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Summary: Praise for An Elegant Madness
Review: "A delightful book, well researched and highly entertaining." --Christopher Hibbert, author of George III: A Personal History "A treat... [Murray] writes...in the sort of amused style that would easily have befit that Regency scribe Jane Austen herself.... She combines gossipy enthusiasm with uncompromising attention to research and detail." --Salon "Breathy, bracing... For anyone feeling a bit put off by the wanton excess, schlocky materialism, and general bad behavior of our own era, this is a tonic narrative indeed." --Mirabella "Ms. Murray has clearly enjoyed collecting this mass of gaudy trivialities, and anyone with a taste for informal history will enjoy reading it. The period produced splendidly mischievous cartoons, whose work adds to the pleasure of the text." --Atlantic Monthly
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Summary: How can a supposedly Non-fiction book sacrifice the truth?
Review: "~Venetia Murray shows again and again that she neither understands nor has properly researched the Regency period. She is just cashing in on the interest in the period and I find it insulting."~ researched"~ make this a good read - as she clearly didn't understand it in the first place - if she had she would have at least got the names and dates correctly.
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Summary: Great stories, but I don't speak French!
Review: A very entertaining book, but a little disjointed. One thing seems to lead to another, and pretty soon you are reading about something that has nothing to do with the chapter title. The Regency period was named for the Prince Regent, but nowhere is there even a thumbnail biography of the Prince. Any reader who does not have a thorough understanding of the period will miss many references (i.e. his problems with the Princess of Wales). Call me a Midwestern hayseed, but I don't speak French! There are many phrases, sentences and even a 3 page menu that are written entirely in French with no English translations. A footnote or an appendix would have been very helpful. I don't know why authors assume all their readers are fluent in French. However, despite these faults, the book was an excellent read.
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Summary: Excellent resource for the history behind Regency Romances
Review: An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England by Venetia Murray $29.95, Viking PressVentia Murray has provided an interesting and well-documented look into the turbulant transition period between the French Revolution (1791) and the start of the Reform Period (1830). This time has been the fertile ground for many fiction writers, from Georgette Heyer to Jill Barnett, and every month more books come out using it as a backdrop. "An Elegant Madness" along with "The Regency Companion"(Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa L. Hamlin) provides the historical backdrop. Murray has done extensive research, and while to long-time readers of Regency novels, the material will seem familiar, she has placed the period within the context of political and economic history as well as the society. One particularly helpful element of "An Elegant Madness" is that for the first time, a reader will have a sense of how expensive the Regency was in today's modern-day terms. Murray uses a rate of exchange of 50 to 1. For example, "..an item in 1812 was 200 (pounds) it would 10,000 (pounds) today..." Best of all, she has included an extensive bibliography for those who want to go further into the time period, and an index so you can track down that elusive fact in the future. I'd recommend this book to readers who have a grounding in the time period (so you recognize the names), but are interested in the history rather than the fiction.
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Summary: An amusing and readable compendium.
Review: Dr.Johnson once remarked that all works which describe manners "require notes in sixty or seventy years". In her book "An Elegant Madness" Venetia Murray provides an amusing and readable compendium of manners which will serve instead for readers of Regency fiction. Particularly devotees and students of Jane Austen will appreciate the scope of Venetia Murray's research, and (dare one say) her almost journalistic eye for a striking fact. However, as the author herself points out in the Preface, her book is about the manners and customs of a small, elegant and often dissolute elite. Jane Austen writes of the more numerous upper class, desperately anxious not commit or become involved with impropriety of any kind, but nevertheless obedient to many dictates of the "beau monde".It is necessary to know what these were and Venetia Murray's book tells us.
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Summary: Excellent
Review: Even if the other reviews are true and Venetia Murray is inaccurate, this book is worth the sketches! I think they reveal alot about the time period, as well as the political and societal norms! And it was fun to read, too!
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Summary: Fun with great sketches!
Review: Even if the other reviews are true and Venetia Murray is inaccurate, this book is worth the sketches! I think they reveal alot about the time period, as well as the political and societal norms! And it was fun to read, too!
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Summary: Delightful read but full of errors
Review: I enjoyed the book. Venetia Murray writes well and is a great story teller. However, I have a number of books on the Regency period and in cross-referencing her "facts" with other more notable and period sources, her book contains a number of errors. People are misidentified and major events are recounted differently. In addition, I had difficulty with the index--in some cases events and people could not be found on the pages cited. Altogether I enjoyed the book but if I were an historian I would not use it as a resource.
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Summary: Witty, Elegant and Highly Entertaining
Review: I found this book a light and delicious souffle: academic history it is not: but a great read for the upper middle-brow interested in daily life, love, money and and all the things we all care about as much now as we did two hundred years ago - Yes, and Yes again. Full of amusing stories, witty, very well-resarched and exactly what the author claims in her Preface. She writes " 'An Elega nt Madness' was never intended to be taken as a sociological survey: the aim of this book was to convey the mood of the Regency, to entertain my readers, and, perhaps, to enlighten a few.'" I just don't understand the negative customer comments: they must be amateur historians with their own agenda.
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Summary: A poorly researched book
Review: I hate to be cruel, but I think 'An Elegant Madness' is a truly shoddy book. It seems to have been written with no other purpose than to cash in on the popularity of the Regency period. It is not scholarly, it is not acurate, it is not even well-written. In fact, I think Venetia Murray gives a bad name to amateur historians. Her book is so second-rate that she makes the kind of general reader who likes reading social history look foolish for doing so. I am sorry to say this but it makes me angry to see a wonderful subject brought low by an ignorant journalist.
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