Regency London

I googled "Regency London Social History" and found:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Regency+London++social+history

Read Jane Austen, George Gordon Lord Byron, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his second wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (who penned Frankenstein). The Regency Period extended from King George III's final slide into madness in 1812 when his foppish, wastrel son George IV was appointed Regent in his stead, assuming the throne on George III's demise in 1820, to George IV's own death (prematurely brought on by his spectacularly loose living) in 1830. Perhaps the most enduring artifact of The Regency Period, (though not English in origin) is the waltz. Following the exuberance of the Georgian Period, the self-indulgent Regency Period all but inevitably fostered and formed the the more staid, practical morés of the Victorian Era.

A nice collection of websites (mostly run by enthusiasts) is to be found at

the Regency Collection


The Regency Page is a huge, if not the greatest, collection of websites. (More by historians.)

Timber's list of novels describing the period is a good one. Often one can get a "feel" for a period in a novel that gets lost in the dry pages of really good hisory writing. You might want to put Thackery's "Vanity Fair" at the top of the novels list. I resisted reading this book for years, but once I got around to it in my forties, it became a favorite. Ah, that Becky Sharp.

I just want to say that "foppish" and "wastrel" are two of the greatest words in the English language. I tip my hat to you, timber, for using both of them in the same sentence.

...and applying them to the same person.