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In great agitation, she took a sheet of foolscap from the desk drawer. Placing it on the blotter, she dipped her sharpened quill into the inkwell and began to write furiously ...
Or, something like that. How many characters in how many Regency romances have written or received a missive on a sheet of foolscap? More than I can count. So, just what is foolscap?
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Truth or fiction? Essentially, true. Though mathematics confounded him and he was by no stretch of the imagination a computer programmer himself, Lord Byron was the father of the very first computer programmer, his daughter, Augusta Ada Byron.
Impossible? Computers are a twentieth-century invention, right? Not so.
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The Regency definitely had champagne. Beau Brummell claimed it was the secret of the high gloss on his boots. It flowed like water at Carlton House. Countless characters in countless novels quaff it at glittering social events. But how did they drink it, when not a single "champagne" glass was made before or during the Regency?
They had lots glasses, of course. The Regency was a very important and innovative period in the history of English glass-making. But it was not until the 1830's, after the death of the former Regent, King George IV, that the first specially-made "champagne" glass was introduced. And yet, during the Regency, champagne was most commonly sipped from glasses that were much more suitable for the enjoyment of that delicate and festive wine than that later, purpose-designed "champagne" glass.
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As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 29
And yet, though Elizabeth Bennet was not impressed by this grand display of ostentation, she was aware, as was Mr. Collins, that windows were an expensive luxury commodity during the Regency since they were essentially taxed twice. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, both the Window Tax and the Glass Excise Tax were the law of the land.
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The dining table and chairs go in the dining room, the bed goes in the bedroom, right? Well, they do now, but that was not always so. Particularly for those who were not of the royalty or the aristocracy of England. Until the Regency.
Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century, the rooms of the house of a middle class English family typically did not have specific designations. Nor were their household furnishings, especially the furniture, made for a specific room or purpose. Any room in the house of this family might be used for any purpose, any piece of furniture put to whatever used was needed at the moment. The only room in this family's house which did have a specific purpose was the kitchen. This had changed by the Regency.
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