I’m excited to introduce a new Regency novel today. It’s entitled A Flight of Fancy and written by Regency Reflection’s own Laurie Alice Eakes.

To celebrate A Flight of Fancy, we’re running a special week-long contest. Starting today through next Friday, October 12, we’ll feature Regency quiz questions at the end of each post. To enter the contest, you’ll need to correctly answer the questions in the comment section below. For every correct answer, your name will be added into the drawing for a Regency Food and Frolic gift basket. There will be five questions in all, which means your name can be entered up to five times (if you get all five questions right). The deadline to answer ALL CONTEST QUESTIONS will be Saturday, October 13 at midnight.

The gift basket will include:

A small Starbucks mug

A box of Earl Grey tea

A package of Pepperidge Farm Cookies (biscuits)

A $10.00 Amazon gift card

Before we get to today’s quiz question, let me tell you about the story, and why I’m enjoying reading it so much.

Cassandra Bainbridge may be a bit of a bluestocking, but when Geoffrey Giles is near, love seems a fine alternative to passion for Greek and the physics of flight. With his dashing good looks and undying devotion to her, the earl of Whittaker sets Cassandra’s heart racing with his very presence. It seems his only flaw is his distaste for ballooning, the obsession that consumes so much of her thoughts.

When a terrible accident compels her to end her betrothal, Cassandra heads for the country to recover from both her injuries and her broken heart. With time on her hands and good friends to help her, she pursues her love for ballooning and envisions a future for herself as a daring aeronaut. But when Lord Whittaker slips back into her life, will she have to choose between him and her dream?

A Flight of Fancy has generated critical acclaim from places such as the Romantic Times, which said: ” Eakes has a charming way of making her novels come to life without being over the top. The second Daughters of Bainbridge House story has romance, mystery, suspense and characters who transcend the stereotype of stiff English formality.”

One of the things I personally love about this story is how Whittaker finds himself torn between love and duty. He struggles with handling both things at once, and that same struggle reaches out and touches every person on the planet at one time or another. And of course, the suspense element is riveting, keeping the reader constantly guessing at what will happen next, who’s toying with Whittaker and Cassandra, and why.

I genuinely hope others enjoy this book as much as I do.

Today’s question: A Flight of Fancy is set in 1812. During what years did the Regency take place?

A: 1790-1820

B: 1800-1830

C: 1811-1830

D: 1811-1820

Remember to leave your answer in the comment section below. And come back Monday for Laurie Alice Eakes’s post on ballooning during the Regency, plus two more quiz questions.

This contest is now closed. Please see the final post for answers to the trivia questions. 

Originally posted 2012-10-05 01:00:44.

Woman Reading

Though she died just before the Regency began, Mary Wollenstonecraft (mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley) had an enormous impact on Regency ideas about the education of women.

The Original Feminist

In her ground-breaking book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollenstonecraft made the first strong and popular argument for women’s education. Though she’s considered one of the mothers of feminism, Wollenstonecraft’s feminism was very different from the feminism that makes headlines today. Instead of arguing for the right of woman to be just as raunchy as the guys, Wollenstonecraft was concerned  with women’s virtue: she argued that it was impossible for women to make wise  decisions if they’d never been taught how to think.

You couldn’t, Wollenstonecraft argued, raise a girl to only think about her looks, to only be concerned about snaring a husband, and then expect her to be smart enough to run a household or good enough to raise well-behaved children. If you wanted her to be fit to do her duties, you had to educate her.

Also, Wollenstonecraft argued, women were created as suitable mates for men, which meant they were of the same species – as Dorothy Sayers would later put it, women are human – and so what was good for men was good for women. God didn’t expect wisdom and virtue from men and silliness from women. If education gave men the tools they needed to be virtuous, education could give women those same advantages.

Controversy

Wollenstonecraft’s ideas weren’t completely accepted in her own day – they aren’t even now – but by stating her case so clearly and so well, she started a conversation that lasted all the way through the Regency and beyond. The “bluestockings” of the Regency – the bookish women – were Wollenstonecraft’s intellectual heiresses.

If you’re reading this today and you’re a woman who loves books, if you’re a woman who enjoyed a high-school and even a college education, Mary Wollenstonecraft is one of the brave pioneers you have to thank.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Originally posted 2012-09-24 10:00:00.

This month we’re been looking at the education of Regency students and scholars. The antics of schoolroom have provided fodder for many a novels. Did you know that many of your Regency Reflections authors have had interesting moments within the school walls as well.

So we asked our authors, “What was your biggest school days blunder?”

Laurie Alice Eakes
To be honest, I have nothing to share. I kept too low a profile in school unless I absolutely knew the answer just to avoid this sort of thing.

Unless this after school event gives it away…

I had a terrible crush on a geeky guy—Hmm, I married a computer geek turned lawyer geek—and wrote a poem to him. I can still remember part of it. Mind you, I was fifteen and painfully shy.

Oh, I wish I were a computer
Or a slide rule and equasions I could do,
For if I were one, or maybe both,
Some notice I might receive from you. . .

