"True Stories of Regency Romance"

The Game of Hearts, Felicity Day  (TBR shelves, 2024)

My first draft started with a rant about the Bridgerton series, because my North American edition of this has a big button that read "For Fans of Bridgerton." I've deleted it as off-topic, but I will say that if I had seen the UK cover first, I'd have clicked with no hesitation to buy my copy.

Even the subtitle is better: "The lives and loves of Regency women."

In this history, Felicity Day looks at the women in the highest circles of society, the "Ton" and those who aspired to join them. She uses letters, diaries, memoirs, and newspaper articles to explore courtship and marriage, continuing beyond wedding ceremonies (to my surprise, often at home with only a few guests, and by special license) into married life. She also looks at how marriages ended, whether by death or divorce. The sources partly explain her focus on the upper levels of society, because these were the people with leisure and the means to write, whose records have been best preserved over the years. Day follows six women in detail, with a host of supporting characters - sisters and other family members, friends, rivals, in-laws. I recognized some of the names from other reading, particularly Georgette Heyer.

With chapters covering topics like "The Price of Love" (settlements and financial matters) and "The Power of Refusal" (what options women had), Day moves beyond the tropes of romantic fiction and also looks at several commonly-held assumptions about women in the Regency period. Companionate marriages were becoming the norm in this period, so parents were less likely to pressure their daughters for dynastic or financial connections. There was also no pressure for a woman to marry in her first season, lest she be considered "on the shelf" or in Georgette Heyer's phrase, an "ape-leader" in a cap at age 20 or 21. Day reports women marrying into their 30s and 40s.

I very much enjoyed meeting the Regency women featured and learning about their lives. The illustrations are both beautiful and informative. I particularly appreciated the pictures of some of the women and men featured, which helped make their stories feel more real. There are even two photographs, as Felicity Day carries some of their stories in her last chapter down into the later Victorian era. This book was more serious than I expected from the North American cover, and I'm very glad to have read it.