After taking readers on a dazzling tour of Regency astronomy, naturalism and embroidery in The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, Olivia Waite is back with another gloriously nerdy, rigorously researched historical romance. The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows follows printer Agatha Griffin and beekeeper Penelope Flood as they fall in love, against the tumultuous, chaotic backdrop of Britain circa 1820.

In this essay, Waite explains why printing and beekeeping are not only fascinating topics in and of themselves, but also perfectly suited to tell a story of radical love, together.

Bees and people have an ancient relationship. There are cave paintings of honey hunters dating back eight thousand years, before the dawn of anything like modern history. And for nearly as long, people have been seeing in beehives a utopian idea of what human society could be. In newly imperial Rome, Virgil wrote of bees as both valiant warriors and obedient subjects bound in service to their king (as he mistakenly called the queen bee). People saw from very early on that different bees performed different jobs to support the hive as a whole, and this combination of communal good and social stratification made bees a popular symbol for political idealists of nearly every stripe.

When you start thinking of bees as people, you want them to have the best possible home.

So it’s not surprising that during the late 18th and early 19th century—a time chock-full of Western revolutions, uprisings, monarchist backlash and democratic zeal—one of the great goals of science was designing a new and better beehive. Skep hives, round domes woven of straw, had been in common use in Northern Europe for centuries; they were cheap to make and easy to care for. They were not, however, easy for people to get honey out of without killing every bee inside, often using sulphur smoke that tainted the taste of the honey. The killing wasn’t necessarily a problem for many farming folk—after all, people raised cows and pigs and chickens for butchering—but it increasingly became a problem for scientifically minded beekeepers.

After all, if bees are a bit like people, then killing them is a bit like murder.

So while the American colonies and the French political classes were flinging off their monarchist chains (while keeping Black slave labor shackled), there was also an explosion of new hive designs, many of them strange and ambitious and weirdly charming. They were built of wood and glass and metal; they were cylinders or cabinets or jars, or the bold octagonal shape of the Stewarton hive (1819). The Langstroth hive, still used today, would eventually triumph over all these after the middle of the century, but there is something irresistibly earnest about the designs that occupied this transitional era. They’re so hopeful—ideal worlds in miniature, as utopian as the political optimists who were redesigning human societies according to democratic principles (howsoever unequally applied across race, gender and so on). When you start thinking of bees as people, you want them to have the best possible home.

My favorite design by far is the leaf hive, or folio hive, developed by blind Swiss entomologist François Huber. Using observations from his wife, Marie, and servant François Burnens, Huber made several important discoveries about honeybee anatomy, and developed an observation hive with separate rectangular sections that hinged at the back. At the front, the sections could be spread open like the pages of a book.

Reader, I fell in love.

My own relationship to bees began with my great-grandfather, who kept three Langstroth hives on a hill overlooking the sea. There was something mystical in the way he approached the hives in his veiled hat and leather gloves and removed one humming frame at a time, checking for brood and honey. I found bees in children’s books defending the protagonists against witchcraft, and bees as reincarnated human souls in Greek myths. Even nonfiction books full of bee facts gave me that telltale throb of good poetry: bee dances as complex language, their sensitivity to magnetism and electrical charges, the discovery that every worker bee’s sting was also a suicide.

And then I came across Huber and his leaf hive while reading about the history of science for The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics—and I knew I had to write a lady beekeeper for the sequel set in 1820. Too early for Langstroth, but perfect for a hive that looked like a book full of bees. I paired her with a stubborn printer, a woman and artist who was trying to walk the difficult line between vital political critique and seditious material that could get her imprisoned or worse.

There was plenty for a printer to be seditious about: 1820 was a famously tumultuous year in English social history. King George IV’s animosity for his wife burst into full flower as she returned from Italy demanding to be officially crowned. Rather than share the throne with a woman he loathed, George attempted to divorce her via a Bill of Pains and Penalties. Caroline was essentially put on trial in both in Parliament and the press: Her servants were interrogated, her household surveilled by George’s agents, her every action scrutinized for propriety by people who had reason to wish her the worst.

If I were to sum up the way the English public reacted to this threat against their queen, I could do it in one word: They swarmed.

Everyone who could write put out a pamphlet and the caricatures were passed around and chortled over like today’s best memes.

Letters were written in defense of the queen from cities and towns and trade guilds all over the country, and crowds presented them to her en masse at Brandenburg House. Londoners rioted; soldiers mutinied; angry crowds broke windows in country towns; everyone who could write put out a pamphlet and the caricatures were passed around and chortled over like today’s best memes. Women became part of the public political conversation in larger numbers than ever, despite still being barred from the vote. Some of this agitation was the result of George’s political opposition sensing an opportunity and grabbing onto it with both hands; some of it was sincere patriotism or chivalry in defense of a royal lady.