And so it went. Well, we were in the literary club together, and during a meeting, while sharing things, I accidentally pulled this poem from my notebook instead of the banal one I intended to share. . .

Oops.

Susan Karsten
This is going to sound really strange, since things have changed SO much. When I was in 2nd grade, in about 1962-63, I was asked, by my teacher, who I will call Mrs. Mustard, to come into the supply closet. This was a room, with shelves on 3 sides and a window. It was the teacher’s private little storeroom. She regretted to inform me that my red and white checked blouse had come untucked, and would I please not let that happen again. My, things have changed! By the way, this was a public school.

Kristy Cambron
I’ve always felt that as a student, you could try to blend in with the class and avoid any embarrassing moments. But alas, my  biggest education blunder was when I was in the on-stage role as the teacher. I was a corporate facilitator at the time and was training a class of more than forty adult learners on customer service soft skills. It was a great class – learners were energetic and engaged. Everyone smiled and seemed to throughly enjoy themselves  So when one learner approached me at the end of class, I hoped to hear positive feedback on her classroom experience. The last thing I expected was for her to tell me I’d just trained the class and no one had bothered to tell me that my suit pants zipper had been broken all day!

Naomi Rawlings
I accidentally went into the boys locker room before a basketball game. I didn’t realize the visiting team used the girl’s locker room, and I was just trying to get to the bathroom and following the sign that said girls. Fortunately I was in elementary school and it was a high school game. So I wasn’t old enough to get teased mercilessly for the rest of my day. But my cheeks still get red just thinking about it. I must have been the color of a tomato for the rest of the night!

Kristi Ann Hunter
Oh the options. I think the question might not be what was my biggest blunder, but which one am I willing to share in a public forum! When I was in sixth grade, my best friend had English and Math together. I feel quite bad for our teachers. We had to write a lot of sentences in English class. My friend and I made ridiculous sentences about polka dotted potties and remote controlled spitwads.

At the end of the day, in math class, we took turns sitting in front of each other and slowing pushing the other’s desk forward. We’d see how far we could get before the teacher got mad at us.

photos by Wikimedia Commons

What about you? What was your biggest schoolroom blunder?

Originally posted 2012-09-19 10:00:00.

I was lucky enough to get my part of my college education at a great books program – that is, a program based on the sort of education that’s been going over in England for centuries – back to the Regency time and beyond.

The big differences between what I did and what your average Regency gentleman did are:

1. I got to study the great works of Western literature in translation. Back in the day, you would have read Aristotle, Plato, Virgil and the rest in the original Greek and Latin.

2. I got to do it even though I’m a woman.

Self-Education

I’m almost a decade out of college now, and I still feel the effects of my great books education, in the best of ways. My world grew when I read those books, and, as I reread them, it’s still growing.

And if you’re in America, you’re literate, and you have a public library card, you too can read the books an educated Regency gentleman – an educated medieval gentleman, an educated Roman gentleman! – would have had (or longed to have) on his book shelves.

That’s the beautiful thing about education: it doesn’t have to stop. If there’s something you want to know about, if there’s wisdom you want to gain, you can do it. No, just reading books won’t give you all the benefit of reading them under brilliant professors and it won’t give you all the joy of discussing them with other eager-eyed students. But here are some hacks for the adult, self-starting student:

1. Try online courses, many of them free, in the subject area you’re interested in. iTunes U has a lot, and there are even Christian universities offering free, good content.

2. Use a book to help you find and understand good books. The Well-Educated Mind is one that will give you a guided course of good reading.

3. Pick translations of the great works that also have great introductions. Most copies of classic works in translation will contain introductions that explain the context of the work and why it’s important. I hardly ever skip these, because they’re like a mini-tour, giving me a heads-up about what I ought to be looking for when I read the book itself.

What Good Is It?

So, why should you try reading the great works? Well, I can’t answer it for you, but here are some benefits I’ve noticed for myself:

1. I have context. When I read new political ideas or religious ideas, they don’t seem bigger than they should. I can see where they fit on a continuum centuries long. When I read a new story, I can see the echoes of the old story it’s riffing on.

2.  The Bible makes more sense. When you read other works written around the same time as the Bible, it helps you understand the Bible better – and also to admire it more! When you see what kinds of things were written at the same time, the truth and beauty of scripture stand out.

3.  Some of it’s just plain enjoyable. So much of good literature is valued not just because it’s true or influential, but because it’s beautiful. Indulge yourself – read some Boethius!

4. You can recognize new lies as old ones. There isn’t much new under the sun. And if you’ve read about politics in Rome, you’ll learn something about politics in America. If you’ve read about temptation in Dante, you’ll recognize temptation in your day-to-day life.

5. You can recognize that truth is always truth. There’s something reassuring about reading across the centuries, because you can see that some things don’t change. The goodness of the Lord is everlasting, and it shows up in the written record of human history.

Question for you:

What’s your favorite old book? Or which do you think you’d enjoy reading the most?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell 

Originally posted 2012-09-12 10:00:00.