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

An Economist History Book of the YearElegant, entertaining and frequently surprising. Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book ReviewThe Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted during the earlier Regency period (18111820) when the profligate Prince of Walesthe future king George IVsucceeded his father. Around the Prince Regent surged a society of contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. Capturing the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of artiststhe Shelleys, Austen, Keats, Byron, Turnerscientists and inventorsStevenson, Davy, Faradayand a cast of dissident journalists, military leaders, and fashionistas, Robert Morrison captivatingly illuminates the ways this period shaped the modern world.