This chapter analyses the use of anachronism in popular historical romances, focussing on Lorraine Heath’s Victorian romance series Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James as sample for close study. The analysis is conducted within the broader context of historical fiction but with specific attention given to the neo-Victorian novel’s approach to the fictional past. The chapter explores the anachronisms of language, character psychology and behaviour found in these novels, and finds that the representation of character mindset and reactions to the social context aligns with other neo-Victorian texts that seek to revise the period and that the genre’s historical inaccuracies are also greatly determined by the formula and leisurely purpose of the popular historical romance. Anachronisms serve a function to achieve a reparatory aim and give readers the opportunity to reflect on modern women’s concerns within the safety of the satisfactory love story. This way, anachronism become “necessary” to meet readers’ genre expectations by fictionally re-inscribing women’s perspectives, active sexuality, autonomy of thought and independence in the highly-predetermined structure of the nineteenth-century romance plot.
