I smile as I type this post today, because it is with great fondness that I look back on some of my childhood memories.
When I was six or seven and we gathered around the table on Christmas Eve to eat lamb and fruitcake and Yorkshire pudding, I hardly realized one day I’d be writing books set near the Regency Period of British history. So there I was, a young child scrunching up my nose at the funny shaped golden blobs that didn’t resemble pudding at all but were called pudding, grumbling that the lamb tasted funny, and complaining that thew fruitcake didn’t look much like cake. But my English grandmother beamed throughout the entire meal, telling us how she used to eat these foods every Christmas when she was growing up.
During Regency days, goose, venison and beef would have been the prevalent meat at Christmas feasts, not lamb. Yorkshire pudding was a common food for the lower classes, and wouldn’t have been served in aristocratic households. But these food were around (along with other familiar Christmas foods like eggnog and gingerbread) and somehow they filtered across the Atlantic with my great grandparents and down through the years onto our dining room table when I was younger. The thought makes me want to whip up a batch of Yorkshire pudding and introduce it to my family this year.
We are so used to those luscious candies we justify eating at Christmas time—fudge, Godiva chocolates, cherry cordials, etc.—that we don’t consider how little chocolate was available during the Regency, and certainly not in cream-filled or even buttery forms. Mostly, chocolate was for drinking.
Here, however, are two recipes for candies that might have been made at Christmas time—confectionary and chocolate drops.
To Make Confectionary Drops
Dutch cocoa
Take double refined sugar, pound and sift it through a hair sieve, not too fine; then sift it through a silk sieve to take out all the fine dust which would destroy the beauty of the drop. Put the sugar into a clean pan, and moisten it with any favourite aromatic…Colour it with a small quantity of liquid carmine, or any other colour, ground fine. Take a small pan with a lip, fill it three parts with paste, place it on a small stove, the half hole being the size of the pan, and stir the sugar with a little ivory or bone handle, until it becomes liquid. When it almost boils, take it from the fire and continue to stir it: if it be too moist, take a little of the powdered sugar, and add a spoonful to the paste, and stir it till it is of such a consistence as to run without too much extension. Have a tin plate, very clean and smooth; take the little pan in the left hand, and hold in the right a bit of iron, copper, or silver wire, four inches long, to take off the drop from the lip of the pan, and let it fall regularly on the tin plate; two hours afterwards, take off the drops with the blade of a knife.
Carl Larsson (1853-1919) - 1904-05 Christmas Eve (National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden)
To Make Chocolate Drops
Scrape the chocolate to powder, and put an ounce to each pound of sugar; moisten the paste with clear water, work it as above, only take care to use all the paste prepared, as if it be put on the fire a second time, it greases, and the drop is not of the proper thickness.
Note: A pound of sugar is about 2 cups by modern measurements. I have no idea how much an ounce of cocoa powder is, but this would be like Hershey’s cocoa powder for baking.
And if you want something a little more nutritious to serve before the chocolate, here is a recipe for White Soup that says it is good for all seasons:
WHITE SOUP
1/4 lb. of sweet almonds, 1/4 lb. of cold veal or poultry, a thick slice of stale bread, a piece of fresh lemon-peel, 1 blade of mace, pounded, 3/4 pint of cream, the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs, 2 quarts of white stock.
Reduce the almonds in a mortar to a paste, with a spoonful of water, and add to them the meat, which should be previously pounded with the bread.
Beat all together, and add the lemon-peel, very finely chopped, and the mace.
Pour the boiling stock on the whole, and simmer for an hour. Rub the eggs in the cream, put in the soup, bring it to a boil, and serve immediately.
In researching my current WIP (Work-in-Progress) I needed to find a botanical garden for my hero and heroine to tour. I had the Chelsea PhysicGarden all lined up.
paeonia moutan
Chelsea at the time of the regency was an outlying suburb of London, very close to Mayfair. In fact all the land around Chelsea and Brompton as you were leaving London was dedicated to commercial nurseries since the soil was quite fertile. Many of these were walled gardens. Chelsea Physic (meaning healing) Garden was a renowned herbal garden right by the Thames.
