choose one over the other LOL. Thanks for this great post though!
And…. Georgian has pulled ahead. It’s 20 votes for Georgian and 15 for Victorian!
i prefer the Georgian probably because my first historical reading as a teenager 50+ years ago was Georgette Heyer and in particular These Old Shades and Devil’s Cub. I think the beautiful clothes( for both men and women) appeal to me but on a more serious note I think that the authors writing about the Georgian era tend to have done their research and are really able to transport you there. Because Regency has become a bit of a bandwagon I think there are many authors (a lot of them American) who just churn out books reflecting contemporary values with protagonists dressed in period costumes. My favourite Georgian authors apart from Heyer are Stella Riley, Lucinda Brant, Jo Beverley Joanna Chambers and Elizabeth Hoyt. On that note does anyone know what has happened to Elizabeth Hoyt? I do like some Victorian, particularly KJ Charles and Courtney Milan. Marguerite Kaye has also written some good books set in the Victorian era. For Regency Mary Balogh is still a go to but I think Grace Burrowes has gone off the boil a bit.
“gone off the boil”
That is a wonderful expression I’ve not heard before. Thank you!
Have you heard. “That put his gas at a peep” meaning someone has had a put down or a setback. I suspect it is particularly Scottish but am not entirely sure.
Nope. I’m not sure I even understand what it means!
The results for this survey are evenly split!
That’s so interesting to me because publishing is massively skewed Victorian (or at least our DB is!) Seems like a missed market here!
Currently, Victorian leads by one!
I suspect that’s because – as I’ve said here somewhere – a lot less about the Georgian era has infiltrated public consciousness – even in the UK where it’s our own history! Very little – if anything – about the Georgian era is taught as part of the history syllabus in UK schools. Although thanks to Horrible Histories, I reckon a lot of kids now know that we had four kings called George at some point!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtYmq5qFVA
Honestly? If it’s a good story with three-dimensional, engaging characters, I don’t much care what era a book is set in PROVIDED the author has done the research and got it right. (Which, sadly so few really bother to do, even now when it’s easy to look thing up on the internet!) I love Stella Riley’s Rockliffe books, and most of Lucinda Brant’s Roxton series, but KJ Charles’ Sins of the Cities and Milan’s Brothers Sinister books are big favourites, too.
Oddly enough, I’d say a lot less is known about the Georgian period here in general, simply because it’s not taught in schools in the same way “the Victorians” is. Even an armchair historian like me was surprised when I read Duran’s At Your Pleasure – which is set shortly after the transition from Stuarts to Hanoverians – to realise just how rocky that whole period actually was.
I love the Victorian era. It was remarkably innovative. In that time, many of the greatest inventions we use to this day were invented then. The subway, the telephone, the radio, sewing machines, the toilet, photography. The postage stamp! Perhaps that’s why so much great steampunk is set in that era.
In Britain, there was the abolition of slavery, the expansion of the vote (women just missed it), and a public that read voraciously. Plus, it was the last pre world war era.
I love to learn about other cultures through my fiction reading. All that colonialism means that many romances are set in India or other colonized countries. The best of them–The Duke of Shadows and Not Quite a Husband–show the complexities and terrible abuses of colonialism while also showing the wonders of the places in which they are set.
I don’t know, there was a lot of war going on all around the globe during the Georgian era. Mostly the British and the French whacking each other, directly or indirectly, but plenty of other parties got involved. The Seven Years’ War was considered global–often called the First World War–and Napoleon invaded every continent he could reach.
Anyway, my vote is for the Georgian era, the whole of it, from sea pirates to Sir Walter Scott. It set the table for the backlash of the Victorian era by being wilder and more freewheeling, and has just as much invention and revolution and terrible injustice. But honestly they are both terrific eras for fiction.
I’ve always felt that WWI changed the globe in unprecedented ways. It’s a before and after war for me.
Oh, it’s definitely a very significant war! And it was different, like every war is different in that tactics and weapons change.
But I think the other wars are less significant to us because we don’t remember them; certainly have no film and photos of them, no video of veterans and survivors to fill in the details of what the war was like and the suffering it caused. Mostly we don’t even remember what they were about, if your schooling was anything like mine. But some of those conflicts reshaped the world in enormous ways (thinking of Napoleon in particular).
I started reading romance with Regencies and in general I prefer historical romance to other genres. Recently I have been reading a lot of Georgian romance — most notably, Lucinda Brant and Stella Riley. Besides Georgette Heyer, there is also Patricia Veryan and Jo Beverley’s Malloren books, plus some Robert Neill books from years ago. I am beginning to try other authors listed as Georgian writers.
I also enjoy Georgian and Regency books that involve travel in France. I studied French and have an inadequate command of the language and an interest in French culture.
The Victorian era historicals have limited appeal for me. Interestingly, that era has never appealed to me in terms of music or literature, whereas I enjoy music and literature from earlier periods and from the 20th century after World War I. I can’t explain my disinterest in most of the 1800s, but the Impressionist painters are really the only exception to the rule.
That’s a tough question. I just listened to a Victorian novel, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, and a Georgian novel, Persuasion by Jane Austen. I loved them both, and I enjoy diving into the different eras and learning what they have to teach me about love, social status, poverty, and women’s roles in society.
If I am looking for a light romance novel, I find Georgians are usually more fun. Georgette Heyer and her witty, frothy stories are the perfect example. In many Georgians much time is spent talking or thinking about clothes, hair, balls, assemblies, etc. Societal rules are fairly strict and the characters either play the game within the rules or they break the rules, but either way can be fun.
