Regency Recollections

de Rees Howell Gronow

This book is a manual of Regency etiquette -- the correct way to dress, get invited to a ball, lose at the gaming table, fight a dual or elope. This book is the best contemporary account of life between 1810 and 1820. This book is an ideal companion to Jane Austen and Regency literature. Captain Rees Howell Gronow was a dandy, a debtor, a duellist and a raconteur who lived the high life in Regency London and Paris. A witty soldier and socialite, he was also a talented writer, and his memoirs form the liveliest picture of Regency society ever produced. A contemporary noted that Gronow "committed the greatest follies, without in the slightest disturbing the points of his shirt collar." An epitome of style, the personification of the man about town, he devoted his life to fashionable and exciting pursuits. And he lived in exciting times. He was a Waterloo veteran, knew the obnoxious Prince Regent, mixed with the imperious Beau Brummell, and, generally, was at the heart of a very high society. Inevitably, Gronow's lively memoir is inhabited by a cast of belles, courtesans, dandies, duellists, eccentrics, gamblers, heroes, millionaires, mistresses, matriarchs, and more. As a debtor seeking refuge in Paris, Gronow would produce these astonishing anecdotes which remain an outstanding source for historians. This edition presents Gronow's Regency recollections in an accessible form, aimed at the general reader as much as the aficionado. Here, all the fascinating details of Regency life put on their gaudy show: how to get invited to a ball, how to fight a duel, how to make a successful elopement, how to win (and just as importantly, how to lose) at the gambling table, how to wear the right trousers. It is more than a manual to Regency style; it is a record of a life well lived and a life brilliantly remembered. - Jacket flap.