However, I found out that the garden was off limits to women until later in the 19th century!
I had one other choice, although it was farther from London: Kew Botanical Gardens, which is about ten miles southwest of the center of London.
The late Georgian period (last half of the 18th century) was a great age for botany in England and other parts of Europe. England was ahead of much of Europe because of its great colonizing efforts and intrepid navy and merchant ships sailing the seas. Often these ships carried botanists aboard who collected all kinds of seeds and plants to bring back home. (Remember the ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin, in the movie Master and Commander?)
Sir Joseph Banks, 1812
One of the greatest botanists of the time, Sir Joseph Banks traveled with Captain Cook on his first voyage and brought back many specimens from the South Seas from this trip. In the 1790s, King George III (before going mad) was very interested in agriculture (hence his nickname “Farmer George”). It wasn’t just an idle hobby. He hoped to use the new plant discoveries in the different parts of the British empire to improve the agriculture economy of the British empire. One successful example of this was the importation of the recently discovered breadfruit from the Pacific to the West Indies (Jamaica) as a cheap, starchy foodstuff to feed slaves.
Strelitzia - Bird of Paradise
From the early 1780s, Banks became an adviser to the king for Kew Gardens. Banks was responsible for making it into a world class botanical garden. He sent collectors on various ships going overseas specifically to bring back seeds or plants from every continent on the globe. He is credited with bringing back himself or through these collectors the peony, hydrangea, mimosa, acacia, eucalyptus, lotus flower, tiger lily, and bird of paradise.
Lilium lancifolium - Tiger Lily
In 1789, a seminal work of botany Hortus Kewensis was published by one of the curators of Kew Gardens. It listed all the plants cultivated in the Kew Botanical Gardens up to that point, which was more than 5,000! Another important thing about both the catalog and the garden was that they used the relatively new plant classification system called the Linnaean System developed by Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, the naming of species. It is the system we’re familiar with today of giving plants a Latin name and grouping them in descending orders of family, genus, species, etc.
This just scratches the surface of the field of botany during the time of the regency. For more reading on the history of Kew Gardens or the science of botany, here are a few sources:
Kristi here. Did you know the Christmas season has arrived? To be honest, it’s pretty hard to miss, at least where I live. Driving down the street you see the lights on the lamp posts and the town square, baked goods wrapped in red and green cellophane are already appearing on our counter, and the jingling of bells greets you as you enter nearly every store.
I love Christmas. I especially love Christmas music. I’ve been known to break it out in June. While some tunes gracing the airwaves today are clearly modern inventions, others we tend to feel have been around for centuries.
Most of them haven’t.
The plethora of Christmas carols as we know and love them today came about mostly in Victorian days. Several composition dates fall in within ten years of 1850. I find it hard to believe that music wasn’t part of an English Christmas celebration, though. Given that the entertainment at many a party involved one or more young women displaying their musical prowess, I think that for many music would have been part of Christmas as well.
So, if you’re like me and you can’t help but picture your favorite Regency heroine belting out a exalting song or two while celebrating the birth of Christ, what do you have her sing? Here are a few possibilities of songs that Regency families might have had access to:
The First Nowell… sort of
The First Nowell (or Noel, as it is commonly written in America) was first published in 1823, though evidence suggests it was sung long before then. The words, however, are slightly different that the ones we sing today. At least one published version of the song had the angels singing “O well” instead of “Noel”.
Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Angels From the Realms of Glory… sort of
While each of these songs had words closely relating to those we sing today, their tunes were very different. Many of these songs were poems or lyrics sung to the tune of other, year-round hymns. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that these songs began getting their own music.
Silent Night… sort of… not really
Unless your hero had connections in a small German town, they would not have heard of this song as it was written in 1816. Even if they did have it somehow, you’d still be singing it in another language.
