Review: 'Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency' by Bea Koch

Famously, 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' was how Lady Caroline Lamb described Byron. Of course Byron is now well-known across the world for both his writing and his shenanigans. (I mean, who brings a bear to college?) Lady Caroline Lamb, however, is sadly much less (in-)famous. Thankfully Bea Koch is here to rectify that, with a rousing gallery of Regency ladies worth risking danger for! Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 9/1/2020
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Discover a feminist pop history that looks beyond the Ton and Jane Austen to highlight the Regency women who succeeded on their own terms and were largely lost to history -- until now.
Regency England is a world immortalized by Jane Austen and Lord Byron in their beloved novels and poems. The popular image of the Regency continues to be mythologized by the hundreds of romance novels set in the period, which focus almost exclusively on wealthy, white, Christian members of the upper classes.
But there are hundreds of fascinating women who don't fit history books limited perception of what was historically accurate for early 19th century England. Women like Dido Elizabeth Belle, whose mother was a slave but was raised by her white father's family in England, Caroline Herschel, who acted as her brother's assistant as he hunted the heavens for comets, and ended up discovering eight on her own, Anne Lister, who lived on her own terms with her common-law wife at Shibden Hall, and Judith Montefiore, a Jewish woman who wrote the first English language Kosher cookbook.

As one of the owners of the successful romance-only bookstore The Ripped Bodice, Bea Koch has had a front row seat to controversies surrounding what is accepted as "historically accurate" for the wildly popular Regency period. Following in the popular footsteps of books like Ann Shen's Bad Girls Throughout History, Koch takes the Regency, one of the most loved and idealized historical time periods and a huge inspiration for American pop culture, and reveals the independent-minded, standard-breaking real historical women who lived life on their terms. She also examines broader questions of culture in chapters that focus on the LGBTQ and Jewish communities, the lives of women of color in the Regency, and women who broke barriers in fields like astronomy and paleontology. In Mad and Bad, we look beyond popular perception of the Regency into the even more vibrant, diverse, and fascinating historical truth.

Who has seen the trailer for Bridgerton? If you haven't, do yourself a favour! The Bridgerton books are some of the many set during the Regency period, which are so often pushed aside as "mere romances" or "bodice-rippers". However, the Regency was a fascinating decade during which many of England's most famous authors and poets thrived. In order to understand the "vibe", I guess, of the Regency period, just the tiniest bit of (literary) history may be worth delving in to here, so bear with me as we go through a few English regal eras. Firstly, the Georgian period, which lasted roughly from 1714 to 1830 and is the period during which Romanticism truly began to thrive, with a steady helping hand from Gothic literature. When you think Romanticism, think Percy Bysse Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and of course Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. 

Towards the end of the Georgian Period is when the Regency occurred, which formally lasted for a decade, from 1811 to 1820, when George IV stepped in as regent for his ill father, George III. (So  many Georges!) However, when looking at the period's trends and their development, the period is also considered to have lasted from 1795 to 1837, when Queen Victoria's reign begins. The Regency was a period of high cultural and artistic achievement, as the Prince Regent was a key patron of many artists, including some in this book! There was also a large class divide, with the rich truly rich and the poor truly poor, which lends a darkness to the glamour and glitz of the period.

Now, this long preamble exists to give us a backdrop to the women Bea Koch discusses in her Mad and Bad. Koch shows us how women were able to thrive in the arts, to enjoy power through high society rules, and to break those rules as long as the did so quietly. But Koch also shows us the dark side of this, the slide into poverty, the cold shoulder when they had been too loud, the quiet disappearing once you're no longer popular. Koch divides her book into various sections, each looking at a different group of women. We have the Hostesses, the high society women who decided who was (and crucially who wasn't) invited to the season's key events. We have actresses who astounded the audience and then disappeared. Jewish women who kept up intercontinental correspondence, women who contributed to the sciences and the arts. It's quite inspirational to read about this women, which was surely the point. There are names that might be familiar, like Dido Elizabeth Belle, butt here also will be many that the reader has never heard of. What Mad and Bad does well is show the wide variety of lives possible during the Regency period, as well as the diversity of the English population itself, hopefully adding to the growing number of nails in the coffin of the idea that the English population was solely white until, let's say, the 1960s. 

Mad and Bad is clearly a passion project. Bea Koch, one of the owners of the Ripped Bodice bookstore, has a deep love for the Regency era and its women, which shines through in how she speaks of them. Each little biography is well-researched, if perhaps not exactly investigative. The tone is kind and enthusiastic but therefore perhaps also lacks a bit of rigour. It feels as if you've settled down with your cool aunt, who is ready to drop some brilliant facts over a glass of red wine. This means that as an introduction to the fascinating women of the Regency Period, Mad and Bad is perfect. For those looking for an in-depth or academic breakdown, I'd recommend continuing the search. What Mad and Bad has done is address some of my own preconceptions in regards to the Regency Era and its women, which means my Christmas will be spent watching Bridgerton.

I give this book...

4 Universes.

Although perhaps not the deepest book, Mad and Bad is a great introduction to the various women who made the Regency period fascinating! Sure, Lord Byron is fascinating, but honestly Caroline Lamb and her aunt Georgiana sound like the people I'd want to hang out with. Wordsworth might be it for some, but I prefer Mary Anning digging up fossils.