The “Traditional” Regency is a subgenre of the historical romance field whose style, tone, and mores were imitated by and solidified by Georgette Heyer and followers like Clare Darcy, Marion Chesney, and after that so many great authors I still read again and again such as Carola Dunn, Jo Beverley and her early books, Kasey Michaels, another favorite, I could go on and on. These are comedies of manners, which doesn’t mean they’re funny, though the tone is generally fast-paced and lighter than historical romances. These books were squeaky clean. If a couple was married or even indiscreet beforehand, we received no graphic details about their relationship. At one time, about the time I got interested in the genre, every publisher had a traditional Regency line, including some smaller presses. Regency readers were smart, savvy, and up on the time and details of the Regency.
Then the genre died. Door after door closed to the traditional Regency. Those of us who preferred it to the steamier replacements were reduced to reading our old books over and over again, or giving in and just skipping a few pages here and there.
But why did this happen?
Cinnamon. Photo by Wiki Commons.
Yvonne of the Regency information web site http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/regency explains the problem with a story about something that happened in Sweden, her home country, in the 1930s.
“Back in the 1930s there were two toothpaste companies that basically shared the market. The bigger brand had about 70% of the market and the runner up 30%. The most popular toothpaste had mint taste, not surprisingly, while the other had cinnamon. Market researchers told company #2 to switch to mint also, since it was the more popular taste. So they did. But… People that liked mint toothpaste still bought brand #1, while all those that had bought the cinnamon tasting toothpaste certainly weren’t interested in mint. Company #2 folded due to lack of sales.
The bottom line: Publishers never understood, or rather, wanted to accept that Regencies, like cinnamon toothpaste, are a niche market. Not even in their heyday did they appeal to the general mass market.”
Some claim authors gave into reader and/or publisher demand for steamier love scenes. Some claim the stories got too hung up on historical facts and not enough on character and story. Still others say the problem lay in too much inaccuracy in the stories and readers got disgusted.
Although all of the above are contributing factors, the bottom line is what is usually the situation in business—the bottom line in the accounting books. The traditional Regency just did not sell enough books. Authors moved on to bigger books for which they could get higher advances and more room for character and plot development.
Yet readers still wanted—still want—the traditional Regency. Thanks to digital books and the Christian market, readers can get them again. Many of the authors of the traditional Regency have gotten the rights to their books and made them available through Amazon and other e-book venues. My first Regency was sold to the family friendly–translate squeaky clean—Avalon Books. Family Guardian won the National Readers Choice Award for Best Regency in 2007 (and may end up available digitally now that Amazon owns Avalon). That opened the door for me to sell Regencies in the Christian market. Many others have come along, too. Love Inspired publishes Regencies on a regular basis.
My bottom line on this is that readers are the driving force and will cry out for cinnamon instead of mint until someone makes it available.
(My thanks to the ladies on the Regency fans Yahoo group for their input on this subject and for Yvonne for giving me permission to quote her.)
So interesting, Laurie Alice. I loved Jo Beverly, too. And you are so right about having to skip pages if you find an ABA Regency. Except sometimes you have to skip half the book! Contrary to what a couple friends think, I do like Regency. Especially when there is danger, mystery, or suspense weaved in. I read Family Guardian before we met. Picked it up at the library and fell in love with Clarissant and Tristan. So what a joy it was when I met the author. Blessings.
Finally! What a relief and JOY it is to hear someone mention Marion Chesney’s name! I can’t tell you how many readers I know who haven’t heard of her. She’s my all-time favorite Regency writer. I’m glad she’s still writing cozy mysteries as M.C. Beaton, but I miss her Regencies so much!
Laurie, I set out wanting to write Regencies like Chesney’s…fun and rollicking. It didn’t even occur to me to put sex in them. As a teen, I read Victoria Holt and other writers who left the bedroom door closed. In other words, I wasn’t a big reader of torrid romance and had no idea that my sweet little books would have trouble selling.
