Dark Days of Georgian Britain: Rethinking the Regency, by James Hobson - book review
We all know that Victorian England was a horrible place, with grim conditions for factory workers and harsh treatment of the poor. But, James Hobson argues, we have a rosy picture of Georgian England because authors such as Jane Austen - and above all the film versions of her novels - portray it as period of elegance and wealth, when people had nice manners, nice morals (on the whole) and delectable costumes. Of course Austen's books never attempted to portray the whole of contemporary society, only those parts of it she felt competent to describe, and she modestly compared her fiction to a miniature painting on a tiny piece of ivory. Without having to quarrel with Jane Austen - who was as acutely aware of the economic motives of human interaction as any Marxist - there is still every good reason to read Hobson's latest book, Dark Days of Georgian Britain: Rethinking the Regency . Despite laws that provided very minimally for those at the bottom...