Georgette Heyer

Anyone who regularly reads my reviews will be aware that I am quite partial to the works of Georgette Heyer. For me, this novelist is simply unbeatable.

Georgette Heyer has often been dismissed as being merely a writer of romantic fiction. However, that opinion has frequently been expressed by people who've never read a single one of her books because conversely, she's likened by many who have read them to a modern-day Jane Austen. I think I would disagree somewhat with both these contentions.

It's true that the majority of her novels are romantic and are set in the Georgian or Regency period. They are also frequently a commentary on the manners and mores of those times, all delivered in a similar well written and witty style to that of Jane Austen. She might not have received the literary acclaim that has been granted to Jane Austen and she might not be studied (yet) by GCSE or A Level students but she single-handedly created one of the most popular and lucrative sub-genres in romantic fiction, the Regency romance, and she has never yet been bettered.

Georgette Heyer was born in 1902 and fell into writing fiction almost by accident. Her first novel, The Black Moth, was originally written as a story to entertain her younger brother who was recuperating from an illness and was subsequently published as a novel in 1921. And so began her long and prolific career as a writer during which she produced over fifty novels during her long career.

She didn't just confine her writing to romantic fiction but also published several detective novels, which brought her some success during the 1930s. These novels are still in print but although contemporary at the time they were written, to modern readers they will probably seem quite dated now. Like her historical romance novels, her crime fiction was witty and stylish and similar in many ways to Agatha Christie or Dorothy L Sayers, who were the queens of crime at the time.

Her true passion, however, was history of the undiluted kind, and therefore her novels, even her romances, contain a great deal of accurate historical detail, which immediately gives the reader a wonderful sense of time and place. This love of historical detail elevated several of her Regency novels into a different genre altogether, as they concentrated far more upon the historical elements and less upon the romantic. Indeed, one of these books 'An Infamous Army', set at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and dealing with the Battle of Waterloo, gives such accurate detail about troop placement and movement during the battle that it is reputed to have been used as a teaching aid for military cadets at Sandhurst. The story may be apocryphal but there's no denying that the description of the battle contains an almost blow-by-blow account of events.

But it's her Regency romance novels by which Georgette Heyer is best remembered and which hold a special place in my heart. The saddest thing for me is that Heyer herself was actually quite dismissive about her romantic novels and treated them merely as 'pot boilers'. However embarrassed she may have been about these books, she didn't short-change her readers. The storylines were always strong, the dialogue witty, her heroes invariable wealthy and urbane, though often not handsome in the accepted sense, and her heroines were feisty and intelligent, much like Austen's Elizabeth Bennet. This, I think, is possibly why Georgette Heyer is so often compared to Jane Austen but, to my mind, that is where the similarity ends. Jane Austen wrote contemporary novels and her heroines are women of their time, and with the exception of Elizabeth Bennet, most of Austen's heroines are less than feisty. Indeed, one or two of them are positively obnoxious, but that's my personal opinion.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that Georgette Heyer has her detractors. She has been accused of inventing a vocabulary which was not used and also of sanitising a time which had much poverty and misery, something she glosses over in her books. I don't wish to appear to be an apologist for Georgette Heyer - she's more than capable of sweeping away any criticism by herself - but this is fiction and most people don't want to read about peasants starving on the roadside because they've been thrown out of their tied cottage by an uncaring aristocrat. If they want the unvarnished truth, they can read an historical biography. With regard to the Regency cant used in her books, to say this was made up is fallacious. Georgette Heyer was meticulous in her research. In one of her books, 'Frederica', she has the hero taking a young boy to look around a foundary in Soho in London and when it was pointed out to her after it had gone to the printers that the foundary in question had actually been in Soho, Birmingham, she was devastated that she'd made what she regarded as an unforgivable error and tried to stop the book being published. Surely not the actions of someone who made things up!

Many writers have tried to produce Regency romances to the standard of Miss Heyer but most have failed ignominiously. A large proportion of historical romantic fiction is now created in the USA, and it invariably lacks the authentity of language or historical detail. Even British-born writers struggle to write with the stylish wit so prevalent in Heyer's work. Georgette Heyer was an original talent with a style which it seems it's impossible to emulate.

My first introduction to Georgette Heyer, and indeed adult literature, was at about age ten or eleven: a time of hormonal change and heightened emotions for most females (and males for that matter). The first adult novel I read was 'Friday's Child', featuring a heroine in her teens with whom I could identify and who loved someone who barely noticed she existed; again, a situation with which most pubescent girls could identify. I lapped it up and went back for more and I've been reading her novels ever since.

For those who have read and enjoyed Georgette Heyer, I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted but for those who've never read any of her work, I urge you to give it a try. She is much easier to read than Jane Austen, her characters are every bit as well-rounded and might I say, even more interesting, and the stories keep the reader engaged from page one.

Romantic fiction today often details minutely the sexual relationship between the main protagonists and, although sometimes enjoyable to read, it's often totally unnecessary embellishment of the story. Georgette Heyer's novels rarely go beyond the bedroom door even in the couple of books where the main protagonists are married and in fact, her stories often don't feature any physical contact at all until the final pages. However, she was incomparable in her ability to build sexual tension between her hero and heroine, making the final declarations of love far more believable than any modern novel which has the heroine falling into bed with the hero on the slightest acquaintance.

Nearly all Georgette Heyer's books are still in print, except for those which she had supressed because she didn't feel they were good enough, and will be available at your public library. As I said before, she's written over fifty novels so I won't list them all here but will give my recommendations. If your preference is for light and frothy romantic fiction, to begin with I suggest you try 'Sylvester', 'Faro's Daughter' or 'Frederica', and for more serious historical fiction with a dash of romance, then 'An Infamous Army' is a good place to start. If your preference is for medieval history, then 'The Conqueror' takes some beating. Heyer's detective fiction is all pretty good, albeit very stylised and dated, and 'A Blunt Instrument' is one of my favourites. Whichever book you try first, I guarantee it won't be your last.

Georgette Heyer died in 1974 and nearly forty years after her death, her books are still being read and enjoyed and she's still attracting new readers. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

It's half a century since I picked up my first Georgette Heyer novel and I've read them all, some I've devoured much more than once. For me, she is the ultimate comfort read. Whenever, I'm in a reading rut, I always know that I can rely on her to entertain me and re-energise my love of reading. She transports me to another time and place and instead of being a middle aged woman with greying hair and an expanding waistline, I'm a young lady of the Regency attending balls and routs and getting vouchers for Almacks and just a few pages further on, I'm going to meet my hero....