Songs you could likely have sung with your favorite hero around the pianoforte:
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, O Come All Ye Faithful (Although you were more likely to hear it in it’s original language as Adeste Fideles, English translations existed as early as 1799.), The Twelve Days of Christmas, We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Some songs you wouldn’t hear because they had yet to be written:
Away In A Manger (1885), O Holy Night (1847), Good King Winceslas (1853), It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (1849), O Little Town of Bethlehem (1867), We Three Kings of Orient Are (1857).
What’s your favorite Christmas carol? Do you prefer the older carol-style songs or some of the more modern compositions?
“Those woods are mine and mine alone for hunting.”
“I am afraid, sir, that you are mistaken. Thos woods belong to my family and have been for six hundred years.”
“The deed to the land says otherwise.”
“My sword says more otherwise than the deed.”
“En guard!”
With clashing swords and combat to first blood or death, trial by combat, whether criminal or civil, was not an uncommon way to settle disputes in England in the Middle Ages. In fact, the issue arose in 1818 when someone demanded to settle a dispute in such a manner.
“Are you saying that is still on the books?” One can hear the authorities exclaim. “But we are civilized now. We have a different system.”
Yes, indeed, it was still on the books, though hadn’t been used for hundreds of years.
By the Regency, England’s courts had evolved from the days of trial by ordeal or combat or simple pronouncements from on high. They had become a complex and loosely jointed system of magistrates, justices of the peace, and circuit judges for the assizes.
How the system evolved from the days of Anglo-Saxon rule until the Regency is a complex system on which entire books have been written. This is a brief description of the duties of the men who handled around ninety-five per cent of England’s criminal cases during our time period. It changed again in 1830, and then again in 1971, and we don’t need to fret about those because this is its own era.
Who were justices of the peace and magistrates? They were usually gentlemen who sat in the various offices in London, hearing criminal trials brought to them from various sources. Coroners for murder, for example. Bow Street is the most famous of these offices, and possibly the most famous of the Bow Street magistrates is Sir John Fielding, brother to the eighteenth century author and also a Bow Street magistrate.
Fielding, Sir John, was called the Blind Beak of Bow Street. A “beak” in street cant, was a respected man. Sir John was blinded serving in the royal Navy, but legend has it that he recognized the voices of 3,000 criminals.
Outside of London, we had justices of the peace. These were gentlemen, but not peers. If a peer was a justice of the peace before gaining a peerage, he could keep the post, and peers did not take on the role. JPs performed the same duties of hearing cases as did magistrates. They were simply outside of London. Both sent serious criminal cases up the chain to higher judges.
On a side note here, neither magistrates nor justices of the peace could perform weddings at this time. That fell solely under the jurisdiction of the Church of England.
Outside of London, circuit judges traveled around the country and held trials at the assizes. Assizes occurred twice a year. That meant an innocent man accused of murder could languish in prison for up to six months until the next meeting of the assizes.
Inside London, serious crimes such as murder were heard by the Court of the King’s Bench.
Sadly, corruption, taking of bribes, and other forms of misconduct by judges was not uncommon. In some eras, though I haven’t found much evidence of it during the Regency, judges were removed and even sentenced to death for corrupt practices.
Regardless of these slips into sin, a trial before a judge and jury proved far more effective than trial by combat or ordeal.
Veteran Regency author Regency Regina Scott joins us again to tell us a little more about her writing, as well as her love for Regencies. Regina’s first published book was The Unflappable Miss Fairchild in 1998, with Zebra Regency Romance. Since then she has published continuously, with 19 novels and four novellas to her credit. In the last couple of years, she has turned to writing Regencies with a Christian tone. These have found a home with Love Inspired Historicals. Her fifth Christian Regency, The Rake’s Redemption, is out this month.
1. Last time you were here, you told us about how you fell in love with the Regency time period. What can you tell us about the setting of this new book?
