About 2 years ago, I decided to give up writing historical romances for a while, but my last one was set in the Edwardian Era. Before that, I’d written a couple of Regency romances, another set at the same time, i.e. the Napoleonic era in France, and a Victorian romance. So my Edwardian one (The Fashionable Flirt) is set “most recently”.
There is a romance about the Edwardian years as it is seen as the last years of the leisured and comfortable lifestyle of the upper classes, before it was destroyed by World War I. However it was also a time of ferment and social change. There was the Boer war, which gave the British a bad scare when they were almost defeated by Afrikaner farmers, and the various social movements such as the fight for Votes for Women, the rise of the Trades Unions and Labour party, and the Irish demands for Home Rule. There was a Liberal Government in power from 1906. My heroine, the Hon. Christabel Morney, is from a Liberal upper class family, and is involved in campaigning peacefully for women’s suffrage, and for the improvement of conditions for the working classes, especially for women. Her father is very indulgent of her, because she is so lively and pretty but he still believes that marriage is the best career for a young woman and is eager for her to settle down with one of her many suitors. Well to do women still tended to see marriage as the gateway to a fuller life, where they would run a large house and estate, and get involved in charities and the arts and politics, as hostesses. Christabel wants to marry but she is still enjoying her freedom as a single belle. I enjoyed writing about this era, because I like the fashions, and feel close to the people. Names were more romantic, the upper class ladies had such delightful Christian names as Cynthia, Diana, Venetia, (one young late-Victorian lady was called “Dulcibel”….).
Also, while chaperonage was still a part of upper class life, young women had more freedom to go out alone or meet young men. Young aristocratic women still were mostly virgins when they married, but heavy flirtation and a bit of “petting” seems to have become more common…and romantic friendships between single girls and married men occasionally happened as well. Married women were starting to use contraceptives, and to reduce the size of their families. Whereas Victorian women had large families, younger women were now having 2 or 3 children. Some of my research for this story took me into the diaries of Lady Cynthia Asquith, who was from a Tory family but married the son of the Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith. Cynthia was mostly a socialite who was conservative in her views, but since she was not very well off, she had to try and find work, to support herself and her husband. My Christabel is from a Liberal family… and more involved in liberal causes. When she marries, I can see her supporting her husband in politics and having causes of her own that she works for.