Despite the fall of Napoleon, despite the failure of the French revolutionary experiment, the English government trembled to its foundations. The divorce Bill passed the House of Lords—but was dropped since it was clear it would never make it out of the Commons, which was thronged with pro-Caroline votes.

The English people celebrated the failure of the Bill as if they’d won a great military victory. Despite the corruption of the government, the power of the landed gentry, the lack of suffrage for women and many men, the people knew their voices had been heard and their collective power felt.

Caroline never was crowned queen. She died painfully of cancer the following summer. Her funeral procession turned into a riot; two men were killed by soldiers. She had been a symbol for the radicals and reformers, but never a supporter of their ideals and push for political change. But in organizing for her cause, the reformers had developed effective tactics to appeal to the public and in print. The next few decades saw the passage of the Great Reform Act and the rise of Chartism and the early cooperative movement, among other advances.

The increasing industrialization of the Victorian era used bees more and more metaphorically, even as beekeeping itself became standardized and a foundation of the agricultural industry. In 1867, caricaturist George Cruikshank—who had drawn many of the Georgian era’s most popular and enduring cartoons—produced a reworked engraving of his British Beehive, which depicted a conservative view of English society, as orderly as any honeybee could wish. Don’t change what’s already perfect, Cruikshank implied. The same year saw the publication of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital, which used worker bees to argue that human labor was more than merely physical—that it had an ideal, reflective aspect that created value. People: better than bees, said Marx!

Today, bees as pollinators are vital to global food production—and yet they are increasingly threatened by environmental hazards, climate change and good old-fashioned human theft. It turns out that if we lose bees, we’ll also lose a lot of people. Domestication goes two ways: We can’t be in a historically long-term relationship with another creature and then continue normally if it vanishes.

I’m almost as worried about the bees these days as I am about people. I have to hope the story of this relationship is a romance, that people and bees will manage somehow to live happily ever after, together.

Suzanne Enoch’s Hit Me With Your Best Scot transports romance fans away from glittering ballrooms and polite country lanes and into the exciting and under-explored setting of the Regency-era theater. Enoch shares how she brought to life the backstage romance of actress Persephone Jones and Scottish aristocrat Coll MacTaggert.

In the 50ish books I’ve written, this is the first time I’ve featured an actor or actress as a main character. Having spent most of my writing time in the English Regency and doing the research that goes with that, there were names I’d heard of: Edmund Kean, Joseph Grimaldi, Fanny Abington, Sarah Siddons and, of course, the Drury Lane Theater, the one at Covent Gardens and the famous Lyceum.

For the tale of actress Persephone Jones and her romance with Coll MacTaggert, Lord Glendarril, I didn’t want to use an actual theater, so I invented the St. Genesius, a rival to the royal theater of Drury Lane. (Genesius is the patron saint of actors.) There were a couple of specific things I needed, including a small dressing room for an actress, catwalks galore, a backstage area filled with old props, backdrops and lots of places for a big Highlander to feel claustrophobic. All the backstage antics made using a fictional theater much simpler than trying to adapt the story to a real one.

I love doing research and probably have over 500 books on topics from the history of the lavatory to the scourge of gout, but for this story I needed to add a couple more to my shelves. (Yay, book shopping!) The Time Traveller’s Guide to British Theater: The First Four Hundred Years by Aleks Sierz and Lia Ghilardi gave me a good overview, while Rival Queens: Actresses, Performances, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theater by Felicity Nussbaum gave me lots of specifics—and they both made me jealous of long titles. Oh, and I looked through Roaring Boys: Shakespeare’s Rat Pack by Judith Cook just because I wanted to.

In the course of writing, I’ve discovered that atmosphere is more important than specifics, but it’s also important to have a grasp of the topic so you’re just not flinging words like “blocking” and “downstage” and “stage right” around willy-nilly. That said, it was great fun to invent a close-knit acting troupe, have some theater rivalries and make some hopefully amusing use of “the Scottish play,” including one actor who refuses to say “Macbeth” even when the name appears in the text of the play.

I chose Macbeth as the play being performed during the course of the book because my hero, Coll, happens to be Scottish, and because of the supposed bad luck that frequently accompanies the performance of that particular play. That allowed me to keep the characters guessing over whether the mishaps that keep befalling Persephone Jones are simply because of the play, or if something more sinister is at work. Plus, all the male actors could be envious of how very fine Coll looked in a kilt.

