Georgette Heyer's Regency World (32 page)

Clara Reeve (1729–1807):
Following in the footsteps of Horace Walpole and his famous Gothic novel
The Castle of Otranto
, Clara Reeve won renown for her 1777 book
The Champion of Virtue, a Gothic Story
, later renamed
The Old English Baron
. She also gained acclaim for her enduring study of the evolution of writing from epic to romance to novel in
The Progress of Romance
.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797):
An early feminist thinker and writer, Mary Wollstonecraft worked as a teacher, translator and literary advisor before publishing two landmark texts:
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
(1787) and
Vindication of the Rights of Women
(1792). In 1792 she went to Paris and met Gilbert Imlay, an American businessman with whom she had a daughter (and who Drusilla Morville in
The Quiet Gentleman
thought she would have liked better than Mr Godwin). They were never married but his infidelities led her to two suicide attempts. The couple gradually moved apart and in 1796 Mary again met William Godwin and they became lovers. They married in 1797 after Mary became pregnant and she died ten days after giving birth to a daughter who would as Mary Shelley, one day, write
Frankenstein
.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851):
Mary Shelley was best known for her novel
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
(1818), written in response to a challenge laid down by Lord Byron at a congenial gathering of literary friends during a summer at Lake Geneva. The daughter of the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft and the writer William Godwin, Mary eloped with the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 1814, and married him after his first wife’s suicide in 1816.

Influential Men

Lord Amherst, William Pitt 1st Earl of Amherst (1773–1857):
Pitt was a diplomat and in 1816 embarked on a diplomatic mission to China. Meg’s husband Lord Buckhaven accompanied him there in
Cotillion
. The mission was not a success but in 1823 Lord Amherst was appointed governor-general of India.

Henry Peter Brougham, later 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868):
A noted intellectual and lawyer, in 1802 Brougham helped to found the
Edinburgh Review
making regular contributions which helped to establish the journal as one of the foremost political periodicals of the nineteenth century. In 1810 he entered parliament as a liberal Whig with a concern for reform, and spoke out against slavery and in favour of public education and legal reform.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824):
Educated at Harrow and Cambridge, Byron received poor reviews for his early work. He travelled extensively in southern Europe, enjoyed a dissipated life, and returned to England with ample new material for his verses. In 1812 he gained overnight fame with the publication of the first two cantos of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
. Dark and handsome, fêted and adored by upper-class society, he became the model for the ‘Byronic hero’. In 1815 he married the heiress Annabella Milbanke, from whom he separated the following year. His earlier affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, his rakish lifestyle and rumours of a liaison with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, eventually saw society turn against him, prompting Byron to leave England, never to return. He died at Missolonghi in Greece.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822):
Elected to the Westminster parliament in 1794, Castlereagh became a brilliant war minister who consistently supported the British campaign against Napoleon. He appointed Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) to command the army and in 1812 became foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons. He was married to Lady Castlereagh, one of the patronesses of Almack’s.

Coke of Norfolk, Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1754–1842):
Owner of Holkham Hall in Norfolk, Coke (pronounced ‘cook’) was an agricultural pioneer who invested much of his energy in his estate, to the benefit of both his tenants and his purse. Overcoming stubborn resistance to new farming techniques and crops (he was among the first to grow wheat successfully in Norfolk), in less than forty years Coke increased his annual rental income from £2,000 to £20,000. Eager to share his farming success with others, Coke played host to the Holkham Clippings, an annual three-day event to which many people—including Adam Deveril of
A Civil Contract
—came from all over the world to learn and share ideas about farming. A successful and energetic Whig MP, Coke held his seat in parliament for 57 years.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834):
Best known for his poems
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
and
Kubla Khan
, Coleridge was one of the founders of English Romanticism. He studied at Cambridge and met the poet Robert Southey with whom for a time he became a pantisocrat and (with Drusilla Morville’s father in
The Quiet Gentleman
) made plans to create an equitable community on the banks of the Susquehanna. Instead he married Sara Fricker (Southey married her sister Edith) and continued writing. His career as a poet was adversely affected by ill health and an opium addiction, but he continued to write and lecture, producing a weekly paper called
The Friend
as well as critical and theological works, plays and, in 1817, his famous
Biographia Literaria
.

