From JStor: The British Regency era lasted less than a decade, but it spawned a staggering number of unlikely fictional marriages… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
On December 25, 2020, Netflix released Bridgerton, a book-to-screen adaption of Julia Quinn’s popular romance novel The Duke and I. Only four weeks after its debut, the series reportedly became one of the streaming giant’s most-watched shows. According to Netflix, around 63 million households immersed themselves in this steamy historical romance.
Romance is one of the most lucrative fiction genres, a billion-dollar industry featuring stories full of banter, courtship, and smoldering chemistry. The Bridgerton books represent just one example of a wildly popular subgenre: the Regency romance. Some common tropes found in these stories include an anachronistically independent heroine who must contend with strict social rules, a Season packed with balls and dances, vicious gossip that spreads like wildfire, and a happily-ever-after with a reformed rake of a duke (or viscount).
The real-life Regency period lasted less than a decade (from 1811 to 1820). It began when King George III was deemed too mad to rule the United Kingdom. His son, George IV, was appointed to act in his stead as Regent, or proxy ruler. And during this nine-year period, the aristocracy flourished. Fashionable society was known as the le bon ton, French for “in the fashionable mode.” In Catherine Gore’s 1841 silver fork novel, Cecil, one of the characters eulogizes George IV’s reign as “holiday time for people intent upon promoting the greatest happiness of the smallest number,” notes scholar Winifred Hughes.
So how did an entire subgenre of literature spring up around a few thousand rich people who lived during the 1810s?
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