Special Guest Post by Jane Dunn, Author of Regency Historical Fiction A Lady’s Fortune #HistoryWritersAdvent24

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In Regency England, twenty-seven-year-old Leonora Appleby is considered by many – herself included – to be beyond her most eligible marrying years. With her childhood home, Hasterleigh Manor, soon to be taken over by the heir to the land, George Lockwood, Leonora has happily resigned herself to a quiet life as a country Miss. But life has a way of springing surprises...

Do Regency Ladies Swim?

There has been a debate about whether young women at the beginning of the 19th century actually swum for pleasure. There was enough evidence that they’d splash about a bit at seaside resorts like Brighton but did they swim in lakes and rivers, and further out to sea? Of course the most celebrated Regency swimmer was Lord Byron who was understandably proud of his heroic 4 mile swim across the Hellespont, a tumultuous strait that divided Europe from Asia. He wrote, ‘I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical or rhetorical.’ He wrote a poem about it and included the swim in his epic Don Juan.

Leonora Appleby, my heroine in A Lady’s Fortune, discovers a real love of wild swimming when trespassing in the derelict grounds of an abandoned mansion in her village. ‘Leonora pushed off into the chill water and gasped. The cold was less intense after the hot summer, but it was still breathtaking and hit her like a body blow. The first gliding stroke never failed to thrill as she breasted the still surface, drawing a cloak of ripples behind her, her whole being entirely alive. The euphoria that radiated from her heart to her limbs was close to love.’

Significantly, the swimming lake Leonora loves belongs to Earl Rokeby, a wounded soldier who returns unexpectedly from the Napoleonic Wars, scarred in body and soul. He too is a passionate swimmer and like Byron had swum the Hellespont. Swimming and the lake is one of the central strands of the story and in the end almost claims Leonora’s life.

I wanted to discover some evidence of real women enjoying swimming for pleasure during the Regency. There is a delightful book Mrs Hurst Dancing that has collected and published the watercolour sketches of Diana Sperling, the daughter of a gentry family who lived in a country house in Essex during the Regency. She documents with humour the activities of her brothers, sisters and visitors and there I found a lovely sketch of Grace and Harvey Sperling swimming for pleasure in their lake (or rather large pond). 

Of course the brilliant satirical cartoonists of the age, Cruikshank and Rowlandson, also leapt with glee on the subject of well-endowed women paddling and swimming with all the hilarious potential for mishaps, inevitably involving the revealing of thighs and bottoms, and ballooning breasts forever popping out of their flimsy constraints. Swimming for fun was here to stay.

Jane Dunn

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About the Author

Jane Dunn is an historian and biographer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first job after university was at British Vogue - she was runner-up in their annual talent competition and lucky enough to be offered a job in the editorial side of British Vogue. Jane began writing historical fiction, specifically set in the Regency in the time of the Napoleonic Wars. An elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Jane lives in Berkshire with her husband, the Classicist, Nicholas Ostler, and an elderly rescue whippet. You can find Jane on Goodreads and Twitter @JaneDunnAuthor