To me, stories from the Victorian era can be darker and more complex. Social issues tend to be more prominent, and sometimes I’m in the mood for that, sometimes not.
Of course these are generalizations, and I could be altogether wrong in my impressions. Do others share these same impressions?
Absolutely.
While I like a good Victorian, I much prefer a good Georgian. That being said, can I give a shout out to books set during the 1600s? The Roundheads and Cavaliers series by Stella Riley was excellent, and there were a few other authors who used the English Civil Wars or the Restoration period as a backdrop to write some good romances. Really, I don’t care about the time period so much as that the author has done their research, has created a story that is compelling and true to the era, and that has a good romance at its heart.
We do have an English Civil War tag, one for Stuart era, and also one for the 1600s in general!
My favorite “Victorian” books are the steampunk books set in that era, like C.S. Poe’s Magic and Steam series or in a looser, alternate universe setting like Iron Seas series by Meljean Brooks, and K.J. Charles’ Charm of Magpie books. And I do love K.J. Charles many well researched historicals.
But overall I prefer the Georgian period. It wasn’t as, well, Victorian! I have enjoyed Stella Riley’s books, as well as Lucinda Brant’s books. And I can’t forget These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer.
One vote for Victorian! Love me a rags to riches industrialist who bothers the nobility with his or her very existence! Or any suffragist storyline! Or the birth of modern medicine! Georgian stories bore me, they seem to be seeped entirely in nobility with no other members of society getting to play more than the barest of roles and far too much space is given for dusted hair and wigs and things in fashion that aren’t my aesthetic. Victorian era novels are much more likely to have a plot and cast that I inherently find more intriguing. Now I need to go and find that Courtney Milan novel about the doctor….
Do you mean this one? I ADORE it.
I’m sure someone else will comment, but let me be the first. Regency IS Georgian (1714-1830).
That out of the way, it’s Georgian all the way for me.
The Georgians were robust, told the truth. No hypocrisy. Emotions were encouraged. Fashions were gorgeous, even the men’s wigs. Extremes of fashion, as always, were stupid. Those sky-high hairstyles for women were only ever worn by society women, and then didn’t last more than 5 years because they were unbearable. Although women didn’t have the vote, they were considered as partners rather than subservient to their husbands. They were still abused, of course, but the zeitgeist was not to put them down.
The Victorian era was full of hypocrisy, poverty and filth. Urban poverty was unbelievably awful. Five families and a pig living in one cellar, and that wasn’t uncommon. Because of the movement to the towns, to they could work all hours in the factories, sanitation became a serious problem, so the streets also stank, and diseases like cholera and typhus ran rampant.
The romances based in the Victorian era often don’t realize that the aristocracy really didn’t matter any more. You might bow to a duke, but after two big agricultural depressions, land didn’t have the same significance that it had in previous centuries. Wealth and power moved to the House of Commons and the industrialists, who in general were the ones exploiting the poor to get rich. At least children couldn’t work in the factories until they were 10.
Pollution was terrible because of the poisons belched into the air by the factories, which were legion.
Fashion was deliberately restrictive for women. In the 1840s, heavy petticoats added pounds to the weight women had to wear, and sleeves were cut so that a woman couldn’t raise her arms above her waist without ripping her gown. Crinolines were a relief to many women, because they were so much lighter, so of course they were parodied. But then they submitted to the bustle. Metal grommets were invented, so tight lacing could finally become a thing, and stifle women so that vigorous exercise was difficult or impossible.
The only way to write a romance about the Victorian era is to concentrate on the outliers, the Aesthetics, the Morris enthusiasts who wore Rational Dress, the philanthropists who fought for the rights of factory workers and the early feminists. Maybe the inventors and scientists, who pushed real advances during this period.
I thought the Regency era of British history was officially 1811 to 1820.
It is, but it’s part of the Georgian era too. We had Kings called George from 1714 to 1830. George III was King while his son (later George IV) was regent.
It’s a subsidiary of Georgian? Kind of like how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. From a tagging perspective I’ve only used Georgian for non-Regency Georgian so the results are actually usable. If there is a better term for “Georgian but only the Georges before the Regency George” I’m happy to use it. But honestly this isn’t the debate I expected this post to have!
No, there isn’t another term as far as I’m aware – the actual Regency (as you know) occurred during the reign of George III, so it falls within the Georgian period. But thanks to Austen, then Heyer, the nine years of the actual Regency have become like a completely separate thing… I suspect many people equate Georgian with “panniers, ridiculous wigs and men in high heels” withour putting it together that the empire line dress also originated in the Georgian era.
All the books tagged “Regency” are (technically) “Georgian”, but the reverse is not true!
It’s not subsidiary, it’s just part of the Georgian era.
The Georgian period ran from 1714, when George I came to the throne, to 1830, when George IV died. The Regency era, strictly 1811-1820, is part of that era, as is the Seven Years War, the Pitt Prime Minister era, and loads of others.
The Regency was a turbulent period, it was an era of war. From the time Prince George was appointed Regent in 1809, when the Peninsular War started, after much shenanigans around Europe, to 1815, when Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo, Britain (not just England!) was on a war footing. The Regent finally became King after his father died in 1820, but he’d been closely involved in government for at least 20 years by then.
In 1830, George was succeeded by his brother, who became King William IV. In 1837, Victoria acceded. That 7 year period is either pre-Victorian or post-Georgian, whichever side of the bridge you’re on.
Thought you knew!
Please correct: George became king in 1820! Regent 1811 – 1820, King 1820 – 1830.
I’m sure it’s a typo on Lynne’s part – I’ll edit.