Vulgar History: Regency Era
A feminist women's history comedy podcast. We look at history through a feminist lens, focusing on the women often removed from the narrative.
Episodes
March 4, 2026 • 89 mins
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Sarah Biffin was one of the most sought-after portrait artists of the Regency Era, painting members of the royal family, including the King. How did a farmworker's daughter born without hands reach such success?
Joining us to celebrate Sarah Biffin's iconic saga is special guest Kristen Lopez.
Learn more about Sarah Biffin's work (and view some of her paintings) at the "Without Hands" exhibition page.
Bu...
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February 25, 2026 • 102 mins
Grace Dalrymple Elliott was a courtesan in London, a spy in French Revolutionary Paris, the lover of two of history's most annoying Princes, and finally, a memoir-writer in the Regency Era. Our guest today, Gavin Whitehead (from The Art of History podcast) joins us to talk about the unending twists and turns of this woman's life!
Listen to Gavin's new podcast, Raven, wherever you get podcasts!
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February 18, 2026 • 102 mins
Elizabeth Bathory is currently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific female serial killer. But was she?
Author Shelley Puhak's new book The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster interrogates how and why Elizabeth Bathory got such a killer reputation, and what may have really happened all those years ago in her castle.
Buy a copy of The Blood Countess (affiliate link)
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February 11, 2026 • 123 mins
Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë were all accomplished novelists. Charlotte's famous work is Jane Eyre, and Emily's is Wuthering Heights. But how did three sisters all become popular authors at the same time? Could it have been the cemetery water they grew up drinking??
Jane Eyre superfan Lana Wood Johnson joins us to discuss the tuberculosis-laden lives of these Northern English authors (with Irish accents).
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February 3, 2026 • 79 mins
Last time, we discussed the first part of Georgiana's life. This time, we get into all the illegitimate children of it all, with bonus visits to Revolution-era Paris and also Earl Grey tea time. With special guest, royal commentator Amanda Matta (matta_of_fact on social media).
Watch this episode as a video.
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Georgiana, Anne Damer, and Elizabeth Lamb's witch portrait
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January 28, 2026 • 94 mins
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire is a key person connecting the French Revolution era to the Regency Era, because she was besties with Marie Antoinette, wore poufs, and then became besties with the Regent himself, George, Prince of Wales.
We're joined by Vulgar History returning guest Amanda Matta (matta_of_fact on social media) to talk about the first part of Georgiana's wild life.
Watch this episode as a video.
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January 21, 2026 • 99 mins
In the Regency Era, reputation was all many working-class women had. When Edinburgh schoolteachers Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie were accused of sapphic behaviour by their student Jane Cumming, they lost everything. So they decided to sue their accuser's wealthy grandmother for libel. The legal case, Pirie and Woods vs Cumming Gordon, only fanned the flames of the scandal.
This week, our guest Indigo Dunphy-Smith walks us through...
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January 14, 2026 • 64 mins
It's our Regency Era, which means we had to get Vanessa Riley (current Queen of Regency era fiction) on the podcast. This week we're revisiting out conversation from 2023 about her novel Queen of Exiles, about the life of Haiti's Queen Marie-Louise Christophe.
It's interesting to revisit this now, after discussing the Haitian Revolution last series, and seeing Marie-Louise in the context of the Regency Era in England.
Plus: bonus...
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January 7, 2026 • 43 mins
The real Pirates of the Caribbean were Black, and women! And Jacquotte Delahaye was the most famous of them all.
Author Vanessa Riley's new novel, Fire Sword and Sea, is a sweeping, immersive saga based on the life of the legendary seventeenth-century pirate Jacquotte Delehaye. Vanessa joins us on the podcast to talk all about this lesser-known figure, and how she managed to research this story!
Learn more about Vanessa Riley ...
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December 31, 2025 • 83 mins
To round out this year on Vulgar History, I want to revisit this instant classic episode with Regency Era romance author Alexandra Vasti, all about Regency Era Sexy Times!! Now that the podcast is in our Regency Era, it bears repeating.
Enjoy!! And can't wait to spent 2026 with you all.
Buy Alexandra's sapphic Regency romance Ladies in Hating (affiliate link)
Info on Alexandra Vasti and her books
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December 24, 2025 • 112 mins
Hortense Mancini was the It Girl of 17th-century France, then put on a pair of pants and ran away from her awful husband. She then became It Girl in exile around the European continent, finally winding up in London as mistress to the Merry Monarch, Charles II. And then her life really began, as for the next two decades she hosted an influential salon in London.
Author and historian Annalisa Nicholson has two new books out about Ho...
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December 17, 2025 • 116 mins
For this year's Hanukkah special, we're revisiting the timeless saga of RACHEL, the Jewish actress so iconic she needed only one name. It's so interesting to look at her story again after the French Revolution series, because it shows that Market Ladies: The Next Generation were just as riot-happy as the original Sans-Culottes Squad.
We're joined by Allison Epstein, our French Revolutionary history advisor, to discuss Rachel's (se...
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December 10, 2025 • 87 mins
We're in our Regency Era and just finished Mary Shelley Month, and Claire Clairmont REFUSES TO BE IGNORED. We're revisiting the story of this iconic woman, whose story feels even more meaningful now that we've learned about her (kind of) stepmother Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as more about the Regency Era in which Claire made her mark.
Plus, our guest Lesley McDowell's book Clairmont is now available in North America!! (It wasn't...
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December 3, 2025 • 66 mins
Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. In her new book Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel, Dr. Zoë McGee reveals how Jane Austen and other women writers from this time used their stories to try to change society's mind about rape culture - and to reassure survivors they were not alone.
Zoë joins us today to talk about how her resear...
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November 27, 2025 • 58 mins
It's (American) Thanksgiving, so here's a special American History episode! In this, you can hear my discussion with Dr. Jane Kamensky, President and CEO of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
We talk about how Monticello strives to continually engage visitors with the complex history of enslavement, how Monticello honours Sally Hemings, how Monticello plans to celebrate America's upcoming 250th anniversary, and also we le...
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November 26, 2025 • 79 mins
Click here to watch this episode as a video!
The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, were Regency-era Irish women who ran off to Northern Wales to live their cottagecore lesbian domestic dream.
To discuss their adventurous youth and middle-aged Hobbit eras is superstar history podcaster and content creator Katie Charlwood from Who Did What Now!
Learn more about Katie and Who Did What Now!
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November 19, 2025 • 44 mins
Regency Era heiresses are a part of most Jane Austen novels, as women with fortunes men want to marry into. Some of these fortunes were from old family money, but many of them were new wealth founded on human exploitation on Caribbean plantations.
Our guest, Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, reveals what she's found in her research about heiresses as well as the stories of the people the heiresses enslaved.
Learn more in Miranda's book Heire...
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November 12, 2025 • 93 mins
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Anne Lister was many things: secret sex diarist, land-owner, mountain climber, womanizer, power lesbian. How did she find a way to thrive during the patriarchal Regency Era, and what does her life story mean to today's queer community?
We're joined by returning guest Kit Heyam and new guest Sarah Wingrove to dish all about Anne Lister's wild life and legacy.
Learn more about Kit...
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November 5, 2025 • 56 mins
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of England's best-loved and most-read authors. This year is the 250th anniversary of her birth in December 1775, and her works are as popular as they ever were. But her own story is far less known than that of her heroines. So we're here today to learn all about Jane Austen.
Our guest this week is Paula Byrne, one of the world's leading Jane Austen experts. Paula's new...
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November 2, 2025 • 56 secs
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