From unwanted proposals and lingering looks across ballrooms to a wet-shirted Mr Darcy emerging from a lake, the romantic stories of Jane Austen – and their countless adaptations – have captured the hearts of many of us. But, if we turn to the real historical record of the Regency era, how much truth is there to these tales of happily ever after? As a nod to Valentine's Day, Lauren Good speaks to Rory Muir about the reality of love and marriage in the age of Jane Austen, from engagements and elopements to going on honeymoon with your mother-in-law.
(Ad) Rory Muir is the author of Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen (Yale University Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Marriage-Age-Jane-Austen/dp/0300269609/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Life of the Week: Stalin
James Longstreet: Confederate Judas
Medieval popes: everything you wanted to know
A history of song: from Schumann to Sting
Boston Tea Party | 4. The crackdown
Aztec warfare
History Behind the Headlines: Elections, ‘panda diplomacy’ and the word of the year
How spies shaped the modern world
The Habsburgs: everything you wanted to know
The medieval Welsh Marches: identity on the frontier
Boston Tea Party | 3. The destruction of the tea
Sherlock Holmes: the real history that inspired the detective stories
Life of the week: Queen Victoria
Merry Christmas from the HistoryExtra podcast
Druids: everything you wanted to know
Bannockburn: Robert the Bruce’s greatest victory
Boston Tea Party | 2. The Sons of Liberty
Amazing Grace: a story of salvation and slavery
Life of the week: Amelia Earhart
Nazi Germany: the myth of the innocent bystander
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Dan Snow’s History Hit
Gone Medieval
History Unplugged Podcast
Not Just the Tudors
History Daily