r/RomanceBooks • u/miredandwired • 1d ago

Banter/Fun Pet peeve in historical books: 1816 the year without summer

This is a silly one but I wanted to share because if anyone will understand my pettiness, this community will. I am reading Alexandra Vasti's otherwise quite good Earl Crush. I just read this sentence :

"It had been 1816—a late July afternoon, hot and blue."

The year 1816 was known as the year without summer across Europe due to a volcanic eruption that lowered temperatures worldwide. Crops withered, people died of cold, etc. So 1816 July would have been pretty cold. Funny how I can suspend disbelief for young handsome dukes, earls etc but I draw the line at temperature 🤣

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u/Competitive-Yam5126 All Aboard the S.S. Dubious Consent! 🚢 1d ago

As a historical romance lover, I'm so glad I know absolutely fuck all about history, because I'm sure there are plenty of things like this that would drive me insane. 😂

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u/International_One405 1d ago

Omg same! I was just thinking I never would have picked up on the 1816 thing, thank God! The same thing happened to me when I got into the medical field. Pre nursing school I LOVED hospital dramas - especially House. Then I started learning about medicine and every episode was like, "well thats the most far-fetched, ridiculous thing ever". I finally stopped watching it when House personally wheeled a dead body down to MRI (which was conveniently abandoned at the time), single handedly positioned it in the machine, programmed the MRI to start visualizing and then shot the body to demonstrate how the MRI magnet would have pulled the bullet out of the victim or something like that.

I just couldn't.

So anyway, I say all that to say, "I totally get the 1816 thing!"

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u/miredandwired 1d ago

Thank you, I knew this community would get it!

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u/Unusual-Molasses5633 1d ago

A friend refuses to watch medical dramas with her doctor sister bc the sister would keep yelling about the inaccuracies, lol. So I totally get it.

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u/Colorado_Girrl 1d ago

I quit watching a sci-fi show with my SO because he couldn't shut up about the plot holes all throughout each episode. If he had waited until after it was over then I would have been fine because I do the same thing. But while im watching I just want to enjoy suspending my disbelief until after. I had even asked him to just keep quiet then I more or less rage quit halfway through the next one because he couldn't zip it. I almost never watch shows or movies as it is (ADHD) so I hate being interrupted during one im actually able to focus on.

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u/Unusual-Molasses5633 1d ago

... no jury of your peers, omg.

I love spoilers (I literally check for them on my phone as I watch) and that would drive me NUTS.

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u/Colorado_Girrl 1d ago

Oh, I do too. I want to know if what im watching is going to be worth it to try and finish. Or I'll check it for movies if there's one I might want to see. But the talking during drove me up the wall.

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u/BonBoogies Sit on his face already so he has to shut up 1d ago

Same. Also glad my memory is shite and I’ll probably forget this tidbit (although questionable now that I want to forget)

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u/TrelanaSakuyo Abducted by aliens – don’t save me 1d ago

I immediately assume any historical fiction is set in an alternate reality where those inaccuracies are truths.

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u/Cowplant_Witch romance herpetologist 1d ago edited 1d ago

That’s a healthy attitude. Honestly, a lot of historical romance is kind of like the renaissance festival. It’s fun and it’s historically inspired but it’s not authentic and it’s not trying to be.

I think it’s important to set expectations at the beginning. Like, people criticize Sarah MacLean for having Sesily called “sexily” in {Bombshell by Sarah MacLean} but it does inform you right at the beginning of the series that accuracy is not on the agenda. Later on when you learn that one of the women invented chloroform it’s like, sure, why not. (And her book, Knockout, is very popular!)

Edit to add - I recently read an Amanda Quick novel that was set "in the late Victorian Era." She obviously did research because she went into detail about Victorian era photography, but by not giving the exact year, I think she communicated that the book would be approaching historical accuracy a little more casually.

I was honestly a little annoyed because I like to know the exact year, but it is a good way to avoid obvious anachronisms like a beautiful hot summer day in 1816. If the exact year doesn't matter, you can just say it's set during the Regency and leave it at that.

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u/GingerIsTheBestSpice 1d ago

I've read books that featured that year correctly!

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u/miredandwired 1d ago

Tell me more!!! I would love some recs. It must have been a crazy year to live through.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/VitisIdaea Her heart dashed and halted like an indecisive squirrel 1d ago

This comment was removed because the author was banned for deceptively promoting their own work.