This story is set entirely in London during the Season, but my hero is on the fringes of Society by his own choice, so there’s only a couple balls and most of the action takes place out of doors—driving in the forgotten corners of Hyde Park, meeting in secret at Vauxhall Gardens, dueling on Primrose Hill.
2. Was there any fun fact about the Regency period that you stumbled across in your research for this book that really fired up your imagination? Any little tidbit that prompted a plot point or a cool character moment?
I stumbled across an article written just after the Regency that laid out the specific rules for duels, contrasting them to those of the French. Because my hero, Vaughn Everard, has a reputation as a duelist, knowing some of the rules he could choose to keep or break really helped me write the main dueling scene in the book and keep it in his character. I learned to fence when I was in college, so I really wanted to get that scene right!
3. Does your new book, “The Rake’s Redemption”, continue the story of any of the characters from your last book, “The Captain’s Courtship”? What did you enjoy about writing a linked story? Was there anything about that connection that made writing “The Rake’s Redemption” more difficult?
The Rake’s Redemption is the third book in the Everard Legacy miniseries, starting up shortly after The Captain’s Courtship left off. This book tells the story of how Vaughn Everard finally finds the man responsible for killing his beloved uncle, and his cousin Samantha’s continued attempts to fulfill the requirements of her father’s will.
I love writing linked stories because they give you a bigger canvas on which to lay out an adventure. But they’re also hard, because if you decide later that it would have been better for the hero of book 1 to have done something to set you up for book 3, it’s too late!
4. Tell me a little bit about your hero, Vaughn Everard.
Vaughn is the quintessential warrior poet—literally! He grew up before the Regency began, so he tends to have more of the swashbuckling attitude of the previous era—lace at his cuffs, sword at his side. That puts him in direct contrast with his more elegant, refined peers. And he writes moving, romantic poetry that sets all the ladies’ hearts a-flutter. Can you tell he’s my personal favorite of the three Everard gentlemen?
5. Tell me a little bit about your heroine, Lady Imogene Devary.
Lady Imogene grew up sheltered, the apple of her father’s eye. But she’s noticed her father behaving oddly lately, and she cannot figure out why. The problems seemed to start when a certain poet began calling, demanding a moment with her father. So Lady Imogene sets out to discover what’s going on. Between her own natural charm and her father’s position as the Marquess of Widmore, she’d never had anyone refuse her least request. But then, she’s never met anyone like Vaughn before.
6. What can we look forward to next from you?
Next March, the final book in the Everard Legacy comes out: The Heiress’s Homecoming. That’s Samantha’s story, set 8 years after the other three books, where we how the legacy plays out in her life. She’s only sixteen in the books out this year, so I wanted to give a little time to come into her own.
7. Where else on the web can our readers find you?
King George III, by Thomas Gainsborough, via Wikimedia Commons
Any Regency aficionado knows that many of our stories are set in the years 1811-1820 when George IV, Prince of Wales was made the Prince Regent. In the Regency Act of 1811 Parliament determined that King George III was unfit to rule. But what do we know of King George III, what is the legacy he left behind during the longest reign of a king up to that point in history?
Personally, he married Charlotte of Mechlenberg-Streltitz and bore fifteen children. It says much about the time that, though his popularity waned over his reign,England’s populace was always proud of him for being faithful to his wife of 59 years!
Source: Wikicommons – Queen Charlotte
Side note: Queen Charlotte is noted to have African ancestry, from Margarita de Castro e Souza, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman part of the black branch of the Portuguese Royal House. English Royal painter captured her appearance without softening her features which was called mulatto in nature.
His two eldest sons, George IV (later Prince Regent) and William IV left him constantly faced with their excessive extravagance, dissolute lifestyles and profligate ways. Both of those sons eventually wore the crown, but died without surviving legitimate children.
That began the reign of Queen Victoria, the last monarch of the House of Hanover.
