The Regency History blog is four years old!

Rachel Knowles standing in the Royal Crescent, Bath

Can you believe that it is four years since I started this blog? I began in October 2011 and in the past four years I have posted 246 blogs and 16 pages and my blog is now visited by around 14,000 people every month. 

Thank you to all my readers – your support is what keeps me going. If you haven’t already done so, do sign up to my monthly newsletter which gives links to the previous month’s posts as well as extra bits of news about my writing and research.

A drawing room at St James' Palace
from The Microcosm of London (1808-10)

My most popular posts

To celebrate my blog’s 4th anniversary, I have compiled a list of my all-time top twenty posts, according to Google analytics:

1. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
2. When is the Regency era?
3. Lady Elizabeth Foster, later Duchess of Devonshire
4. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
5. Queen Charlotte
6. The rise and fall of Beau Brummell
7. When was the London season?
8. Headdresses and hairstyles for Regency evenings
9. 30 Beau Brummell quotes
10. George IV and Queen Caroline: a disastrous royal marriage
11. George IV
12. Mrs Fitzherbert
13. Princess Caroline of Brunswick
14. Who was ‘Silly Billy’?
15. Lady Caroline Lamb
16. Almack’s Assembly Rooms
17. The Grand Tour
18. Regency History’s guide to the Mysteries of Udolpho
19. The Six Princesses: Princess Amelia
20. Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough

Two of my pages also rank highly – my lists of fashion links and Regency novels.

Hats from La Belle Assemblée (1812)

Of course, posts that have been around longer have a higher chance of being ranked highly but, perhaps surprisingly, the list of my top twenty posts during the past year is virtually identical.

My two best days ever

When there is a spike of activity on my blog, I am always interested to know why. During 2015, I have had two days where I have witnessed unprecedented activity on my blog. Are you interested to know why?

The first spike occurred on Monday 4 May when nearly 4000 people visited my blog in a single day. Why? Because the new Princess of Cambridge had just been named Charlotte and lots of people suddenly wanted to know about Queen Charlotte!

Queen Charlotte
from Posthumous memoirs of his own time
by NW Wraxall (1836)

The second spike was even more pronounced. It occurred on 8 August and over 7000 pages were viewed on my blog. Most of these occurred after 10pm and came from within the UK. Why? The BBC showed The Duchess starring Keira Knightley that evening and this sparked an interest in what the real Duchess of Devonshire was like!

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
(painting in the South Sketch Gallery, Chatsworth)