The Regency Years

During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern

By: Robert Morrison

Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell

The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's 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.

©2019 Robert Morrison (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Boring

I don’t know if it is better when actually reading the book, but this was boring and I didn’t feel like I learned anything. I really wanted to stop listening. Listening it felt like a bunch of quotations strung together.

Good book, not so great reader

This is one of the better books on the period I’ve come across. It does a great job of connecting historical and social developments to artistic and literary developments. It even has some original and astute insights about familiar literary works like Pride and Prejudice, which I wasn’t expecting from a history book.

Unfortunately it was pretty unpleasant to listen to this reader. He’s not the absolute worst I’ve heard, but close. I would highly recommend reading this book rather than listening to it.

Surprising

All new info to me. I especially liked hearing about the rampant drug use by famous people. I thought only modern morons did that.
The whole book from start to finish was a surprise to me.
It was well read and captivating all the way.

a favorite on repeat

I just love this time period. it's so different from ours and yet so much is still the same

Ok

The tolerable history I suppose… I did enjoy that it spent an entire chapter with several sections on sexuality, which tends to be left out of many books.
However the narrator seems to have mispronounced several words on purpose, including Byron's 'Don Juan' pronouncing it 'Don Jew-on'- and as it is mentioned pretty much every paragraph for at least a chapter 2, it starts to really great on the nerves…
The author also seems to take some kind of thrill in making lists, I cannot help but be reminded of a high school student trying desperately to pad out an end of term paper. Instead of just saying "the arts and sciences" he goes onto list 10 to 14 different professions, and these lists are pretty much constant depending on the topic. It gets pretty annoying to be perfectly honest…
I don't need a list of 14 to 25 different names, professions, trades, houses, roads, artists, architects, poets, writers, economic viewpoints,… Yeah it's like that except go on for at least another 10.