As an avid reader tucked away on an island state of Australia, I was entranced by all things British. Discovering writers like Austen and Heyer had me hooked on the extended Regency period. Here was real history in a time of wars and social change, mixed with witty fiction stuffed with joyous vocabulary. I’ve travelled the world and still feel the same. The five Bennet sisters from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice are famous in literature. Only three marry. I began to wonder what happened to the remaining two, which became my novel.
I chose the author’s last complete novel, posthumously published, instead of the more famous Pride & Prejudice, though I allow myself to re-read both once a decade. There’s a poignancy from an author who understands the consequences of missed opportunity. Anne Elliot was unwisely persuaded to reject the man she loved. Several years later she is effectively an old maid, while his fortunes have risen and make him a fine catch. Fate throws them together but old wounds run deep, creating suffering on both sides.
'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia Woolf
Jane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot, no longer young and with few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she was persuaded by others to break off her engagement to poor, handsome naval captain Frederick Wentworth. What happens when they meet again is movingly told in Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension,…
The extended period of the Regency takes us from 1789 to 1830. It’s a period of repeated war with Napoleon Bonaparte, the opening up of travel and great social and political change. Do you want to know what to wear to a ball at the Prince Regent’s Brighton Pavilion or how you might journey from London to Bath? Dr. Mortimer takes you there with a broad brush and a light touch.
'Excellent... Mortimer's erudition is formidable' The Times
A time of exuberance, thrills, frills and unchecked bad behaviour...Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history - the Regency, or Georgian England.
This is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable and the gardens of Humphry Repton; Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo. It was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality.
And like all periods in history, it was an age of many contradictions - where Beethoven's thundering…
Written more than thirty years after the Napoleonic Wars, Thackeray’s novel says a great deal about Regency morality and behaviour. Anti-heroine Becky Sharp is a penniless young woman on the make who considers morals and fair play to be a luxury. Becky moves with the changing times, aiming to advance and profit from every useful contact – particularly male. In short, she uses people and none more so than her supportive friend Amelia Sedley. As time sweeps on, Becky often goes too far but will she get her comeuppance?
William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair depicts the anarchic anti-heroine Beky Sharpe cutting a swathe through the eligible young men of Europe, set against a lucid backdrop of war and international chaos. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Carey.
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia Sedley, however, longs only for the caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour…
What to choose from this unique writer, who brought the Regency back into 21st century fashion with her large catalogue of novels? I love them all. They’re uniformly hilarious, adventurous, and full of mind-boggling, funny dialogue. Her detailed research is never more brilliantly revealed than in this novel, which is still highly prized by senior military figures as the greatest account of the Battle of Waterloo. All this, in a novel which succeeds on its own terms as a story. What more could one want?
If you love Bridgerton, you'll love Georgette Heyer!
'The greatest writer who ever lived' ANTONIA FRASER 'My generation's Julia Quinn' ADJOA ANDOH 'One of the wittiest, most insightful and rewarding prose writers imaginable' STEPHEN FRY ___________
1815, and the British and French armies are massing ahead of one of the greatest battles of all time ...
Occupied by the British, Brussels however is en fete.
And Lady Barbara Childe, renowned for being as fashionable as she is beautiful, is at the centre of all that is fashionable and light-hearted.
When she meets Charles Audley, the dashing aide de camp to…
More books have been written about Jane Austen than she wrote herself. Some are scholarly while others clearly seek the titbit which will guarantee sales. Experienced biographer Tomalin walks the sensible path through the great novelist’s life, whose works were attributed only to having been written by a lady. Facts are combined with a well-written and often entertaining narrative. The extensive book is well researched and covers the author’s nearest, dearest as well as the detested.
The novels of Jane Austen depict a world of civility, reassuring stability and continuity, which generations of readers have supposed was the world she herself inhabited. Claire Tomalin's biography paints a surprisingly different picture of the Austen family and their Hampshire neighbours, and of Jane's progress through a difficult childhood, an unhappy love affair, her experiences as a poor relation and her decision to reject a marriage that would solve all her problems - except that of continuing as a writer. Both the woman and the novels are radically reassessed in this biography.
Mary and Kitty Bennet are as unalike as two sisters may be. They are only close in age and a lack of prospects. When wealthy Sebastian Montagu returns to Meryton, Mrs. Bennet loses no time plotting a betrothal, but Kitty has spied another beau and plain Mary has no dreams of marriage. Sebastian’s mother has far higher marital ambitions for her son.
There is heartache, misunderstanding, and change for all, leavened by the wit of Mr. Bennet and the machinations of his irrepressible spouse.
The Valor of Valhalla series by Martin Kearns is a pulse-pounding dark urban fantasy trilogy that fuses the raw power of Norse mythology with the grit of modern warfare. Set in a world where ancient gods and mythical creatures clash with secret military organizations and rogue heroes, the series follows a band of unseeming heroes who are bound to an ancient prophecy. As they navigate a dangerous web of deceit, sacrifice, and violent combat, they must confront not only their own demons but also the growing threat of Ragnarök—the Norse apocalypse.
At its heart, The Valor of Valhalla blends high-stakes…
In a battle between two ancient evils, can one naïve young man become the last hope against powerful creatures of legend?
David Dolan thinks he's already got the world figured out. But when a collapsed bridge plunges him into the icy Hudson, he's pulled deep into the deadly realm that exists between life and death. And with his earthly form trapped in a coma, he's vulnerable to the horde of demons hell-bent on his utter destruction.
Traversing the road to the afterlife, David seeks the wisdom and skills he needs to fight the demonic forces reigning havoc on his allies…