King George III in battle, painted by William Beechey, via Wikimedia Commons
As king, war was the one constant of King George III’s reign. He oversaw the defeat of France in the Seven Year’s War, and was subsequently nicknamed “The King Who Lost America” from the constant battle with the Colonies’ War of Independence. But with the defeat of France in the Napoleonic War,Britain emerged the world’s leading power, though King George III was not in power when it ended.
In Parliament, bad choices in the men he kept around him, and detesting those he had no choice in appointing, made government stability rare and created a volatile atmosphere with his Prime Ministers and in the House of Commons.
But he was also the first British Monarch to study science, chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics. He learned French and Latin, geography, commerce, agriculture and constitutional law. And despite the loss of the Americas, there was great expansion of the empire and trade. The population almost doubled and there were great strides in agricultural methods and advances in technology. The tide of moral and religious improvement which began in the days of John Wesley, kept the popularity of a King whose religious education was wholly Anglican.
The Prince Regent, Later King George IV, by Thomas Lawrence, via Wikimedia Commons
Unfortunately, he was far from well during the last twenty years of his life. He had three different bouts with mental illness, but in October 1810 he had a major mental breakdown; even to the point of being restrained in a straight jacked and tied into chairs. He was renamed “The Mad King” and he spent the last years of his life completely blind and deaf but lovingly cared for by his wife and doctors.
It is sad to think that the people finally saw him as an object of sympathy once George IV, was made the Prince Regent. Britain’s people watched and compared him to his son as the Prince Regent squandered the already low coffers of England and kept the dissolute lifestyle his father had hated.
Imagine you were transported back to Regency England. What would you want to be? A commoner? Peerage? Royalty? Why?
Susan Karsten:
I would want to be in the merchant class. I do believe the women of this class had less societal strictures and could also sometimes help in the family business. Of course, let my fantasy be that of a successful merchant! 🙂
Ruth Axtell:
I would want to be what I am today in my own era: a romance writer. I’ve been researching the popular novels of the Regency, and it seems that women authors were quite numerous and prolific. The “Minerva novels” were gobbled up by women readers. They specialized in inexpensive romances and gothic novels, which reader could purchase or take out from “circulating” libraries. Mary Russel Mitford and Fanny Burney were two popular authors who made their living writing romantic novels.
Kristi Ann Hunter:
I’m gonna have to go with the peerage, or at least gentry, on this one, for several reason. One, I’m lazy. The idea that someone else would cook my meals and do my laundry has a certain appeal, I must confess. But also, with a higher rank you had the power, time, and money to change things. I would like to have the influence and ability to run a charity or work with the underprivileged. The glitzy parties wouldn’t be bad either.
Kristy Cambron:
I am not sure I would have been a proper member of the peerage (or royalty, for that matter) in Regency England. I find too much pleasure in the vocation of writing, I enjoy the modern comforts of jeans and coffee shops, and I value the rights women have to cote and pursue our dreams in modern society. I also wouldn’t know the first thing about having a service staff attend to my every whim, so I’d have been a poor member of the aristocracy. I’d rather have been a commoner with some means (so I wouldn’t have to stress about where the next meal is coming from), perhaps a friend that was invited into Jane Austen’s parlor from time to time, so we could write our next novel together? I know one thing for sure – I’d adore the clothes more than anything!
Laurie Alice Eakes:
Given the choice, I’d like to be a peeress in my own right like Diana in the Malloren series by Jo Beverley. It was rare and it did happen. The woman had lots of freedom and power other women did not enjoy, even after they married.
Vanessa Riley:
I’d have to be peerage or have enough rank and wealth to assure my family’s position and a suitable match for my daughter. A house in the country and a townhouse in the city, large enough to host a ball.
Naomi Rawlings:
I’d prefer to be a commoner. It’s a hard choice to make, because when I think of peerage, they had such a posh life full of luxuries, beautiful clothes, and the best that money could afford them. But so very little of their wealth was earned. Most of it was handed down generation to generation. Plus the upper class wielded so much power on the back of regular, every day people. I couldn’t live with the guilt of spending a year’s salary on a dress. So I pick commoner. Boring and ordinary, yes. Harder style of living, yes. But they were still the backbone of the country.
