Super-Librarian <3 Sarah Tolerance
Every now and then someone sends me a URLwith a mention of my Sarah Tolerance books. And every now and then what the reader particularly likes is the anti-party-line Regency setting.
Well, of course that pleases me. The fun, or part of the fun, of writing the books is standing most or all of the Regency Romance tropes on their ear. It's almost irresistable: I used to have women come up to me, when I was writing straight Regencies back in the last millennium, and coo "Don't you wish you lived then," to which my response was generally, "Hell no." No painless dentistry? Crappy sewer- and plumbing systems? The clothes look great until you have to get strapped into a corset. And I know damned well that I would not have been the Duke's daughter, I'd have been a farmer's daughter, and probably died early from some utterly preventable disease. No thanks. But it is a fascinating era, historically and socially, and I can't quite keep my hands off it. I just want to play in the mud, not go to a tea party.
Back to the mud pit.
Well, of course that pleases me. The fun, or part of the fun, of writing the books is standing most or all of the Regency Romance tropes on their ear. It's almost irresistable: I used to have women come up to me, when I was writing straight Regencies back in the last millennium, and coo "Don't you wish you lived then," to which my response was generally, "Hell no." No painless dentistry? Crappy sewer- and plumbing systems? The clothes look great until you have to get strapped into a corset. And I know damned well that I would not have been the Duke's daughter, I'd have been a farmer's daughter, and probably died early from some utterly preventable disease. No thanks. But it is a fascinating era, historically and socially, and I can't quite keep my hands off it. I just want to play in the mud, not go to a tea party.
Back to the mud pit.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 9:37 AM
3 Comments:
Madeleine, have you ever read The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thomson? It's the classic work on the political upheavals of the turn of the nineteenth century, a tremendously engaging and moving book. It should be forced upon (perhaps thrown at) anyone who expresses the wish to have lived in that era.
No, I haven't, Greg. (Adds book to long list of must-find-and-read.)
You haven't? Seriously, Mad: if you go to Amazon.com, call up the title, and browse inside the book, you will find yourself seized by the need to consult it before proceeding much farther in Sarah 3. It's really something you should have, and you will find it tremendously affecting.
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