The premise of 'historical fiction' is that the setting is historical. Irrespective of whether the setting is Roman-Britain, colonial America, the France of the Sun King, or India during Queen Victoria's reign, my enjoyment of stories - thrillers, humour, romance etc. depends on the authors holding my attention.

What I do not need, using a barefoot runner analogy, is a carpet tack left on the running track (i.e. a painful distraction).

The Regency Period is well-documented - Rennaissance architecture and landscape gardening were each hitting its zenith, urban planning was getting into its stride, the Prince Regent was spending money like water on extravagant projects and numerous mistresses, Napoleon was striding around Europe, furthermore as Cheryl Bolen kindly points out there were diarists among the aristicocracy and, of course, there was Jane Austen.

IMHO authors of historical fiction should pay close attention to the historical setting as a holistic environment - social, political, economic, fashionable, architectural, cuisine, military, technological etc.

While I understand and agree with authors' artistic license to alter the chronology of events or to bring hitherto unknown 'family' members to life to suit their story - I, and indeed the writing communities, do expect an admission of the changes to the historical record.

Carpet tacks are deviations from the norm, the expected and the archived.

A counter argument will, I suspect be, the majority of Regency Romance authors are natives of the USA writing for an audience that is largely in the USA. More later........