Well, if you’ve read my Regencies, you’ll see they have explicit sex scenes. It turns out a lot of women like them and the market demands them. But I’m sad for the readers who hope a traditional read in my stories and obviously don’t find that. I’m thrilled to know you’re keeping that niche alive. Thank you so much, and I wish you much success–may that traditional niche flourish and expand!!!
And thanks again for mentioning Marion Chesney.
:>)
I really appreciate all your insight into the Regency period and market. the mint vs. cinnamon model is such a great example of what marketing seems to forget.
I loved this article. I was reflecting just yesterday on how glad I am that Christian Regency has developed as a genre. I cut my teeth on Elizabeth Mansfield and Joan Smith. I was always thought the squeaky cleanness of Regencies would blend well with Inspirational Fiction.
I’m certainly not the Regency expert that many of you ladies are, but since my new novel is set in 1817 Virginia I wanted it to have that comedy of manners feel. I wanted it to have the love triangles and twists and turns of an Austen novel like Emma. I also wanted more than two points of view to come closer to Jane’s omniscient narrator that could take us into multiple heads. I wasn’t sure how that would all turn out when it came to finding a publisher, but Zondervan picked it up within a few weeks. Probably the American setting made it an easier sell. I’m so happy they kept my five points of view, though. I was worried about that. Love in Three Quarter Time will be the launch title for the new Zondervan First imprint in September.
Great post! I do think that ebooks will help bring back traditional Regencies. Signet, one of the major publishers of print traditional Regencies years ago, is starting to bring out new traditional Regencies in ebook form. As one of their authors, I’m grateful for the opportunity, but as a reader I’m even more grateful to see new books from some of my favorite authors.
Me, too, April! I’m so excited yours are coming out again!!! I hope I won’t offend any inspirational readers, but I would like to be able to read a traditional Regency without the inspirational elements added in–the Signets I grew up with didn’t have that element, and those are the books I feel very nostalgic for.
But I hope both types thrive!!!
Kieran, I think that’s the hole in romances these days–all the sweet historicals I know of have inspirational elements. Why not traditional regencies without inspirational? Again, it’s the readers’ choice. The romance market is huge. Surely there are tons of readers for both inspirational and non-inspirational traditional regencies.
That said, I write traditional regencies without inspirational. What I do write is comedy.
Oops, I should say, I write mainly sweet. But always comedy.
Linda, you’re a writer after my own heart. I want to read one of your books!!! :>)
This was such an interesting post, and it’s nice to know there are others who wish there were more “squeaky-clean” Regencies. I happen to write a “clean” mystery series set in the Regency period that is about London’s Jewish community (it’s called the Ezra Melamed Mystery Series), and it’s been interesting to see that the series also appeals to Christian readers who love mysteries but don’t like all the violence, etc., that is typical of so many mysteries written today. I hope that more readers will “cry out for cinnamon,” as you say.
Finding Patricia Veryan’s books was literally a God-send for me. I love Regency, but I could no longer pretend that the graphic scenes being tossed in with more frequency were easily skipped. My eyes kept grabbing hold of them and…well…not good. I have a library full of Georgette Heyer and Patricia Veryan. In lieu of reading the new trash, I read these wonderful stories over and over and over and over and…
It’s actually a distribution, retail issue that led to the Regencies not doing well in print. At 4.99 a book, they did not earn the money that a 6.99 or 7.99 book would earn. When bookstores switched over to looking at profit per foot, small books were dumped off the shelves (this included Westerns by the way, and other books that didn’t earn per foot).
The other issue was that we went from hundreds of distributors who knew their territories and who knew what sold locally to six national distributors. These major distributors only looked at national sales, not localized sales. Again, westerns, horror and other genres that used to do well locally showed up as doing terrible back numbers.
The publishers went to “book clubs” to try to get Regencies to the readers–but the high price of mail (and the cost of paper going up) killed that.
