MAD & BAD

A pop-history look at England’s Regency era, a time period popular in the romance genre.

Koch is one of the owners of the Ripped Bodice, a Los Angeles–area bookstore “dedicated to romance.” In her debut book, the author examines the Regency (1811-1820), when George III’s illness rendered him unfit to rule and his son was installed as Prince Regent. After a cursory introduction to George III, Koch launches into stories of women who lived before, during, or after the Regency period. The author cannot explain the importance of the Regency period, however: “Ten short years in the grand scheme of history….What about the Regency continues to draw us in? I wish I had an answer (I would make millions of dollars).” Her lack of clarity about the Regency’s relevance makes the text rambling and unfocused. Koch organizes brief biographical sketches into chapters according to women’s relationships to men, to their interests, or to their own identities. Although the author notes that men controlled the historical narrative, she does little to examine how that negatively influenced the record of women in history. Much of the book features gossipy retellings of women’s lives during the period and how they were connected—or not. Several times, Koch cites fictionalized dialogue from films to support her claims. In a chapter on historical accuracy, Koch focuses on the lives of Mary Seacole and Dido Elizabeth Belle, two black women, to showcase the rich diversity present in London during the 19th century. However, the author inexplicably ends the chapter with the story of Princess Caraboo, a character created as an elaborate scam by a white woman named Mary Baker. Koch is unconvincing in her argument that Baker “shows us that everything we and her contemporaries think and thought about nineteenth-century women barely scratches the surface of the truth.”

A disjointed work that adds little to our understanding of the Regency period.