Have Yourselves A Very Vulgar Holiday
A Rebellious Regency Update
Hi everyone!
I’m so delighted to have been sharing this newsletter all year and to have found a furious, silly, clever readership who enjoys my posts. We grew from a small production to a small/medium-sized production this year, which is largely because of all the good vibes you all kept sharing when I dropped a new essay.
2025 Plan-a-palooza
Most of the pieces I’ve been sharing this year are re-edits of things I had written before, sometimes for my old blog and sometimes for now-defunct magazines. It felt silly to put these behind a paywall when the previous versions are still floating around the Internet for free.
In 2025, I will continue to revisit my older pieces for free every other week here on Substack. So, for all the free subscribers, yay! We can continue screaming together about the scandalous women of olde times every other week.
But wait, there’s more!
Midway through 2025, I am going to begin marketing my upcoming book: Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, The Uncrowned Queen of Great Britain (title: still a work in progress). There aren’t pre-order links for this yet, because I’m actively still writing it, but when there are I will share them for SURE! The book itself will be in your local bookshop sometime in early 2026.
There are lots of things I’ve been learning about while writing this book that fascinate me but won’t fit in the book. So, I will turn those things into new Substack posts, coming out probably once every other week.
See what I did there? So you’ll get a free rerun post one week, then a new Caroline of Brunswick-related post on alternate weeks, which means a new post every week (for paid subscribers).
Don’t Know Who Caroline of Brunswick Is, Though?
To be clear, not many people know who Caroline of Brunswick is. That’s why I’m writing this book: so that more people will know about this wacky, hat-wearing goofball.
As part of my research, I visited her hometown of Braunschweig (aka Brunswick), Germany, where I was mostly met with confusion along the lines of: “Why is this Canadian woman writing a book about a German woman who was kind of Queen of England for a hot minute?” And that’s just from the historians I met! Non-historians were like, “Who even is Caroline of Brunswick?”
So I understand if my description of every-other-week Caroline of Brunswick essays has you like, what?
But here’s the deal. Caroline of Brunswick (or CoB as I call her, in my head and my notes) was married to George IV of Great Britain. George IV, before he was King, served as the REGENT. The REGENCY ERA is named AFTER HIM.
So Caroline was on the scene with people you have heard of, like Jane Austen, Queen Charlotte, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley among others. And it’s the stories of these other people that I’ll be sharing in these bonus posts in a series I’ll probably call REGENCY REBELS.
What To Do?
If you’re reading this, you’re probably already a free subscriber! And what you can do is rest peacefully, knowing you’ll be getting a silly/scathing feminist rant about a woman from history every other week starting in January.
If you want to get a silly/scathing feminist rant about Regency Era Icons in those in-between weeks, great news!! I’m offering 50% off paid subscriptions from now until the end of the year.
And if there is someone in your life who you just don’t know what to get them, be they a loved one, an enemy, or a colleague whose name you drew in an office Secret Santa. Why not confuse them entirely by gifting a subscription to this Substack??
I’m off to continue writing this book, but will return in January with Substack posts both yassified reruns and new Regency stories; keep well over this wintry time and talk soon!
xoxo Ann
VULGAR HISTORY A LA CARTE is the companion publication to the Vulgar History podcast. Click here to hear the latest episode of the podcast.
Ann Foster is a a writer and podcaster. She’s currently writing a nonfiction biography of Caroline of Brunswick. Don’t know who that is? You will soon! She’s represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.