Voting and distribution of representation by elected officials is a vital and fascinating topic today as it was during the Regency.
We can now watch legislative sessions live-streamed, or follow issues of interest via the internet, but the doings of the government during the Regency were communicated by way of a journal that was sold by a publisher. In 1806 Thomas Hansard began producing reports of parliamentary debates in a journal published by William Cobbett called Parliamentary Debates. Hansard bought out Cobbett in 1811 and continued to publish the debates. This constituted a watchdog system of sorts.
The set-up of the voting system was ripe for reform. In the early 19th century there were two types of constituency, country areas and towns or boroughs. In the countryside only the landowners could vote. In boroughs the level of enfranchisement varied but was usually limited. The constituencies had not been changed for centuries and no longer reflected the distribution of the population. Industrial towns like Birmingham and Manchester did not have MPs of their own. On the other hand some settlements had died out but they were still represented in parliament! In ‘rotten’ or ‘pocket’ boroughs there might be only one or two voters! And we think red-lining is bad!
The early 19th century saw increasing demand for reforms. Most people wanted constituencies distributed more fairly and they also wanted enfranchisement extended, but Wellington’s party, the Tories, resisted.
The Whigs formed a government in 1830 and tried to introduce reform. The House of Commons eventually voted for a reform bill but the House of Lords rejected it. King William IV warned that he would create more peers, who favored the bill, unless the Lords agreed to accept it. Eventually the House of Lords backed down and passed the Great Reform Bill. It received the royal assent on June 7, 1832.
The franchise to vote was only extended slightly but more importantly the new industrial towns were now represented in parliament. Before 1832 Britain was ruled by an oligarchy of landowners. After 1832 the urban middle class had an increasing say.
Today Regency Reflections welcomes Dina Sleiman. Dina is stopping by to show just how much influence the Regency era had beyond the shores of England.
Although my new historical romance, Love in Three-Quarter Time, is set near the American frontier, it is also set during what would be considered the Regency period in England. And because American culture was so influenced by Britain, I think any Regency fan will enjoy reading about those influences in my book. Most of my characters come from an English background. In fact, several minor characters are directly from England. And my heroine, little trouble maker that she is at times, decides to fake a Yorkshire accent to try to impress her potential employers with her European background. The story takes place in Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson and many other members of the “planter elite class,” which gives it a sophisticated touch reminiscent of Regency England. But it’s also situated not far from the Shenandoah mountain range, which was still considered the frontier in 1817.
Let’s look at some of the elements associated with Regency culture that are seen in my book.
Fashion
1817 Regency Gown
Fashionable Americans wore the same styles as their European counterparts, and made every effort to keep up with the latest trends. In 1817, for ladies this meant higher waists than ever before and sculpted bodices. Hemlines were also higher than ever and skirts were wider and more frilled than during other times in the Regency Era. I especially give a close up look at the ball gowns of that day since my heroine’s mother is a seamstress. You’ll also see plenty of the hats, gloves, and fans that this era is known for. In men’s fashion the style had moved to trousers rather than breeches, and Hessian boots had grown passé. Although, you’ll still see these boots on some of my less fashion conscious characters.
Science
Of course scientific advances are the same in both the United States and England. The US could boast several impressive universities at that time, and plans for building the University of Virginia in Charlottesville were already underway. Let’s not forget that Benjamin Franklin had been an American innovator in science not long ago. My heroine’s sister, Patience Cavendish, has a love for science and a penchant for discussing the latest theories of heat and sound. Like her former president, Thomas Jefferson, she is very influenced by Enlightenment thinking.
