We were delighted to be included in “Blame Jane: Romance Novels 2019–2020: What’s so great about Regency romances anyway?”, a wonderful Publisher’s Weekly article about the ‘new’ Regency romances that are being published, novels that are changing the way we, as readers and writers, see the stories, the characters, and the history of the period itself.
The article by Betsy O’Donovan, a journalism professor at Western Washington University, includes discussion and quotes from such great authors as Anna Harrington, Jo Goodman, Vanessa Riley, Christina Courtenay, Evie Dunmore, and Betina Krahn. Fair Use guidelines preclude us from republishing the article here, but we thought we’d include a few of lines of our input to entice you into going and reading the entire piece.
Excerpted from
Blame Jane: Romance Novels 2019–2020
What’s so great about Regency romances anyway?
by Betsy O’Donovan, Publisher’s Weekly, 11 November 2019
Defending the Crown
“Readers are infatuated with the Regency; let’s give them something more,” says Nikoo McGoldrick, the storytelling half of the married duo behind the pseudonym May McGoldrick (Highland Sword, St. Martin’s, Mar. 2020). “As writers, you take a popular period like Regency, lure the readers in, and then do what Charles Dickens did: you show them life.”
[….]
Rethinking What’s Regency
Jim and Nikoo McGoldrick believe there’s much more to say about the dramatic events that shaped the Regency era. These issues may have been discussed at Almack’s and other social clubs, but they’ve generally been avoided in the genre.
“You have revolutionary forces at work and colonialism is running rampant, and it’s driving governmental actions,” Jim McGoldrick says. “People are fighting in the streets. The industrial revolution is in full gear. Rape and pillage is the order of the day.”
Though ballrooms provide a glittering backdrop, many Regency authors are acknowledging that the people dancing there were ruled by a mad king and a licentious prince, were confronting a politically active middle class that vehemently opposed the concentration of wealth and privilege, and were just beginning to see the cracks in their empire.
“In our Regency,” McGoldrick says of this new wave of romances, “we love Jane Austen, but Pemberly is in danger of being burned to the ground.”