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Home / Historical Periods / Georgian & Regency Britain

Period

Georgian & Regency Britain

1714–1837 CE

Georgian and Regency Britain spans the long Hanoverian age from 1714 to 1837, including the reigns of George I, George II, George III, George IV and William IV. It was a period of dynastic adjustment, imperial expansion, commercial growth, social display and political reform. Britain changed from a post-Stuart kingdom into a global power with a widening public culture of newspapers, theatres, assemblies, coffee houses and political argument.

The period saw aristocratic confidence alongside urban poverty, expanding trade alongside slavery and abolition, and elegant social rituals alongside riot, crime and war. London, Bath, Edinburgh, Bristol, Liverpool and the country house world all offer different views of the same age. Its social codes, inheritance rules, naval power, colonial wealth and reform movements shaped the lives of people at every level of society.

This is the natural home for Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and Frances Burney, as well as Georgian-set historical fiction by writers such as Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Antonia Hodgson, Stacey Halls and Susan Stokes-Chapman. Winston Graham’s Poldark novels belong partly in this world of mining, class tension, coastal trade and political unease. The period works especially well for series about inheritance, scandal, crime, smuggling, abolition, country houses, London streets and families navigating a changing Britain.

Related people for Georgian & Regency Britain

Abraham Lincoln1809–1865 Allan Breck Stewartc. 1722–c. 1791 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852 Beau Brummell1778–1840 Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881 Bernard Montgomery1887–1976 Bernardo O’Higgins1778–1842 Caroline of Ansbach1683–1737 Catherine Blake1762–1831 Charles Edward Stuart1720–1788 Charles II of England1630–1685 Charles James Fox1749–1806 Colin Roy Campbell of Glenurec. 1708–1752 Daniel O’Connell1775–1847 Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849 Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth1757–1833 Edward Vernon1684–1757 Fletcher Christian1764–c. 1793 Frederick Douglass1818–1895 George III1738–1820 George IV of the United Kingdom1762–1830 George Washington1732–1799 Giuseppe Garibaldi1807–1882 Harriet Tubman1821–1913 Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston1784–1865 Home Riggs Popham1762–1820 Horatio Nelson1758–1805 Hyder Ali1720–1782 James Mor MacGregorc. 1695–1754 James Stewart of the Glenc. 1698–1752 Jane Austen1775–1817 John Graham, 1st Viscount Dundee1648–1689 John Moore1761–1809 Joseph Chamberlain1836–1914 Lachlan Macquarie1762–1824 Lawrence Washington1718–1752 Lord George Gordon1751–1793 Louis XIV1638–1715 Louis XVIII of France1755–1824 Louis XV of France1710–1774 Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948 Napoleon1769–1821 Olaudah Equianoc. 1745–1797 Philip Astley1742–1814 Prince William, Duke of Cumberland1721–1765 Richard Brinsley Sheridan1751–1816 Robert Clive1725–1774 Robert Peel1788–1850 Rob Roy MacGregor1671–1734 Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin1766–1841 Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald1775–1860 Thomas Stamford Raffles1781–1826 Tipu Sultan1751–1799 Tom Cribb1781–1848 Tom Molineaux1784–1818 Victoria1819–1901 William Blake1757–1827 William Bligh1754–1817 William Grant, Lord Prestongrange1701–1764 William II of the Netherlands1792–1849 William Pitt the Younger1759–1806 William Wordsworth1770–1850 Winston Churchill1874–1965

Series

Series about Georgian & Regency Britain (3 series)

Georgian Saga in Order

by Jean Plaidy 11 books 4.3

The Georgian Saga follows the Hanoverian dynasty from George I and the divided household of George II to George III, the Regency and the accession of Victoria. The novels combine royal marriages, mistresses, succession disputes and parliamentary politics with the private tensions that shaped Britain’s eighteenth- and early…

Historical Romances in Order

by Georgette Heyer 9 books 4.3

This collection brings together Georgette Heyer’s historical novels set outside her main Regency-romance sequence. The settings range from medieval England and France to the Norman Conquest, Elizabethan maritime conflict, the escape of Charles II and the Peninsular War. The list follows the ordering supplied by the Fantastic Fiction…

Wideacre in Order

by Philippa Gregory 3 books 4.1

The Wideacre trilogy is a Georgian Gothic family saga centred on a fictional Sussex estate and the Lacey family’s struggle to possess it. Beginning with Beatrice Lacey’s determination to overcome male-only inheritance, the novels follow the consequences of her choices through the next generation and eventually to an…

Books

30 Best Novels About Georgian and Regency Britain

Bestselling authors first, then star rating.

Non Fiction

12 Non-Fiction Books About Georgian and Regency Britain

Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.