Customer Reviews

Georgette Heyer's Regency World

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As the patroness of two online discussion lists, Janeites, for Jane Austen Fans, and the Georgette Heyer discussion list, I am just the audience who Kloester's is aiming at with this book, and I have to say she absolutely hit the mark! This is an extraodinary book and one which I will be happily recommending.

I get questions all the time from people who want to write Regency novels and are looking for a good overall book to guide them, and from others who want to know more about the REgency and Georgian world which Heyer inhabited for her unique Drawing Room romantic/comedies. Generally I give them an outline of a series of books which they could read which will give them some background, but there has never been a truly comprehensive book which is both academic, readable, spefcific to the period and general enough to cover everything but still give a confident grasp of detail. This book finally does and well done to Kloester for acheiving that.

Her chapter summaries at the start give you a very good idea of the information covered so you are able to go to what you want immediately - chapters include Up and down the social ladder, Town and country, Man's world, Gentle Sex, on the town, Pleasure haunts, Fashionable resorts, Getting about, What to Wear, Shopping, Eat, Drink and be merry, Sporting life, Business and the military, whos who in the Regency includes extremely useful appendixes such as glossary of cant terms, newspapers and magazines, book in heyer, timeline, reading about REgency, where to go next and so forth with some excellent references for easy access - I was also flattered to find my own website in the www addresses so thanks for that too Jennifer.

I was surprised to see a reviewer saying that there was no new information in this. I strongly contest this. Kloester has done more than simply rehash old information, she has provided some new insights for me (I never knew for instance that Rotten Row) was originally Rue de Roi - or street of the King - but she has used her extensive knowledge of Heyer novels to reference items in the REgency.

This is not the sort of book where you can find analysis of Heyer's novels one by one - Hodge's excellent work, the Private World of Georgette Heyer which has just been reissued is definitely the book for that. However you can read about REgency life in here with reference to Heyer's novels.

I would highly recommend this to all Regency fans, those who wish to write a novel, and those who simply wish to understand more in one handy reference book. This is an excellent jumping off point for further reading, but it is also an extremely good book for any fans of the REgency knowledgeable or otherwise. I will definitely be reading anything else Kloester publishes!

A Woodley

This is, as the title suggests, a guide to the general Regency era, focussing on the upper classes, rather than a companion to Heyer's work in the sense of a list of characters, etc., although it does have a list of her Regency novels and a brief synopsis of their plots, and uses her novels as illustrative examples. It is extremely readable and informative as a narrative, and would make a good permanent addition to Regency fans' bookshelves.

What sets it apart from other works on the Regency is its value as a reference work. The information is presented in a very straightforward, well organized, and highly specific. As an example, Kloester has a handy table giving amounts of money, coinage, slang terms and values. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to write about this era. Most guides to the era are too vague to be useful in finding the sort of period details one needs, and most of the writers' guides that I have seen lump the entire 19th century together, and lack sufficient depth. As a reference work, I could wish that the index was more detailed; for example, the author explains what negus is, but it isn't indexed. The very detailed table of contents makes up in part for the indexing.

The book is illustrated with a number of black and white drawings. These are helpful, although one might wish for a series comparing developments in fashion silhouettes, for example.

The work includes lists of famous people, generally British, a glossary of slang arranged by subject, newspapers and magazines, books mentioned by Heyer, a timeline, a fairly detailed map of English regions, and lists for further reading.

Another great reference work is The Regency Companion by Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa L. Hamlin. The two cover a lot of the same material, but have slightly different emphases. Kloester dwells a little more on the nuts and bolts of everyday living, Laudermilk and Hamlin discuss more of the broader European scene. I am glad to have both.

"Georgette Heyer's Regency World" the book is called and it's GH's fantasy take on the Regency and not the real era that is the focus of this book. The author uses Heyer's novels as reference and then try to prove that she was right! Since this is done without naming sources the academic and historical value is low if not non-existent. At best it's an expansion of the fictional world of Heyer's books, not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but as a reliable reference it falls way short. For those that want to know more about the real Regency two accessible recently published books are "Jane Austen: The World Of Her Novels" by Deidre le Faye and "Prince Of Pleasure: The Prince Of Wales And The Making Of The Regency" by David Saul. I recommend working in this book in your budget for fiction but for real reference works on the Regency I suggest you find something a little more useful.