Now we’re seeing traditional Regencies do great as ebooks–mine sell very well online. It’s all about the readers being able to find these books–there’s a demand for them. With online, distribution, paper costs, shelf space all go out the window and we’re back to getting readers the stories they want.
Great article! Thanks for doing the work to bring this information to us!
This is fascinating stuff! Thanks for the analysis, Laurie Alice – and wow, informative comments, too!
April, I am thrilled that Signet and authors with other publishers who have their rights back, are putting the books into digital form.
And to have your wonderful stories available is a treat to Regency readers.
Shannon, absolutely it was distribution. It was the bottom line. No distribution meant no sales and no sales meant no distribution. I wonder if Amazon had been around during the hayday of the trad Regency if perhaps it would have survived longer. With the free shipping option, people would have purchased more of them, I’m thinking.
I still think the hike in paper costs were partly to blame — Amazon might have helped, but publishers are structured so they can’t really make money on a book that costs less than 7.99 these days (which is why they’re fighting the lower ebook costs). They have too much overhead in New York.
Oh, Patricia Veryan. She is so important to my love of the genre that I dedicated my first inspirational REgency, A Necessary Deception, to her memory. I read her books again and again.
She made all sorts of mistakes, and her stories are so amazing I forget to care.
Dina, yes, I think you can have a plantation/country house feel to a story, and kudos to Zondervan for having this new and up-and-coming format to explore new venues and places and times for Christian historical romances.
I had to laugh at a review of Lady in the Mist, which takes place in Virginia, but has an English hero in 1809. She obviously didn’t like Regencies and was pretty obnoxious about this being a Regency. Not even close, but I guess my hero had that Regency hero tone to him.
I am thankful to Yvonne Forsling for the mint/cinnamon analogy. Brilliant, as this lovely lady is. I recommend checking out her site for reviews and great Regency information including a page on colors used during the time period.
By the time I moved out of YA section for my reading, most of the traditional regency lines had already faded away or become difficult to obtain if you didn’t know where to look. Now, with my Kindle, I’m discovering a whole new world of reading that I’d missed before. Special thanks to Laurie Alice for telling me to read Marion Chesney several months ago!
I love Georgette Heyer’s regency novels, and I’ve been enjoying some others. I hear that they are making a bit of a comeback. I hope so.
Just because a certain genre has fallen out of favor with the mass market doesn’t mean their readers have disappeared. Like Shannon said, readers of westerns and horror as well as readers of regencies have been shortchanged by the major publishers in recent years. But these genres do well as ebooks. ebooks will make a lot more genres available all over the world. I once sent email to a Jane Austen fanatic in Singapore. Regency isn’t just in our back yards anymore. It’s all over.
And I don’t believe in skipping the pages I don’t like. If I buy a book, I read the whole thing. I buy a book for the story. While I don’t mind some sex, I refuse to spend my money on books where half the book is sex. We’re talking personal preferences here, and I don’t apologize for my tastes to anyone. A lot of people have insulted me because I don’t want to read reams of sex, and I’m very tired of it. If I can respect their wishes for more sex, they can respect my wishes for less.
YOu’re right, Linda. One should read the whole thing when one buys a book; therefore, I have found myself buying fewer books because sex has replaced story in too many.
Your reading preference is not unique and, regardless, should never be ridiculed. That others feel the same way is obvious in the growth of the inspirational market and the success of traditional Regencies in e-books.
As consumers, all we can do is vote with our Visas.
Don’t forget Clair Darcy! I love the traditional Regency books, too.
Ah, I see you did mention Clare Darcy. Some people have never heard of her, and she was brilliant.
I love Georgette Heyer. That said, I write spicy Regencies. I think there is a place in the market for all heat levels. At the end of the day, it’s all about having a great story.
