Drenched in Regency costume and period detail, Austenland dramatizes the delirious meeting between then and now that is so often summoned by the words “Jane Austen and the Regency.” Readers and critics are hard-wired to a vision of Jane Austen as an exemplar of Regency style, but this proverbial association is somewhat perverse, if only because the period was named after a man Austen despised. The Regency names a structure designed to manage political crisis, but it is inherently unstable, drawing attention to the instability of monarchy itself. Roger Sales argues that the Regency crisis of 1810 to 1812 and the subsequent scandals “provide an important but neglected context for Austen's Regency writings”. The Regency lives on in the novels of Austen and Georgette Heyer, as well as in the enduring sites that were the center of Regency London.