This is a very helpful reference book to those who read and enjoy the novels of Georgette Heyer. There are descriptions of places, clothing, customs and language which gives more of an insight into the situations in which the novels are set. Almost every point seems to be backed up with reference to one of the Regency Romances so it certainly helps to have read them all to understand these comparisons, not that they are strictly necessary.

What irritated me about it was that she uses Heyer's language throughout - she'll describe someone as "a real top 'o the trees" (for example - not sure if she DOES use that example) rather than "an excellent horse rider and sportsman". Although she supplies the glossary, if you weren't familiar with Heyer's writings you'd need to look up most of the body text of Kloester's text. I can't understand why she didn't use modern language for her modern audience and I found it grated very quickly. It's a book to read in short bursts as a reference, not all the way through.

It also read rather like a thesis to me - continual reference to the primary sources, the novels - sometimes unnecessarily. Lots of the information was helpful but I couldn't help feeling that it needed the language to be more detached from Heyer's own words. It's meant to be a modern reference book, not a Regency one.

To any lover of historical fiction and, more particularly, any lover of the sublime Georgette Heyer and her irrepressible heroines, this book is a MUST! I was rather pleased with myself when I realised that I had absorbed vast amounts of historical detail through reading all of her books and found only one garment for which I lacked a name...that of the tiny jacket with a high neck, long sleeves and which came to just under the bust. I'd seen these in the movie "Pride and Prejudice" when the sisters went out to take their walks but needed only a shoulder covering for the day time, and was pleased to discover that these garments are called "spencers", nothing to do with the rather ugly undergarments which are still worn today under our clothes, in the winter. Jennifer Kloester covers every dimension of life in Regency times from the clothes, food, manners and pastimes of the upper classes and the charming little sketches make everything clear. It's delightful read and could almost be classed as a "coffee table" book as it's one of those books which is perfect for picking up and dipping into when the reader has a few moments to fill in.

Please Note: This review is for the Kindle version, not the printed. I am in no way negatively reviewing the content of the book.

UPDATE: Much thanks to Silicon Valley Girl, who brought to my attention that it can take a while for the Kindle to index a book to make it searchable. I have never experienced a length of time like that before. It took a WHILE, but it finally did, so at least I can search now. Still perturbed by the lack of title names in the table of contents.

I've been meaning to get Georgette Heyer's Regency World for quite a while, being a huge fan of her work and of the time period in general. I finally bought it for the Kindle, wanting a quick reference at my fingertips, only to be extremely frustrated.

There is no index and, strangely, the content was not searchable for over a week. Though there is a table of contents, the chapters are not titled further than "1", "2", "3" etc. So if I was to find the one tiny bit of information I was looking for at any given moment, I would have had to either read the book from beginning to end or actually go onto Google Books, look at the preview and attempt to find my way on my Kindle from there.

But NOW the book is searchable, and the book has proven to be very informative with little nuggets of information that are easy to get to that way, anyway.

The target audience - fans of Georgette Heyer's regency novels - will find this book redundant. There is very little new information for a consistent reader of GH. The drawings, though sweet, are a trifle boring.

And if you're not a fan of GH or regency novels, you may find yourself at sea. The author assumes a lot of background knowledge about GH and the regency - and if you already have that background information, you don't need this book.

I expected it to be more informative about the regency period itself. Maybe some authentic regency illustrations, etc.

It's an okay read, but something of a waste of money and time.

My copy arrived a few days ago and I had expected to read it quickly before sharing it with friends. However, one glance showed me this book will be an excellent reference I will keep and come back to many times.

Even if you are fairly knowledgeable about the words, phrases and descriptions used in Heyer novels, this book, with it's tightly packed 366 pages of material, will almost certainly give you new insights-and also will be a convenient, one-stop resource for overviews of Heyer's books, a timeline of events in the Regency Period, a glossary of cant (slang) words, lists of famous people, and a bibliography for further reading.

