That rugged, stubbled Regency hero on your book cover? Someone fetch the gentleman a razor!

For fashionable gentlemen of Regency England, the clean-shaven face was overwhelmingly the ideal. A beard wasn't the mark of a dashing romantic hero that it might be today, and yesterday's stubble wasn't a carefully cultivated fashion statement, rather it generally meant it was time to shave.

But clean-shaven didn't necessarily mean hairless.

Side-whiskers could be decidedly fashionable, sometimes extending impressively down the cheeks. An 1813 satire of the Prince Regent even depicts him with a luxuriant whisker and jokes about his determination to keep it. Moustaches could also appear in military contexts, where facial-hair fashions differed from ordinary civilian dress.

And shaving? That was accomplished the old-fashioned way: soap or lather, brush, basin, and a very sharp straight razor. No safety razor, no electric trimmer, and certainly no five-blade cartridge with an aloe strip!

No gentleman worth his salt would be caught with a five o'clock shadow or any stubble whatsoever. The enormous Victorian beard craze was still decades away, as well. Beards became dramatically more fashionable in Britain around the time of the Crimean War in the 1850s.

So, the next time you spot a Regency duke sporting three days of perfectly sculpted stubble... enjoy the view. Just don't blame the Regency.