William Godwin (1756–1836):
Novelist, philosopher and political writer, Godwin had been a dissenting minister but became an atheist with decided views as to the true nature of man. He believed in the power of reason and that rational behaviour could enable people to live harmoniously without laws or institutions. In 1797 he married the famous writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) and Mary Lamb (1764–1847):
Charles and Mary Lamb were brother and sister who spent much of their life together writing plays, poems and prose works. Charles had become responsible for his sister in 1796 when, in a fit of insanity, she had tragically murdered their mother. Mary continued to suffer from intermittent seizures, but was devoted to her brother who also suffered from occasional bouts of madness. The two are best known for their children’s book
Tales from Shakespeare
.

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848):
The son of the famous Whig hostess, Lady Melbourne, William may have been fathered by the Earl of Egremont. A dutiful son and a kind, amiable husband, William married Caroline Ponsonby in 1805 and quietly endured her affair with Byron and her many other indiscretions. The birth of a mentally disabled son was a personal tragedy and added to his disinclination to deal with harsh realities. The death of his elder brother, Peniston, in 1805, made him heir to the title and he entered the House of Lords as a Whig conservative. He was Queen Victoria’s first prime minister.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830):
A talented artist from his youth, Thomas Lawrence was a renowned portrait painter who, in 1792, succeeded Sir Henry Reynolds as the King’s principal painter. He painted many of Europe’s most notable figures, including the heroes of the Napoleonic Wars (and also Nell, Lady Cardross, in
April Lady
). He lived for a time at 65 Russell Square where he undertook private commissions at a cost of more than 400 guineas for a full-length portrait. Knighted in 1815, Lawrence became president of the Royal Academy in 1820.

Matthew Gregory ‘Monk’ Lewis (1775–1818):
Lewis became known as ‘Monk’ after the publication, in 1796, of his popular Gothic novel
Ambrosio, or The Monk
. His writing influenced Walter Scott’s early poetry and Lewis collaborated with him and Robert Southey on
Tales of Wonder
(1801). As a liberal he was concerned about the treatment of slaves and twice visited his Jamaica plantation before dying of yellow fever in 1818.

Lord Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1770–1828):
The longest-serving of all British prime ministers, Liverpool entered parliament in 1790 and became prime minister in 1812, overseeing the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, and consolidating the position of his ministry with both the parliament and the people. Although not in favour of many of the reforms proposed during the period, Liverpool was an astute and responsive politician who addressed many of the economic issues of the day. He believed strongly in public order and the rule of law and his government’s introduction, in 1819, of the Six Acts in response to the Peterloo massacre was strongly criticised.

Louis XVIII, King of France (1755–1824):
The younger brother of Louis XVI, who was executed during the Revolution, Louis XVIII left Paris in 1791 and went into exile, eventually settling in England. When Napoleon was defeated and sent to Elba in 1814, Louis returned to Paris as King. He enjoyed a brief reign before Napoleon’s escape from Elba and unopposed entry into Paris—at which point Louis and his family beat a hasty retreat from the city. He regained the throne after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo and was the first French monarch to reign with an elected parliamentary government.

Prince William of Orange (1792–1849):
Heir to the Dutch throne, William lived in exile during Napoleon’s rampage across Europe, spent two years at Oxford and served under the Duke of Wellington (who described him as ‘a stupid, untidy and dissolute young man’) in Spain, where he was known by the general staff as ‘Slender Billy’. In 1813 the Prince Regent, feeling that the Dutch fleet would be a useful addition to the British navy, encouraged his daughter to accept the Prince’s marriage proposal. The engagement was broken off, however, and William married the Tsar of Russia’s sister, Anna.