Perfect Pandemic Reading: Introducing Georgette Heyer

A bad week was a “three-Heyer” week – a week where reading three Heyer novels was the perfect panacea for whatever challenges life had thrown at them. I loved this idea and it reminded me of why I love reading – and re-reading – Georgette Heyer.

Georgette Heyer’s witty, clever novels make perfect reading in times of illness or stress – a great escape.





Read and loved for 100 years

There aren’t many writers whose works live on after their
death, but Georgette Heyer is one of them. She wrote across several different
genres but her forte was historical fiction. Today, Georgette Heyer is credited
with having created the ‘Regency’ genre and twenty-six of her delicious novels
are set in that colorful, compelling period when men (like Mr Darcy) wore
wonderful clothes and drove elegant carriages, women were raised with marriage
as their primary goal and were ‘on the shelf’ at twenty, and manners and etiquette
were of vital importance to the upper class.

Born in 1902, the young Heyer had the benefit of her
father’s Classical education and love of books. She was brought up on a rich
diet of Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Kipling and several centuries of great
poetry. She was a voracious reader and began making up her own stories in early
childhood. When she was seventeen she wrote her first novel, The Black Moth. It was published in
1921, one month after her nineteenth birthday. Nearly one hundred years later, The Black Moth, along with fifty of
Heyer’s other novels, is still in print. An enduring bestseller, she has sold
in excess of thirty million books and is now being read by a fifth generation
of enthusiastic readers.

Heyer’s first novel is still loved by readers 100 years after its first publication.



“The language is so alive, so comic.”

There is something compelling about a writer who can
transport her reader into another time and place; into a world so convincing
that you cannot help but see it as though you were really there; and with
characters who leap off the page as living, breathing people. Heyer’s settings
feel real, her plots are ingenious and her dialogue sparkles. Even when her
vocabulary is unfamiliar, such is the power of her pen that you still get the
gist of it. In her Regency novels, in particular, there are so many new (although
they are authentically old) and wonderful words to intrigue and delight her
readers: words like ‘bosky’ and ‘cutpurse’, ‘dudgeon’, ‘ames-ace’,
‘slibber-slabber’ and ‘faradiddle’. As well-known actor and author, Stephen
Fry, has said, ‘It’s her language I think that admirers of Georgette Heyer
relish the most. It’s true there’s something quite extraordinary about it. It’s
all authentic. The language is so alive, so comic.’

Actor, author and comedian, Stephen Fry loves Georgette Heyer’s novels and revels in her language and dialogue. Stephen Fry unveiled her English Heritage Blue Plaque in June 2015.



Laugh-out-loud comedy

Georgette Heyer excelled at comedy – especially ironic
comedy. She knew how to invert a scene, how to upend and explode reader
expectations, and her language has an almost theatrical timing. She picks up
her readers and carries them along through her complex and deftly-woven plots
all the way to her masterfully-written imbroglio endings. It is Heyer’s
characters who remain with the reader long after the last page is turned.
Though drawn mainly from the upper echelons of Regency society, her all-too
human creations stride, mince, ride, waltz and fumble their way through her
impeccably-researched fictional world.

Heyer could bring a character to life in a sentence and she
delighted in creating individuals whose flaws and foibles reflected her keen
eye for human nature. She depicted the pompous, the vulgar and the smug, humorously
wielding her pen like a sword to cut them down to size. She brought to life
naïve women and rakish men, clever women and stupid men, downtrodden and
dependent women and their domineering lords and gave them believable stories of
transformation and redemption. And she did it with a dry wit and a sense of
humour that still makes her readers laugh out loud.

The Unknown Ajax is one of Georgette Heyer’s brilliant ironic comedies.



So much to look forward to…

For those lucky enough to know her novels – and her Regency
and Georgian novels, in particular – just the mention of a character’s name is
enough to provoke a smile or a laugh. She had a genius for creating comic
characters, among them Sir Bonamy Ripple, the indulgent gourmand in False Colours, Ferdy and Nemesis in Friday’s Child, Claude and his valet,
Polyphant, in The Unknown Ajax,
plain-speaking Mrs Floore in Bath Tangle,
vacuous Augustus Fawnhope in The Grand
Sophy, vulgar but well-meaning Jonathan Chawleigh in A Civil Contract, and Lufra, the Baluchistan hound in Frederica. They leap from the
page as living, breathing people (and dog), take the reader by the hand and
draw them, smiling, into their story.

If you haven’t read her yet, you might begin with Arabella (young woman goes to London to
find a husband) or The Grand Sophy
(independent young woman turns her family’s life upside down) or The Unknown Ajax (estranged heir meets
his hostile relatives) or Sylvester (proud
Duke is refused by unconventional female). Or you might try perennial
favourites, Venetia, Frederica, These Old Shades, Devil’s Cub or Friday’s Child. If you enjoy Heyer’s novels, then like so many
millions of other readers, you may find yourself inexorably drawn into her Georgian
and Regency worlds. Once there, you can revel in her meticulous period detail, so
deftly woven into her clever plots, and enjoy meeting her aristocrats, rakes and
ingénues, riding beside them in Hyde Park or joining them at a ball or dancing
with them at Almacks. Whichever book you choose, there will be clothes and
carriages, drinking and gambling, romance and delightful conversation with lots
of intriguing new words. For those who have yet to taste the delicious fruits
of Georgette Heyer’s pen, there is much to look forward to.