I'm writing a fantasy book about a world with a technology roughly similar to that of the early Georgian period of England. I need a book that can tell me what life was like for both the wealthy, middle class, and poor Something like Ian Mortimer's "The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England" would be great. (But he hasn't written that book yet, or, I can't find any mention of it!) I can find Romance novels, and books about women's clothing, and architecture, but little on the real scoop on everyday life and the political changes going on in this turbulent period. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
When London Was Capital of America (2010) by Julie Flavell Benjamin Franklin secretly loved London more than Philadelphia: it was simply the most exciting place to be in the British Empire. And in the decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution, thousands of his fellow colonists flocked to the Georgian city in its first big wave of American visitors. At the very point of political rupture, mother country and colonies were socially and culturally closer than ever before. In this first-ever portrait of eighteenth-century London as the capital of America, Julie M. Flavell re-creates the famous city’s heyday as the center of an empire that encompassed North America and the West Indies. The momentous years before independence saw more colonial Americans than ever in London’s streets: wealthy Southern plantation owners in quest of culture, slaves hoping for a chance of freedom, Yankee businessmen looking for opportunities in the city, even Ben Franklin seeking a second, more distinguished career. The stories of the colonials, no innocents abroad, vividly re-create a time when Americans saw London as their own and remind us of the complex, multiracial—at times even decadent—nature of America’s colonial British heritage. London 1753 (2003) by Sheila O'Connell This is a selection of quotations, poems, anecdotes and extracts about London over its long history, illustrated with specially commissioned location photography and a variety of scenes from rarely exhibited watercolours, prints and drawings in the collection of the British Museum. (commentary on it: "This book is not a conventional narrative with chapters; it is the guide to an exhibit at the British Museum, and would have been sold at the time to those who had seen the artifacts on display. Yet it is also a well researched and interesting look at London at a specific time frame. It includes small stories about events now forgotten, but well known at the moment they occurred. The reader will find several events and trivia they did not know before reading it, and I have gone back to it several times just to browse.") The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (1996) by Hobsbawn This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace by Worsley Kensington Palace is now most famous as the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, but the palace's glory days came between 1714 and 1760, during the reigns of George I and II . In the eighteenth century, this palace was a world of skulduggery, intrigue, politicking, etiquette, wigs, and beauty spots, where fans whistled open like switchblades and unusual people were kept as curiosities. Lucy Worsley's The Courtiers charts the trajectory of the fantastically quarrelsome Hanovers and the last great gasp of British court life. Structured around the paintings of courtiers and servants that line the walls of the King's Staircase of Kensington Palace-paintings you can see at the palace today-The Courtiers goes behind closed doors to meet a pushy young painter, a maid of honor with a secret marriage, a vice chamberlain with many vices, a bedchamber woman with a violent husband, two aging royal mistresses, and many more. The result is an indelible portrait of court life leading up to the famous reign of George III , and a feast for both Anglophiles and lovers of history and royalty. (for a history of debutantes of customs of wealthy young women) The Season (2019) by Richardson The story begins in England six hundred years ago when wealthy fathers needed an efficient way to find appropriate husbands for their daughters. Elizabeth I’s exclusive presentations at her court expanded into London’s full season of dances, dinners, and courting, extending eventually to the many corners of the British empire and beyond. Richardson traces the social seasons of young women on both sides of the Atlantic, from Georgian England to colonial Philadelphia, from the Antebellum South and Wharton’s New York back to England, where debutante daughters of Gilded Age millionaires sought to marry British aristocrats. She delves into Jazz Age debuts, carnival balls in the American South, and the reimagined ritual of elite African American communities, which offers both social polish and academic scholarships.
There may be some useful resources related to other European nations, if you aren't specifically interested in England, but the period itself. Empress Maria Theresia, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great overlap with the first half of the Georgian period. For a military reading, my favourite Napoleonic researcher has a detailed and cross-referenced article on the armies and tactics of Frederick the Great. The same author compiled a similar article on the French/English wars of the 18th century. For an insight into politics, I can't suggest one specific book but a wider research into the life of de Talleyrand. Less known that the bigger names around him (Napoleon, Louis XVI., Emperor Alexander, etc.) - but all the more influential and pretty much a fellow who "shaped" the outcome of the Napoleonic wars. Even more so if you also give some consideration to the conspiracy theories around him (his arrangement of Napoleon's escape from Elba, for example).
I'm not tied to England, it was just a convenient naming convention to describe that era. Well, that, and as an American, the Georgian era had a strong hand in shaping my nation's future. But the political situation was a European movement. Your suggestions regarding the French/English wars and Tallyrand resonate with me! Thanks!
