That’s all well and good when I’m enjoying, for instance, a film adaptation of Emma, but less so when I’m trying to wrap my head around the actual sequence of human events. No matter how authentic we moderns think we want our history (I’m looking at you, Robin Hood), you’d be hard pressed to find someone willing to sit through all the gory details, from the rampant smallpox scars to the cramped living conditions to the irregular teeth. But all of this came to me through highly sanitized lenses, especially when it comes to Regency England. While my historical education has always been spotty, there are a few periods of history that were always pretty clearly defined for me: the ancient world (skewed towards Egypt, given my interest in Egyptian mythology), the Dark Ages, World War II, the eighties, and, of course, Regency England. Jane Austen’s England by Roy and Lesley Adkins
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