The Game of Hearts: The lives and loves of Regency women

(Hardback)

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Taking us behind drawing room doors and into high society ballrooms, The Game of Hearts follows six leading ladies and their family, friends, and contemporaries as they move from matchmaking to matrimony and beyond. Candid insights into the competitive world of the marriage mart; real stories of rakish husbands and rich heiresses; and true tales of lost and long-lasting love, reveal not just Regency courtship customs, but truly captivating lives.

Using diaries, letters and stories of scandal from the newspapers, author Felicity Day pieces together a rich and intimate view of this most beloved period of British history, showcasing the voices and opinions, hopes and desires of the real women who lived and loved in the Regency era.

Reviews

'If Georgette Heyer had written non-fiction it might have looked like this. In The Game of Hearts, Felicity Day uncovers the real lives and loves of the Regency super-rich, ushering us into a world filled with heiresses, parties, grand estates, and more scandal than Bridgerton's Lady Whistledown. Moving from ballrooms to courtrooms and on to the battlefields of Waterloo, Day marries fine historical sense with romantic sensibility, proving that Regency fact is even more fascinating than Regency fiction' -- Helena Kelly - author of Jane Austen, The Secret Radical
'The real world of Jane Austen is brought vividly to life in this beautifully written, endlessly captivating and often surprising account of Regency women. Not to be missed' -- Tracy Borman
'It rackets along - a thoroughly researched, often tantalising, account of the occasional ups and horrifying downs of the Georgian marriage market' -- Gill Hornby * author of Godmersham Park *

Author Bio

Felicity Day qualified as a solicitor before taking a leap of faith and quitting her job to find the kind of work that would make her jump out of bed on a Monday morning. She found it when she began to write magazine features that allowed her to indulge her passion for history, and the life and times of Jane Austen in particular. Her first piece appeared in Jane Austen's Regency World in 2017, and since then she has written about British history and heritage for a whole range of publications, from The Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday's YOU Magazine and Country Life, to specialist history titles such as the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are and History Revealed.