All of that is in addition to chapters on the social ladder, homes in the town and country, men and women and gender isses, the "season", clubs, resorts, vehicles, fashions, shopping, food, drink and menus, sports, business and the military and Who's Who.

My only frustration (rather than complaint) is about the illustrations. They have been praised in some circles for their detail and the fact that Graeme Tavendale and Ms. Kloester had never met until the book was in publication, so he worked from sketches and descriptions provided by the author. However, they are too small to allow the reader to appreciate the details. I understand the cost of printing--but the book would have been even more interesting with much larger illustrations. I finally got a magnifying glass to allow me to see the layout of Bath and Brighton, the architecture of a townhouse and others. The town layouts should certainly have been half pages or preferably full pages. The cover on this edition is also bland and uninformative compared to the cover shown on other sites as being the one released in 2005 in England. (That makes me wonder if in that edition, the illustrations were larger.)

However you feel about the illustrations I don't see how you could be disappointed in the book itself. There are plenty of references to Heyer books and an abundance of "behind the scenes" information.

Georgette Heyer's Regency World is meticulously researched, deeply informative and highly entertaining. Jennifer Kloester gives a broad introduction of the Regency period. I'd loosely associated the Regency period with the dashing lords of the romance novels -- a period close to the Napoleonic Wars and of glittering social affairs of the ton. Kloester explains that the true Regency period only covered 9 years - beginning when George, Prince of Wales, was sworn in as Regent on Feb 5, 1811 and ended when he was proclaimed King George IVon Jan. 31, 1820. Though a short period, the Regency period was a time of change with industrialization and the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Kloester describes the society of the period and shares what life was life both for the aristocracy and the gentry as well as for their many servants. Her coverage of the "Upper Servants" and the "Lower Servants" gives a clear and interesting picture of a wealthy household. We learn exactly what it would have been like for each of the different members of the staff from their daily responsibilities, housing, salary, position, status, to their living quarters. Kloester introduces us to what it meant to serve as steward, groom of the chambers, butler, valet, housekeeper, head housemaid, lady's maid, footman, coachman, groom stable boy, housemaid, kitchen maid, scullery maid, and laundry maid.

In the chapters At Home in Town and Country, On the Town, The Pleasure Haunts of London, The Fashionable Resorts, and Getting About, Kloester gives us a fuller grounding of the architecture, neighborhoods, clubs, and locations that the fashionable and wealthy frequented. She doesn't just write about the development of the fashionable district of Mayfair, but also maps out the spots that are often mentioned, (Piccadilly, Bond Street, Park Lane, Grosvenor Square, Hyde Park, Westminster, Berkeley Square, Curzon Street, St.James Street) so that we have a sense of where these places are in relation to each other. Through illustrations and careful description, we are given a clear picture of what a house would have looked like, what amenities were available and how each residence would have been used during the period. Kloester weaves in characters and passages from Heyer's novels which adds to our understanding of the period and makes Heyer's stories even richer.

The chapters A Man's World, The Gentle Sex, What to Wear, Shopping, Eat, Drink and Be Merry, The Sporting Life, and Business and The Military give fascinating details of different aspects of everyday life. The boxing clubs and men's social clubs, slang, legal arrangements, trusts and legacies, type of education, Almack's and its patronesses, the Upper Ten Thousand, social calls and the many rules of etiquette and behavior that ruled everyone's lives.

Jennifer Kloester's Georgette Heyer's Regency World is a fascinating and delightful read. It is sure to interest and satisfy readers with a particular fondness for works set during the Regency period and/or Georgette Heyer novels.

ISBN-10: 1402241364 - Trade Paperback $14.99

Publisher: Sourcebooks (August 3, 2010), 416 pages.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Georgette Heyer's Regency WorldThis book is the ultimate guide to Heyer's marvelous novels, giving readers complete and often delightful explanations of Regency Speak. No longer will phrases such as 'a honey-fall,' 'within ames-ace,' and 'toad-eat' cause a twinge of incomprehension--with Jennifer Kloester's book to hand we can be fully informed in a matter of seconds.