Hello! I’m Maureen Mackey, one of the new chairs of the Quizzing Glass blog. As my co-chair Caroline Warfield explained in her introductory post last week, the two of us will be posting frequently in the coming weeks with news and information we hope you’ll find fun and interesting.
Caroline told you a little bit about me last week, and now it’s my pleasure to introduce you to her. Here’s a mini interview I did with this prolific author, with my questions and her replies:
When did you first get hooked (and what hooked you) on the Regency era?
When my children were small, I discovered the Signet and Zebra Regencies. They were a quick read for a frantic mom. They were my secret delight and I called them “bathtub books” because I could read them while hiding, er, soaking in the tub. Along the way, I fell in love with authors like Jo Beverly, Barbara Metzger, Carla Kelly, and Mary Balogh. By the time I went to work in a public library, I had read far more than my fair share of them, and the historical romance genre was expanding. We called some of the books coming out in that era, “bent-neck novels” due to all the purple covers with the heroine bent over backward. I was delighted to share my passion with the reading public.
What is your favorite thing about the Regency – what do you like to write about?
I’m fascinated by the class structure. I find myself drawn increasingly to characters that are not of the peerage–physicians, military officers, merchants, vicars, and their families. A favorite trope is a cross-class mixed couple. In addition, as we learn more and more about historical diversity in England, I like to include that. My college degree is in history, and historical fiction–all subgenres–is my hobby horse. I like to include actual events and people in my books.
What is the weirdest or most interesting fact you’ve come across while researching a book?
I wrote a Regency novel set in Rome, just to prove to myself I could do it. It brought challenges and some interesting trivia along with them. Who was the law in Rome in 1820? (The Vatican). Did England have an ambassador? (No. They worked through Hanover’s delegation). The most amazing bit I discovered, however, was that the Jacobite heirs in 1820 (only 75 years after Culloden) were the members of the House of Savoy in Sardinia. England had reason for keeping eyes and ears in Italy.
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Caroline writes family-centered, sensual historical romance set in the Regency and Victorian eras. For more about her and her books, click on www.carolinewarfield.com