There’s lots more to Hit Me With Your Best Scot than the theater, of course—including a cat named Hades, picnics in the park, fires, a masquerade ball, a lost heiress and a viscount who has 28 days to find a bride or he loses his fortune. The entire book was so fun to write, and I’m kind of wishing I’d given the MacTaggert family more than three Highlander brothers so I could keep writing in this warm, wild, witty world.

Author photo by Dinamariephotography.com

Regency romances with diverse casts such as Netflix’s “Bridgerton” may be perceived as merely a laudable fantasy, but the reality is that the time period was far less lily-white than many historical romances acknowledge. Daniel Thackery, the titular nobleman in Vanessa Riley’s An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler, is Black, and was inspired by real people of color who were elevated to similar positions by the prince regent, George IV. In this essay, Riley explores the many fascinating layers of Daniel’s experience as a Black aristocrat.

In 1982, cartoonist Bob Thaves wrote a memorable line in his “Frank and Ernst” syndicated strip: “Sure he [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards . . . and in high heels.”

It’s a sexist quote humorously offered to disclose what we don’t often talk about, the fact that two wonderfully attired peers whirl about a ballroom floor, spinning with that look of falling in love—shimmering eyes, bated breath—but the world doesn’t see them as equals.

The melanated set did exist in this world of finery built on exquisite manners and wealth from colonization, where gossip could spread from an impertinent look.

When writing people of color in the aristocracy, I think of Thaves’ quote. The melanated set did exist in this world of finery built on exquisite manners and wealth from colonization, where gossip could spread from an impertinent look. One could be vilified for being on the wrong balcony with the wrong person or getting caught falling in love with the wrong peer at the wrong time.

Imagine a couple dancing to a reel composed by a famous violinist. The couple is touching, lovingly in each other's arms, spinning around a leased, luxurious ballroom. Thousands of scenes from books may have entered your head, but did any include the renowned Black musician George Bridgetower or the rich rooms of the well-connected Black proprietor Jack Beef?

Now make the couple interracial, or Black, or Asian, or LGBTQ+ or with a visible disability. Whether we want to admit it or not, the story changes. Different sensibilities come into our well-conditioned, biased minds. We can’t help it. We’re born that way.

In An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler, Daniel Thackery is one of the prince regent's favorites. It is a fact that Prinny elevated exceptional people of color, investing in their careers and allowing them access to his social world. It is also a fact that wealthy people of color attended balls, held balls and were outfitted in all the trappings money could buy.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler.

We originally met Daniel, now Lord Ashbrook, as a reserved barrister and nephew to the Widow’s Grace mastermind Lady Shrewsbury in A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby. In An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler the second book of the Rogues and Remarkable Women series, we see him moving in all his responsibilities. He’s a widowed single dad. He’s trying to keep his aunt and her women out of jail. He works in the prince regent's courts. His hands are full, but he deals with the imperfect world as it is.

Daniel must contend with those who don’t like his ascension. He must ignore the glares of some who don’t want him at the balls daring to dance with a member of the ton. He must share the chalked floor with those who refuse to acknowledge his humanity and hope his ratafia is watery.

Things as simple as making sure his cuffs are pressed and his cravat is perfectly tied feed into his anxiety. He understands that are people waiting for the slightest appearance of wrong to allow that niggling feeling, that suspicious notion of his character and motives, to convict him in their minds.

Guilty.

They will cheer if he’s scandalized. For some of his peers, it’s wrong for Daniel to be here, to be anywhere, to breathe.

And our hero knows this. He’s trying to build a better world for his little girl. He has hope. Breathe.

Did I mention the ones who love him? He’s an earl, right? Daniel is not a victim. He is a man who is a party to a system built for men. He has money and power within a patriarchy that rewards power.

Daniel is smart. He’ll not do life alone. He refuses to be one speck of color on a snowy canvas. He has good friends who share his ethnicity, his interests or both. They help him laugh and remember that he’s bright and loved. They’ll help him pick out his dancing slippers with an inch of Regency heel.

I’ve given you a glimpse of some of the things I think about when I write about people of color intersecting with the aristocracy. By acknowledging the knee-jerk discomfort that may arise from seeing Black characters in these roles while still surrounding the characters in the joy of being who they are and loving the skin they bring to the ballrooms, the world expands.

In this context, we learn about people and enjoy differing perspectives without the othering or painful narratives long associated with history and Black people and people of color. That’s a ballroom all can visit for a celebration of dance, dexterity and killer shoes.