Regency Novel - Classic Regency Fiction

Classic Regency Fiction

This includes works which were actually written between 1811 and 1820, during the Regency era, which is well known for romantic fiction, including the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Susan Ferrier, Maria Edgeworth, ETA Hoffman, and Jane Austen, who is perhaps the best-known author from this period, with many of her novels having been adapted into film in recent years. All of these writers published most of their best-known works during this period. While not novelists, the poetry of writers such as Lord Byron, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and John Keats are worth mentioning, as most of their best-known works were also written during the Regency.

Many of these classic Regency writers are also associated with Romanticism, which is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Western Europe in the late 18th century. Romanticism expressed a revolt against the aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period which preceded it. Works during this period stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as anxiety, horror, and the awe experienced when confronting the sublimity of nature. All of these themes are evident in the best-known classic Regency works.

A marriage based on love was rarely an option for most women in the British Regency, as securing a steady and sufficient income was the first consideration for both the woman and her family. This is most likely why this period yielded so many examples of literary romance: it gave many women the opportunity to live vicariously through the novel's heroine, who generally married someone she loved deeply.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1818, also falling within the Regency era. Some consider it to be the single piece of British literature that best reflects the interests and concerns of the time, specifically the fascination with and fear of the science and technological advances of the times. It is a classic example of horror fiction.