For Love of Kitty: A Regency Romance

For Love of Kitty is the first in a series of stories set in the Georgian age, the early eighteen hundreds in England. It was the era of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. King George lll being ill his son George eventually is made Prince Regent and ruled in his stead.

England was at war with Napoleon and the officer class was made up of aristocrats, mainly second and third sons but sometimes the heir to a title. So many were lost that there was a shortage of suitable men for the daughters of the aristocracy to marry. Alliances were made by families, usually the mothers, and they were in despair of finding a suitable husband for their daughters. The girls were brought up to expect a marriage in which they had no emotional say. Kitty has no mother to work on her behalf which is why the tabbies of the ton were able to cause so much trouble for her. The eruption of Tambora volcano caused even more problems with the failure of crops due to the dreadful weather during the ‘year without a summer’ as it was labelled. England was in a precarious position where instability of production by major landowners put pressure on a countryside full of returning soldiers with no work and no homes to go to. The aristocratic government made it worse by passing a law that it was illegal to sleep rough.

Books were bought and read by only the educated which gave rise to the lives of the wealthy being the central characters. In the years to come as literacy increased, the lives of the poor came to the fore in the novels of Charles Dickens.