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u/JarsFullOfStars Bluestocking 1d ago edited 1d ago

{Miss Amelia’s List by Mercedes Lackey} isn’t strictly a romance (though it has romantic elements), but the year without a summer is definitely a plot point.

ETA: that’s a very odd plot summary, the one at the link. Don’t get caught up in expecting people running around Roman temples in Axminster; that only shows up at the end. If you’d like to read extensive details about how to update an outdated wardrobe, you’re in luck, though.

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u/H3-An_maA 1d ago

Not really romance, but the latest Sebastian St. Cyr book {Who Will Remember by C. S. Harris} features the year without summer quite prominently.

Actually all the books in series contain many real people and events (the ones I can remember right now are the Prince Regent's grand celebration after Napoleon's first defeat and then Napoleon's entry in Paris less than a year later) and it's fascinating to see how they are weaved into the main fictional story.

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u/BeigeParadise 1d ago

{A Scandal to Remember by Elizabeth Essex}

FMC ends up on MMC's ship and they do science stuff in the pacific that includes seeing weird sunsets from the Tambora eruption.

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u/pearly_bones Team plot AND spice 1d ago edited 1d ago

{Marked by the Marquess by Alyson Chase} is set in 1816 and the volcanic eruption and cold weather are pretty integral to the plot.

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u/throwingoftheshade I think Lycan, I think Lycan! 1d ago

Also Courting - Be Mine Through all Time (German title) by Felicia Kingsley, which is an excellent read!

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u/hazel_bit Serial DNFer 23h ago

{Without a summer by mary robinette kowal} is part of a series. her writing reminded me a bit of heyer but like with magic

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u/Cowplant_Witch romance herpetologist 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yess. I was just reading about that year. It’s the summer that Mary Shelley (née Godwin) ended up stuck at Lord Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva with a group of other writers. The weather was awful and they were holed up inside, going stir-crazy.

To pass the time, they read each other ghost stories and had a contest to write something spooky. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, arguably the first sci-fi novel, and John Polidori wrote The Vampyre, possibly the first vampire romance.

Naturally Byron declared Percy the winner.

https://www.skylightmusictheatre.org/post/the-contest-that-created-frankenstein

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28063/how-friendly-writing-contest-resulted-three-literary-classics

Edit - I just read a recap, and The Vampyre is definitely not a romance. It’s a horror story that establishes some of the conventions later used in vampire romance.

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u/topaz_in_the_rough In my defense, I was left unsupervised 1d ago

That's what the Doctor Who episode centered around! All the writers stuck in the house in the weather.

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u/Cowplant_Witch romance herpetologist 1d ago

Nice, I might have to check it out. There was a lot of drama in that group. Mary ran off with Percy Shelley while he was married, Byron had knocked up Claire Clairmont, and Byron and Percy were close friends… maybe homoerotically close?

https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/lord-byron-queer-sexuality-459284/

I haven’t seen the movie referenced, and I’m no Byron expert so I’m not sure. I appreciate him for being a queer icon but he also seems like kind of a dick.

I would be interested to see Dr. Who’s take on their dynamic.

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u/ifemelu_berglund 1d ago

That whole friend group was like an episode of Love and Hiphop: Atlanta.

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u/Ahania1795 1d ago edited 11h ago

This reminds me of my favorite historical fact.

Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage's collaborator and the first computer programmer in history, was Lord Byron's daughter. She was forced to learn advanced mathematics from early childhood, because her family hoped mathematics might save her from developing a scandalously poetic temperament like her father.

Byron died when she was a young child, and I've always wondered how Lovelace felt about her father and her mother's efforts to make sure she was entirely unlike him.

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u/rahlennon 1d ago

I love that story!

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u/licoriceallsort Dark and salty, but with candy striped sections 1d ago

Ahh hahaha I just commented this very thing 😂

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u/kgtsunvv yes i like billionaires sorry not sorry🤠 1d ago

I think my history degree makes me biased against HRs even though I love every Lisa Kleypas I’ve read. They might as well not mention a year if I’m reading it. One detail that makes no sense won’t leave my head the whole time I’m reading. But this is very much a me thing and the average reason dgaf

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u/themiscyranlady must in her soul be a prostitute 15h ago

I have to ignore the year mentioned in a book, unless I’m calculating how long the gap is between the prologue and the main action. It’s the only way to let myself turn off that part of my brain.