Politics
Both England and America were still recovering from the War of 1812. In addition, the abolitionist movement was active in both countries. Britain had abolished all slave trade at this time, although not slavery itself. America had recently abolished international slave trade but not domestic. Of course, my abolitionist characters hope that America will keep the momentum moving toward freedom, but I’m concerned that unlike in England, it will take drastic measures to put an end to slavery in the American South.
Economics
Both countries were still recovering from the devastating effects of the “Year without a Summer” of 1816, which was reportedly caused by a volcano in Indonesia. Virginia itself was far enough south to escape the worst of the famine, but it did affect the economy throughout the US and earned several mentions in my book. It comes into play as my hero, Robert Montgomery, makes some important business decisions about his plantation.
Arts and Architecture
Monticello
The Romantic Movement was fashionable in art at this time throughout Europe and the US. My artistic character, Felicity Cavendish, is a fan of this movement. In architecture the style was called “Regency” in England and “Federalist” in America, but both were heavily influenced by the Neo-classical style. This can be seen in Jefferson’s Greek Revival architecture at Monticello and my own fictional creation, White Willow Hall.
Music and Dance
While Americans enjoyed the same cultured composers as their British counterparts, they each had their own unique folk music as well. For high society balls, the dances were nearly identical at this time. England beat us to the “scandalous” waltz, however, when the Prince Regent introduced it in 1816. The waltz coming to America is a primary focus of my book, so you’ll get to enjoy many details of the waltz and other ballroom dances, as well as a peek at the world of ballet. In fact, my heroine Constance Cavendish, turned to teaching dance to support her family after her father died, leaving them destitute. Since men were highly sought as dance masters at the time, Constance must move to the frontier in search of better employment.
Religion
A few weeks ago Reagan Walker shared an in depth article on this blog about the religion of this time in England. I loved this quote she shared from an Anglican minister about other Anglican ministers of this time. “[With few exceptions] the clergy held and taught a negative and cold Protestantism deadening to the imagination, studiously repressive to the emotions, and based on principles which found little sanction either in reason or in history. The laity willingly accepted it, as it made so little demand upon their conscience, so little claim upon their life.” My heroine’s spiritual journey is moving from this type of thinking to a warm and vibrant evangelical sort of faith, also typical of this time, thanks to my handsome circuit riding preacher, Lorimer.
Naturally, some elements in the book are purely American including Thomas Jefferson, the Monacan Indians, the tobacco plantations, and the frontiersmen in buckskin clothing, but I think you’ll find plenty of European influence to please even the most Regency-loving soul. In fact, my characters enjoy a good Austen novel as well as anyone, although the author is still anonymous at this time. I call this my “Scarlett O’Hara meets Jane Austen novel,” and I included plenty of Austen-like twist and turns for a fun, romantic read you’ll be sure to enjoy.
Explore the world of 1817 Virginia and follow in the footsteps of Constance Cavendish, the former belle of the ball, who must now teach the dances she once loved and risk her heart in order to restore her family and her faith. As the fiery Constance falls into genteel poverty, the opportunity of a lifetime may await her in the frontier town of Charlottesville. But the position will require her to instruct the sisters of Robert Montgomery—the plantation owner who jilted her when she needed him most. As Robert and Constance make new discoveries about one another, can they face their past and the guilt that threatens to destroy them in time to waltz to a fresh start? Or will the curtain close on Constance for good this time? Fans of Julie Klassen will love this original novel from Dina Sleiman! http://zondervan.com/9780310334156 Also visit Dina at http://dinasleiman.com
During Regency days, goose, venison and beef would have been the prevalent meat at Christmas feasts, not lamb. Yorkshire pudding was a common food for the lower classes, and wouldn’t have been served in aristocratic households. But these food were around (along with other familiar Christmas foods like eggnog and gingerbread) and somehow they filtered across the Atlantic with my great grandparents and down through the years onto our dining room table when I was younger. The thought makes me want to whip up a batch of Yorkshire pudding and introduce it to my family this year.
The First Nowell… sort of
Vanessa Riley:
