num_pages: 366
description: The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (18111820) began when the profligate Prince of Walesthe future king George IVreplaced his insane father George III as Britains ruler.Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism elegance and brutality exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen Lord Byron the Shelleys John Constable and J. M. W. Turner. Science burgeoned during this decade too giving us the steam locomotive and the blueprint for the modern computer.Yet the dark side of the era was visible in poverty slavery pornography opium and the gothic imaginings that birthed the novel Frankenstein. With the British military in foreign lands fighting the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the War of 1812 in the United States the desire for empire and an expanding colonial enterprise gained unstoppable momentum. Exploring these crosscurrents Robert Morrison illuminates the profound ways this period shaped and indelibly marked the modern world.
language: English
title: The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company