I’d like to welcome my friend Cait Reynolds today as she takes us along for a trip down the research rabbit hole finding cats in the margins. I’ve heard it said that the more thing change, the more they stay the same, and I’m pretty convinced it’s true. Though I write historical fiction that reflects the attitudes and understandings of the times, human beings are still pretty much the same then as they are now. … Continue reading →
I’d like to welcome Jude Knight today as she shares a fascinating article on the role of camp followers during the the Georgian and regency era. To our modern minds, it seems strange to think of civilians, including women and children, travelling into combat zones. Yet until the second half of the nineteenth century, civilians were an essential part of how armies worked. Collectively, anyone who followed the army that was not a soldier was called a … Continue reading →
I’d like to welcome Abigail Reynolds today. We’ll be discussing just how likely was a Napoleonic invasion of England during the regency era. “[France] must destroy the English monarchy, or expect itself to be destroyed by these intriguing and enterprising islanders…Let us concentrate all our efforts on the navy and annihilate England. That done, Europe is at our feet.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, 1797 What if Napoleon really had conquered England as he had planned? When … Continue reading →
I’d like to welcome Kyra Kramer today as she shares a fascinating article on Regency Medicine and how it was more medieval than modern. There would be significant changes in health care in the later decades of the 1800s, with the emergence of germ theory producing biomedicine as we would recognize it by the Edwardian age. The Regency, however, was in some ways the last gasp of medieval medicine – a Tudor merchant would be more … Continue reading →
I’d like to welcome Kyra Kramer today as she shares a fascinating article on consumption–known today as tuberculosis–during the regency era. Medical anthropology is the study of how culture frames health, illness, and medicine. Since cultures change over time, you can also look at medical anthropology from a historical perspective. For example, the way British people during the Regency era conceptualized consumption – AKA tuberculosis – was very different from the way people in the … Continue reading →
