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Home / Historical Periods / Georgian & Regency Britain / Regency Era

Period

Regency Era

1811–1820 CE

The Regency Era formally covers 1811 to 1820, when George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent during the illness of George III. In cultural terms, it is often used more broadly for the fashionable late Georgian world of assemblies, marriage markets, seaside resorts, clubs, gambling and social performance. London, Bath, Brighton and country-house society provide the most recognisable settings.

The Regency was polished on the surface but unstable beneath it. Class hierarchy, debt, inheritance, enclosure, industrial unrest, political surveillance and women’s limited legal independence all shaped the period. Its manners mattered because they controlled access to marriage, money, reputation and survival.

Jane Austen is central to Regency reading, especially Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Georgette Heyer turned the Regency into a major historical-romance setting with novels such as Regency Buck, Frederica and The Grand Sophy. Modern Regency fiction and series often use Austen’s social world as a starting point while adding crime, servants’ lives, colonial money, queer histories or the darker economics behind polite society.

Related people for Regency Era

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852 Beau Brummell1778–1840 Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849 George III1738–1820 George IV of the United Kingdom1762–1830 Jane Austen1775–1817 Louis XVIII of France1755–1824 Napoleon1769–1821 Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin1766–1841 Tom Cribb1781–1848 Tom Molineaux1784–1818 William Wordsworth1770–1850

Series

Series about Regency Era (2 series)

Alastair-Audley in Order

by Georgette Heyer 4 books 4.5

The Alastair–Audley novels form a loose multigenerational sequence linking Georgian family drama with the Regency and the Battle of Waterloo. These Old Shades introduces Justin Alastair and Léonie, while Devil’s Cub follows the next generation through their son, Dominic. Regency Buck shifts to Judith and Peregrine Taverner under…

Regency Romances in Order

by Georgette Heyer 20 books 4.5

Georgette Heyer’s Georgian and Regency romances are standalone novels rather than a continuous narrative, but they share a meticulously reconstructed social world of inheritance, marriage settlements, gambling, debt, travel, military service and aristocratic convention. Arranged here in publication order, the collection moves from the powdered fashions of the…

Books

30 Best Novels About the Regency Era

Bestselling authors first, then star rating.

Non Fiction

1 Non-Fiction Book About the Regency Era

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