Gerri, I could never forget Clare Darcy. Georgina was the second Regency I ever read. I stayed up half the night to finish it, reading beneath the covers, then fell asleep in church the next day. Probably not something an inspirational author should admit.
Ella, No one is dissing your place in the market. It is your choice, and many excellent long historicals with steam have been published. Note I mention Jo Beverley up there. What we are trying to get across is that we want more of our niche in the market.
We want cinnamon, not mint.
This analogy especially struck me because I love cinnamon.
Erin Knightley’s debut, More Than A Stranger has no love scenes–and it’s a single title Regency romance! Perhaps her book will lead a new trend.
And Erin is an absolute doll of a person. I wish her HUGE success!!! :>)
That’s great to hear of a single title without love scenes. I hope it does really well. Who published it?
Signet Eclipse published MORE THAN A STRANGER by Erin Knightley. My library has a copy. I just put in a request for it.
Kieran, I understand that the inspirational element isn’t for everyone, though we must remember that most people then held stronger religious/Christian views than do people now, so the inspirational element is not inaccurate or out of place when done correctly and in context.
And the traditional Regencies with which I fell in love hold a moral tone I greatly appreciate, a sense of propriety too often missing later.
Oh, I agree totally, Laurie Alice, that it’s very hard to make a reasonable explanation of how a sense of propriety can desert young ladies in the Regency era when they were brought up to adhere to that high moral standard that precludes premarital sex. In my books, my heroines do everything but have intercourse until they’re married–but I also understand how that scenario can be just as much of a stretch. It’s tough. I have to find a motivation for them that overrides everything they’ve been taught. I have to find a vulnerability.
Whether you enjoy reading books in which people eventually succumb to–or are able to resist–temptation depends upon your own personal preferences, of course. My own opinion, which I offer respectfully to my fellow writers and readers of Regency romance, is that there are wonderful themes to be explored in both.
Thanks so much for writing this. I have to agree that readers are abandoning what I always felt was the draw of Regency: the social mores of the day, the ladylike decorum, the gentlemanly manner, “approved” behaviors, sometimes confining morals, the societal expectations which could make one miserable but still must be observed. I so object to “Regency” authors imposing 21st values on their characters without any 19th century consequences, I blogged about it here: http://amindwandering.blogspot.com/2012/07/note-to-self-face-consequences.html.
The beauty of Austen and Heyer, as well as the Bronte sisters who followed (and Dickens, Scott, even Balzac), were their insistence on providing very real consequences and moral absolutes to their characters. Sense and Sensibility would have lost all its punch had Elinore Dashwood disregarded Edward Ferrars’ fiance or his honor and pursued her own interests, or if Marianne ran off with Willoughby after he married the heiress to appease his aunt. Can anyone imagine Jane Eyre eloping with Mr. Rochester after she finds out about his crazy wife? or Edmund Bertram marrying Mary Crawford despite her lack of moral compass? These moral dilemmas make the stories the masterpieces they are. I truly pity readers who swap substance for titillation. They haven’t the faintest idea what they are missing.
Interesting post, Laurie Alice. Thanks.
Thank you for this post! I love both Jane Austen’s and Georgette Heyer’s Regencies. I’ll have to check out those other authors you have mentioned that have written clean, well-written books. I love traditional Regencies, but think there should be at least one good descriptive kiss after the engagement. I hate the books where the non-hero and heroine have seven descriptive kisses in the middle of the book and the poor hero is alowed one hardly-mentioned peck! Does the author not think the hero is worthy for the heroine to love? Laurie, I read Family Guardian several years ago from the library. I’m going to have to get some of your inspirational books to read!
Sylvia, I am so glad you’ve discovered new authors through this post. And that’s wonderful that you found a copy of Family Guardian. You can read excerpts from my books on my web site http://www.lauriealiceeakes.com
As to the kiss, yes, at least one and preferrably, when appropriate, two or three between the hero and heroine, at important turning points in the story.