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u/licoriceallsort Dark and salty, but with candy striped sections 1d ago

This annoys me to absolutely no end. It's not an unknown factoid, Mary Shelley got stuck inside with Byron and her wasterel of a husband Percy, for the entire summer and wrote Frankenstein. Like, people. Do the barest amount of research.

I'm saying that I'm sure "sunny and hot" could be relative. It's not gonna be in the 30C+, it would probably be 21C and if it were sunny it might be startling.

But no. It was miserable.

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u/Cowplant_Witch romance herpetologist 1d ago

Yeah, it would take ten minutes to google the year for anything majorly notable. You would learn about it immediately.

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u/licoriceallsort Dark and salty, but with candy striped sections 17h ago

Yes!

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u/Edgny81 1d ago

This is a very particular pet peeve of mine as well.

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u/topaz_in_the_rough In my defense, I was left unsupervised 1d ago

I only know about this because of the Doctor Who episode.

I never would have remembered the exact year in a casual setting.

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u/Cyg789 1d ago

It wasn't only 1816 either, though that was the worst year. Cooler climate as a result of the eruption lasted until around 1820.

For those who are interested, the volcano is Mount Tambora and the eruption is the largest in recorded human history. It's a seven on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which is a logarithmic scale from 1 - 8.

The volcano used to be over 4,300 metres high before the eruption, these days it's only around 2,722 metres high. The eruption could be heard more than 2,600 km away.

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u/Human_Building_1368 1d ago

My sister and I talk about this all the time.

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u/AbsyntheMindedly 1d ago

I feel this so hard, and it’s not even just 1816 either! One of my favorite medieval HR authors (who I liked largely because she was honest that she wasn’t trying to be historically accurate so much as “period adventure drama accurate”, and she’d done enough research to make it kind of believable and fun for people like me who know the time period) switched to pirate HR and set her book in South Carolina in 1780 and then completely forgot there was a war going on. I still haven’t finished the book because I haven’t gotten confirmation that the American Revolution is happening. She’s made a few mentions of political strife but the British Navy is more concerned with catching a single pirate than with blockading Charleston.

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u/SaltMarshGoblin 1d ago

Good grief! The coldest ever English July on record, and the author blithely treated it as a hot blue July afternoon??

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u/LitRPGirl 1d ago

the only thing hot in July 1816 was everyone’s temper about the cold..

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u/capitolsara 1d ago

It's good to know because I read historical romance largely in part to read authors who also nerd out about that time period! I love learning random information about wagon wheel tork or the invention of the alarm clock and have that folded into a romance story

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u/iwrite4myself I'm here for the smut, dang it, not the hand holding! 1d ago

You’re not alone, haha! Inaccuracies like this are usually an immediate DNF for me. The writing has to be phenomenal for me to grit my teeth and pretend it’s an alternate reality. 😅

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u/pecanorchard 1d ago

I feel that we would be excellent friends.

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u/Usual-Section-544 1d ago

I read a romance about Jack Frost that talks specifically about this summer (and of course provides a magical explanation). I didn't remember hearing about it when I studied history before that. But I did go look it up to see if it was true!

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u/TemporarilyWorried96 Collecting Sinful Dukes Like Infinity Stones 1d ago

That’s fair, I’d be annoyed if I came across a historical inaccuracy like this too!

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u/VitisIdaea Her heart dashed and halted like an indecisive squirrel 1d ago

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u/Spirited_Caramel999 1d ago

And that's why I like series like Brides of Karadok by Alice Coldbreath: all the fun from HR, none of the real world history inconsistencies

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u/wastetide 20h ago

Teaching history has made history romances a no go 😭

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u/Buddhadevine Abducted by aliens – don’t save me 19h ago

I just got peeved about one that talked about Las Vegas in the newspapers. The story is set in 1890 but Las Vegas wasn’t founded until 1905.

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u/CraftySwimming3757 14h ago

It’s definitely funny to see what does or doesn’t catch my ire! Like, I’m more into science and the different things that authors can get wrong or avoid actually talking about the science sometimes feels random when a small detail will then totally take me out of it!

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u/Maleficent-Hurry-170 8h ago

Historical, landscape, or botanical inaccuracies make me DNF all the time. Not just romances, but any kind of book.

I think this might be why I've switched to Monster, Paranormal, ect, exclusively. Alien worlds are allowed to suspend the rules of physics and biology.

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u/Nickye19 2h ago

The time I dnfed a historical fiction book for having medieval peasants eat potatoes 😂. If they were medieval Incan peasants maybe.