Robert Morrison (1) (1961–)

It’s 1811 and England has a problem: the current king, George III, is experiencing periodic bouts of madness, leaving the country with no other choice but to appoint a regent. Alas, the king’s eldest son (also George) probably isn't anyone’s first choice! An indulgent, narcissistic bounder, George proves a tone-deaf, disengaged leader, presiding over a decade that turns out to be a boon for aristocrats, merchants, artists, and rakes, but a disaster for England’s lower classes due to show more a variety of unchecked injustices, including laws that made food artificially expensive, laws that limited access to the previously public lands that small farmers relied on for firewood and grazing, exploitative labor practices, and Highlanders expelled from their land by greedy landlords.

This book tells the story of the Regency years, 1811-1820, a relatively short period during which a great deal of pivotal social and political history transpired. The book is organized by topic, to include:

• Politics – Primarily focused on the ongoing disputes between Whigs and Tories, between politicians bent on preserving the prevailing oligarchy vs. politicians determined to introduce reforms
• Warfare – The Duke of Wellington, the final years of the Napoleonic Wars (including Waterloo), and the War of 1812
• International exploration & trade – The state of slavery in the English colonies; the exploration of the Arctic; the looting of the Elgin marbles; China, Turkey, and the East India Company
• Art – The contributions of Lawrence, Wilkie, Constable, and Turner
• Literature – Walter Scott and the invention of the historical novel; Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and a baker’s dozen poets, including Byron, Shelley (the leading radical poet of the Regency), Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge
• Journalism – Particularly focused on the hard-hitting liberal journalists like Hazlitt, Lamb, Hunt, and political cartoonist Crookshanks whose critiques of George and his politics often landed them in courts and jails
• Social trends & mores – The golden age of libertinism, pornography, and pleasure gardens; the hypocrisy of the Regency’s attitude towards homosexuality; and the phenomenon of England’s first celebrity, Lord Byron.
• Social unrest – The Luddite movement, Ribbonmen vs. Orangemen, labor unrest (including the massacre at Peterloo), poverty, slums & rookeries, and the death-knell of the Highland way of life
• Crime & punishment – Infamous crimes, the era’s grotesquely cruel legal code (nicknamed “the Bloody Code”), ghastly prisons, the early years of the penal colonies of Australia, the Bow Street Runners, and the birth of the legal reform movement
• Fashion & consumerism – Beau Brummell’s enduring influence on fashion, the first shopping malls
• Architecture & landscaping – Kent, Repton, Hardwick, Nash, the construction of the magnificent Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and the creation of Regent Park
• Engineering & science - Trains, chemistry, macadam roads, and the surprising significance of the invention of a safe headlamps for mining

Found this to be an entertaining, informative read, though not without a few weaknesses. For instance, Morrison spends waaaay more time than justified on literature and poetry, to include long summaries of novels and poems that serve no real scholarly purpose, however hard he tries to make the case that they do. He relies heavily on 5-6 primary sources, quoting from them again and again, creating the impression (almost surely unjust) that his research runs shallow. His storytelling is competent but nothing exceptional. And what analysis there is is superficial: Morrison’s a sound historian, but he’s no McCullough, Goodwin, Ambrose or Chernow.

Having said that, I have no compunction recommending this to others as a sound, thorough, entertaining and illuminating summary of the Regency years – a fascinating period during which England began to separate from its feudal past to embrace the trappings (human rights, scientific innovation, consumerism) of the modern world. show less

1811-1820. Has there ever been such a decade? Sections on Scott's inventing of the historical novel, Austen writing the greatest ever novel about love (P&P), Shelley's Frankenstein, Polidori's Vampyre, Percy Shelley's revolutionary thinking, the dissipation of the Regent, sexual hypocrisy, prostitution, politics, Napoleonic wars, the War of 1812,arctic exploration, the rise of recreational drug use ("opium eaters"), tourism, sports, science, shopping, and so much more--a wonderful window show more into the period. Impressive breadth of knowledge.

Byron's impact discussed as the "first celebrity": a phenomenon "that sought to exalt supremely talented individuals into secular divinities and to transform consumers into fans who bonded together in sometimes frenetic attachment to the object of their shared adoration." "Byron united personal notoriety to much older and nobler notions of poetic fame, and steadily eroded the lines between creative genius and meretricious celebrity in order to fashion a public persona of unprecedented international appeal." "His reputation as a handsome, brooding, antisocial elite stands clearly behind Austen's portrait of Darcy," and "[t]he modern stereotype of the passionate, sexually charismatic, died-too-young rebel is indebted primarily to Byron," later seen in the "flamboyance of self-destructive rock stars and in the striking number of ways in which Byromania anticipates Beatlemania." "Byron--as poet and pugilist, artist and showman, aristocrat and insurgent--was the brightest star of the Regency."

On Don Juan: "One of the greatest poems of the Regency as well as a remarkable compendium of its fascination with sexuality....It contains vulgar innuendo, sexual slang, and lewd puns,together with accounts of "Philogenitiveness"....There are scenes of nudity, seduction, premarital sex, extramerital sex, and rakery....Above all, Byron packs his poem with audaciously contradictory references to female sexuality....Sometimes Byron speaks of women with great respect,...he clearly sympathizes with women...Outrage--from friends and enemies alike--greeted Byron's poem. He was unapologetic.The Christian world [Milton] sought to justify, Byron knew, was unraveling. In Don Juan he could see the consuming, desiring, sexual, secular modern world coming clearly into view." It is "the funniest long poem in the English language and one in which Byron exploits the promiscuities of the Regency to submit sexual double standards, identities, and experiences to the most searching interrogation they had ever received." show less

I shouldn't be so profligate with my 5 star reviews, but ... this biography is to me the epitome of "compulsively readable." De Quincey was a fascinating and deeply (hoo boy how deeply) flawed individual, and Morrison brings his life and times before the reader with an almost painful vividness.

Regency England lives on in novels and romances, making nonfiction about these significant years so vital to get a more realistic sense of the era. I always forget that the Regency period was when Spencer Perceval was killed, the only time a British prime minister was assassinated, when computers were first thought of, authors like Austen, Byron, and Shelley write, and British society struggled to grapple with massive social-economic gaps. Overall, this history is expansive and approachable, show more and definitely worth reading for those interesting in exploring the Regency period outside of fiction. show less