Author Archives: Diane Gaston

About Diane Gaston

Diane Gaston is the RITA award-winning author of Historical Romance for Harlequin Historical and Mills and Boon, with books that feature the darker side of the Regency. Formerly a mental health social worker, she is happiest now when deep in the psyches of soldiers, rakes and women who don’t always act like ladies.

Edgar Allan Poe and the Regency

Updated on October 7, 2013 by Diane Gaston

On this date in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore. The exact cause of his death are still unknown and theories have included alcoholism, porphryria (What George III had), heart problems, murder, rabies, and carbon monoxide. On October 3, 1849, after being missing for five days, a delirious Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore and taken to Washington Medical College. He was wearing clothes that were not his but never gained consciousness to explain why, nor why he was in Baltimore. He’d left Virginia the week before, bound for New York.

After Poe died, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who’d long borne a grudge against Poe, set upon destroying Poe’s reputation. Griswold wrote an obituary (under an assumed name), an article and ultimately a biography of Poe that depicted Poe as a depraved drunkard and drug addict. The biography was disputed by those who knew Poe. Poe was not, for example, a drug addict. Griswold’s hope to destroy Poe’s literary reputation backfired, though. His biography became popular and sparked a great interest and respect for Poe’s works that had been absent during his lifetime. Poe has become one of America’s literary greats, while Griswold is only remembered as his biographer.

This is interesting, you say, but what does it have to do with the Regency?

In 1815, when Poe was about six years old, he moved with his foster parents, the Allans (he was orphaned at 3 and taken in by the Allans) to Britain, attending school briefly in Irvine, Scotland, before rejoining the Allans in London in 1816. He attended boarding schools in Chelsea and Stoke Newington before he and the family moved back to Richmond, Virginia, in 1820.

During the time the characters in our books were engaging in their fascinating romances, little Edgar Allan Poe was sitting on a wooden bench nearby studying his lessons. One has to wonder what effect those years in and around Regency London had on him.

Do you have a favorite Poe story or poem?

By the way, I have the cover for A Marriage of Notoriety, book 2 in The Masquerade Club series, due on bookstore shelves Dec 17. There’s a great deal on the book at Amazon right now. You can pre-order the paperback at $3.90, almost half price

Regency Cats

Updated on September 30, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I have been more than usually obsessed with cats in the last week, mostly in the nature of keeping my hands away from their teeth. My cat bite is healing very well and the whole episode is starting to feel like a bizarre dream.

But for lack of any other blog ideas today, I went in search of Regency cats, or cats that appear in Regency art.

The first is by Gillray and is called Harmony Before Matrimony. Near a scene of blissful courtship is a little foreshadowing–two cats fighting. It was somewhat reminiscent of my cat attacking my hand. Put my hand in the place of the cat on the floor.

The next print is called Pluie de Chats. It is raining cats and dogs!

My third depiction of cats in Regency art doesn’t come from the Regency but rather is a depiction of the Regency from around 1900 by Marcus Stone whose art you see often on Regency bookcovers. This one is called End of the Story.

This one shows a typical reading experience for even today. If I’m reading, I’m very likely to have a cat trying to distract me.

If you need to waste some time (and who among us, especially those of us with deadlines, doesn’t need to waste time?) here’s a Cats in Art board on Pinterest.

That’s all for today, folks!

But weigh in…are you a cat person, a dog person, or both?

Posted in Frivolity, Regency | Tagged cats, Gillray, Marcus Stone | 17 Replies

Mad Dogs and Englishmen….

Updated on September 23, 2013 by Diane Gaston

This really has little to do with mad dogs and Englishmen, but bear with me. There is a sort of a connection.

Yesterday, the neighborhood cat came to our patio door to taunt and torture our cats and I did a foolish thing. I reached down to stop our “Devil Cat” from rushing the screen and he bit me! Good. His canine tooth sank into the skin of my palm right below my thumb. A couple of other teeth did less damage. I washed and soaked and slathered the wounds with antibiotic cream and bandaged them. Today I’ll call my doctor’s office. My hand hurts and I’m running a low grade fever but other than that, I’m not worried. My cat is current on his rabies shots and, being an indoor cat, he is never exposed to rabid animals anyway. And even if my cat had rabies, at least there is a (reputedly unpleasant) cure.

It certainly was not so in Regency England, though.

Rabies was described as early as 2300 B.C. in Babylonia. In 800-700 B.C. Homer describes Hector as being like a “raging dog.” Four hundred years later Aristotle describes dogs as suffering from a madness that is contagious and fatal to other animals who are bitten. As time goes on, rabies is mentioned all over Europe and Russia and first appears in the British Isles in 1026 A.D.

In the mid 1700s, a serious outbreak of rabies swept London. All dogs were ordered confined for one month and a reward of 2 shillings for killing dogs on the streets led to a carnage.

