Georgette Heyer's "Regency Buck"
Fantastic! I've read this one several times now, and the pleasure of the story, the characters and the writing just grows with each reading. This book, Georgette Heyer's first novel set during the Regency, is the one that started the whole "Regency romance" genre and it's still one of the best. The descriptions of all sorts of Regency social activities, sports, dress, towns, architecture and society are just amazing. Even the use of Beau Brummell, the Prince Regent and various other historical persons as characters in the story feels right, although the character of Beau Brummell was quite sanitized in the book, compared to what he was apparently really like. (Using historical people as characters in a romance usually feels like gratuitous name-dropping to me, but not here.)
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