A small surge of American heroines arose in the subgenre of Regency romance in 2016: Eloisa James's My American Duchess (2016) appeared around the same time as Maya Rodale's Lady Bridget's Diary (2016a), the first in her ‘Keeping Up with the Cavendishes’ series. The feisty heroines of these novels charm readers just as thoroughly as they do their heroes but their appearance also raises some intriguing questions: Why the Regency? Why not simply set the novels in America? Why heroines from America, specifically, as opposed to other British colonies? The answers to these questions simply may be that the Regency is an exceedingly popular setting and the authors of these novels are themselves American; therefore, it is logical that their heroines would share the authors’ nationality and be placed in a familiar setting, one already recognised and loved by a wide readership.

I propose, however, that there is more to the matter, specifically in terms of the Regency setting. As Pamela Regis writes in connection with Georgette Heyer's historical romances,

The nationalities of the heroines and the heroes are crucial, then; in this case, they lend a particular significance to the setting. The high society of the Regency period, in the form it is depicted in historical romance, is ordered by the aristocracy with strict rules of conduct. There are double standards everywhere: the rules are stricter for women than men, and the control the older women ostensibly have in the ballroom wavers under the influence of high-ranking men. This patriarchal set-up is upset by the entrance of Americans, who subscribe to a different ideology altogether. American characters are best suited to making political statements in a Regency setting, as the collision of British and American differences forces a conflict. Recently independent of monarchy, their disregard for aristocracy and their inevitably different attitudes towards autonomy and rebellion not only make for amusing situations but also call the status quo into question.