It wasn’t until 1804 that a German scientist demonstrated that rabies was transmitted through the saliva of mad animals, and finally in 1885 Louis Pasteur cured the first patient with his newly invented vaccine.

Nothing in the history of rabies mentioned rabid cats. Probably another way cats feel themselves superior to dogs.

I’ll let you know what happens at the doctor. Have you ever been bit by an animal? Tell us your story.

Posted in Anything but writing, Regency | Tagged cats, Louis Pasteur, mad dogs, rabies | 22 Replies

Pride and Prejudice – A Victorian Soap Opera???

Updated on September 15, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I’m continuing Myretta’s Jane Austen theme today.

The Christian Science Monitor just published an article on the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, coinciding with Bath’s annual Jane Austen Festival. The title of the article is “Victorian-era soap opera turns 200: Pride and Prejudice still resonates today.”

Doesn’t that raise your hackles?

My goodness! First to call the book Victorian-era?

One could argue whether the book was Regency, because it was published in 1813, during the Regency, or whether it was Georgian, since Austen first wrote it in 1797, but it is lightyears from being Victorian in time-period and story! One wonders whether the journalist (or title writer) ever thought to check his research on that matter? Ironically, attached to the article is a a quiz about the United Kingdom (more on that later). I suspect the writers would not score well.

Then to call Pride and Prejudice a soap opera? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The article compares the popularity of Downton Abbey to Pride and Prejudice. Now, I love Downton Abbey, but it is more a soap opera than Pride and Prejudice ever could be. Wikipedia defines a soap opera as: a serial drama, on television or radio, that features multiple related story lines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t a series. True, the book has multiple characters with multiple story lines and is heavily focused on emotional relationships, but never never to the point of melodrama! Austen did not write melodrama. She wrote with a keen observation, wisdom, and wit about people, about their strengths and weaknesses, about how they could change and grow-through love.

What’s more, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest books in literature. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest books of all time (except on one list I read yesterday and couldn’t find today to provide a link. And this list of 100 Must Read Books for Men- only one woman author there, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird). Consider this quote from Anna Quindlen:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery. (from Wikipedia)

Other than that, the article is pretty decent with some good observations from people who have the expertise to speak knowledgeably about the book.

It also includes a fun quiz – How Well Do You Know Pride and Prejudice? I scored only 80% mostly because I didn’t know enough about the film adaptations of the book. And I guessed Lizzie’s age wrong.

The article also links to another quiz – Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz. I scored 80% on this one, too, mostly because I know Regency history, but not much else!

Take the quizzes and tell us how you do!

Do you think Pride and Prejudice is a soap opera?

Posted in Frivolity, Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged Anna Quindlen, Christian Science Monitor, Jane Austen, Jane Austen Festival, Pride and Prejudice, quiz, United Kingdom | 13 Replies

Circulating Libraries and Beyond

Updated on September 9, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Aren’t we lucky that books are so available to us? Today we have so many choices. Hardback books, paperback books, ebooks. We can buy books online, in mega-bookstores, small independent bookstores, stores like Target and Walmart, even grocery stores. And we can borrow books from libraries.

The invention of the printing press paved the way for making books available to more than the rare few, but even three hundred years later, during the Regency, only the wealthy could afford to buy books. A book in three volumes could cost almost one hundred dollars in today’s dollars. Books were much more affordable when lent from the circulating libraries that abounded in every English city and village.

Some were as large and well-stocked as Hookham’s on Bond Street. Others, in villages, might consist of a couple shelves of books in a dry goods shop. Subscriptions could cost a guinea a year to borrow as many books as one wished at the more expensive libraries to a few pence per book at the smaller ones.

One thing was certain at the circulating libraries of all sizes. Novels were by far the most popular books borrowed.

It is true today, as well. The most popular category of books borrowed in libraries are novels.

Today libraries are struggling to meet the needs of our changing world, especially the changing world of publishing and the effects of the economic crisis. Budgets are being cut at the same time that new technologies are becoming more and more important.

One of the struggles involves the borrowing of ebooks. Instead of ebooks making books more accessible through libraries, the cost of ebooks, sometimes 150-500% above printed books, has made it more difficult for libraries to afford the numbers of books they might have stocked on bookshelves. In response The American Library Association has announced the launch of “Authors for Library Ebooks,” an initiative that asks authors to stand with libraries in their quest for equitable access to e-books. Kicking off the campaign are bestselling authors Cory Doctorow, Ursula K. Le Guin and Jodi Picoult. Authors can sign on to this initiative here.

The ALA has been talking to major publishers, distributors, authors and agents about solutions for library ebook lending, a solution that can be fair to everyone. I think it is so important that libraries survive to offer books to those who cannot afford them and that will include ebooks more and more as epublishing grows.

What do you think?

And….Our Elena Greene is interviewed at History Hoydens today. Let’s show her some Risky Regencies support!! (and hear more about Flying With A Rogue!)

This just in! Number One London is planning a Wellington Tour! Check it out!