ARRA panel 23 Marcy 2024
Historicals are dead – or are they?
Moderator: Joanne Austen Brown
Panelists: Jenny Rae, Renee Dahlia, Steffy Smith.

Do you ever have those overthinking moments when you remember what you said during a discussion, and then you think about what you should have said? Well, this blog post is about that. This is what I ought to have said on Sunday during the panel, as much as it is about what happened.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that this discussion is about race and I’m white, so I have no lived experience of racism hurting me and I am, definitely, not an authority on racism. Part of being white is understanding that I have, in the past, said and done racist things due to my own ignorance, and I’m thankful to all the people of colour who’ve spent their time and emotional labour in helping me learn and understand, and I hope what I did say (and what I ought to have said) on Sunday is a reflection of that deliberate learning.
The other point that needs to be made is that the panel was all white women, three straight and one queer (me), and the audience was mostly white as well.

I also want to note that the organisers (Australia Romance Readers Assocation) reached out to me after the panel to ask if I was okay, and they will discuss this issue at their next committee meeting.

The panel opened with a simple question – is historical romance dead?
As four historical romance writers, the answer was always going to be no, or rather, we hope not.
I had done some background research on this topic – thank you to my writing group, the Wordmakers, for your advice and discussion – and one of the points that people wanted raised was that no genre is ‘dead’ until everyone has had a chance to write it. Once traditional publishing has embraced non-Regency eras with wealthy historical figures from all parts of the globe, and all genders, and all relationship types, then perhaps we can have this discussion.
In the actual panel, I’m not sure I articulated that idea particularly well. I did say something along the lines that readers are probably bored with Regency virgins and Dukes who made all their money in slavery.
What I should have said was that the source material for Regency Romance – Jane Austen – included discussions around slavery and plantation ownership in her books. There is a significant precedent for these discussions, even in Jane Austen’s own works.
“The unfinished Sanditon featured a Black heiress, Miss Lambe, showing Austen’s willingness to engage more explicitly with race and the proceeds of colonial slavery in her world.”
Bianca Hernandez-Knight in the academic paper ‘Race and Racism in Austen Spaces: Jane Austen and Regency.’

Bridgeton: is diversity a modern feature?
Much of the panel went along without drama, until the topic of Bridgerton was raised by the moderator, Joanne Austen Brown. She told a story about how she was in Barnes and Noble in Texas admiring her own books on the shelf, and some readers were looking at the Bridgerton books. She overheard them talking about the diversity in the Netflix series and she interrupted them to tell them that the actual Regency wasn’t diverse, and real history didn’t include all those people. (I was quite upset at this comment so I can’t recall exactly what words she used. This was my understanding of her comment).
I responded by saying that she was wrong. People of colour have always existed and yes, also among the rich and titled. One third of men who worked for the British East India Company married Indian women and many of them lived in England as ‘nouveau riche’.
Brown dug deeper into her position with some comments that reinforced her belief that history is all white. I responded by saying that perhaps if you use Georgette Heyer as your source, then you’ll get that version of Regency history, but it’s not correct to use Heyer as a basis for historical accuracy.

What I should have added were more references to Georgette Heyer’s influence on Regency Romance. Heyer’s romance works were originally published between 1935 and 1964. Many people consider her to be the most historically accurate writer of this era (aside, presumably, from Jane Austen who actually existed in that era).Many others disagree, citing her antisemitism and racial biases.

A few sources to further this discussion
“Much of the romantic world Heyer constructed is framed as a white utopia divorced from the historical realities of the day. In fact, so much of the luxury of Heyer’s world is dependent on the erasure or minimization of people with marginalized identities within her stories, not to mention the erasure of the complex political and social context of the times,” wrote scholar Dr Sam Hirst.

The academic paper of Hernandez-Knight goes further into these ideas, discussing the impact of Heyer on romance writing.
“(Heyer)’s work is often recommended for fans of Austen, despite the fact that Austen was writing in her own time as a social commentator and Heyer is writing historical fiction that is firmly more romance-plot based, than social commentary of any kind,” wrote Bianca Hernandez-Knight.

“The danger is having Heyer’s work read as history proper, when her work is more a reflection of her own era’s complex issues. Yes, there was racist, class and gender inequity in Austen’s world, but her Regency world is more historically accurate, and Heyer’s is the escapism rooted in problems of her own time.
“The argument that Heyer is “just a product of her time” ignores that she wrote antisemitism into her works well after World War II. The Grand Sophy, which contains multiple scenes of antisemitism, was written in 1950. World War II had been over since 1945, with cascading events like the Nuremburg trials (which took place between 1945-1949) prosecuting Nazi war criminals for crimes against humanity and documenting the atrocities of the regime (Nuremburg Trials Project).”

Conclusion
Discussions around historical romance are always going to be fraught.
Many writers prefer to write in a Heyer version of society where only white people had money or power, but this is not a reflection of reality or history. As Churchill said, ‘history is written by the victors,’ but that doesn’t mean we need to accept those versions are completely accurate.
Perhaps Heyer’s dresses and door handles were accurate, but her depiction of WHO existed in society and what influences, negative and positive, they had were not accurate. Her works are a reflection of her own racism.
As romance authors we have a duty of care to all readers from all over the globe to pay attention to the unstated histories and not accept Heyer’s version as reality.
The most interesting history is the one in between the lines of what was written by the victors and those favoured by publishers of their time. Dig deeper to find those stories, and suddenly history in its entirety comes to light.

Further notes

A reader sent me this post on the subject of Heyer which is an excellent read. “Heyer’s “attention to detail,” and “historical accuracy,” doesn’t extend to everything in her books, especially concerning her own bigotry,” said Felicia Grossman.