Georgette Heyer, History and Historical Fiction

by Samantha J. Rayner (Editor), Kim Wilkins (Editor)

The Nonesuch is the name of one of Georgette Heyer’s most famous novels. It means a person or thing without equal, and Georgette Heyer is certainly that. Her historical works inspire a fiercely loyal, international readership and are championed by literary figures such as A. S. Byatt and Stephen Fry.

Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction brings together an eclectic range of chapters from scholars all over the world to explore the contexts of Heyer’s career. Divided into four parts – gender; genre; sources; and circulation and reception – the volume draws on scholarship on Heyer and her contemporaries to show how her work sits in a chain of influence, and why it remains pertinent to current conversations on books and publishing in the twenty-first century. Heyer’s impact on science fiction is accounted for, as are the milieu she was writing in, the many subsequent works that owe Heyer’s writing a debt, and new methods for analysing these enduring books.

From the gothic to data science, there is something for everyone in this volume; a celebration of Heyer’s ‘nonesuch’ status amongst historical novelists, proving that she and her contemporary women writers deserve to be read (and studied) as more than just guilty pleasures.

Genres: Nonfiction

301 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[bluerose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up my first Georgette Heyer novel in September of 2020 (around 99 years, I would later discover, after her first novel was published). I'd seen her name on books for years, but the covers always looked like trashy romance novels (no thank you). Yes I'd seen a few quotes that compared her to Jane Austen but come on really? Cue a global pandemic, an Instagram post saying this book called Arabella is Pride & Prejudice meets Cinderella and fine, I'll give her a shot...

Eight months, fifty-plus books and one delightful online literary conference later I think it's safe to call me a fan. To quote that conference, I am a Heyer hobbyist. And that conference is why this book exists: it was a lovely gift given (in electronic form for free) to those of us who attended Georgette Heyer: A Century Spent Having A Ball An Un-Conference. (The conference was very enjoyable except that there was way too much talk about a certain currently popular tv show which Stephen Fry rightly dismissed in his part as not being up to Heyer's standards. Moving on.)

This is the kind of book that requires you to read many, many other books (34 at a minimum) and I LOVE that--I did complete all the novels referenced before finishing this book, which is why it took me so long to write a review. I have SO many thoughts--believe it or not this is the SHORT version.

#2--I love the comparison of Freddy from Cotillion to Sir Percy Blakeney. And comparing him to Lord Peter Wimsey as well has made me want to give that series another try.

#4--Finally learning about the origins of "bluestocking"--a genuine and full-blown clash of philosophies.

Interesting (and by interesting I mean vile) to learn that Lord Byron made frequent attacks in print on women writers...the more of his quotes I read the more I want to...let's say box his ears.

#5--Excellent essay on A Civil Contract. I especially love how it points out all the direct parallels to specific works of Austen.

#7--Heyer--in space! The influence of Heyer on science fiction. (Do you really need more than the title?)

#8--I have been missing a LOT of the Shakespearean allusions (I think most strikingly with The Unknown Ajax). Time to brush up.

#10--Heyer was DEFINITELY a fan of The Scarlet Pimpernel!

The chapter on Heyer's use of language and what it does and doesn't owe to Austen made me appreciate her skill. Not why I read her (or Austen's) books but I found it fascinating. And it's nice to know I have good taste. Heyer's work holds up in conversation with Pride and Prejudice. Even more importantly, it clarified the reason that I haven't been able to find exact definitions for some of the expressions Heyer used: she made them up and expected her readers to figure them out from context.

#11--Any future film adaptations of Heyer's work PLEASE take note of her quote on the one film adaptation of her work that actually was made: "It seems to me that to turn a perfectly clean story of mine into a piece of sex-muck is bad faith, and something very different from the additions and alterations one would expect to be obliged to suffer. If I had wanted a reputation for salacious novels I could have got it easily enough. The whole thing is so upsetting."

#12--Ugh not a fan of the essay putting a Freudian spin on Heyer's work. Not everyone has daddy issues. Though it was interesting to hear the author's take on The Grand Sophy's unfortunate portrayal of a moneylender. She writes that the scene "is...in my opinion one of Heyer's funniest, most brilliantly staged set pieces. Despite my own Jewish background I cannot give it up, even though I have chucked many another novel away from me in disgust for similarly nasty and clichéd portrayals of Jews."

#13-I have...thoughts about reducing the complexity of books to algorithms. Especially as half the findings in this section contradict each other depending on which metric is used.

#18--Appendix 2--Survey questions--main reasons you enjoy reading Heyer. Mine are: characters, humour, clean romances

And so much more. There is richness here.

(An unforgivable typo in the list of books cited--Heyer did NOT write SPRING Muslin.)

[Pgchuis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is pretty academic and I only read the chapters which interested me. I particularly enjoyed the lists of favourite and least favourite novels, heroes and heroines towards the end. Despite the blurb, The Nonesuch, which is one of my favourites, doesn't figure largely in these essays.

[Lucy Cummin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2020, moments before covid hit, there took place a conference on GH and this tome is the outcome. The essays range over four categories: Gender, Genre, Sources, and what is called 'Circulation and Reception' --that being a catchall. In 'Gender" the essayists examine the roles women and men play in the books and the character types as well as touching on the evolution of the historical novel, written mostly by women and thus disregarded as worthy of notice. This bleeds into the next set of essays on Genre which focus more about the literary influences on and of GH in her development as a writer: the romantic, the realistic, the Gothic and on science fiction -- particularly the sub-genre known as space opera. Section 3 addresses GH's own sources: she had a profound acquaintanceship with Shakespeare thanks to her father and used that knowledge throughout all her books, as sources for plots, for names, for humor. She also read original sources, including Wellington's dispatches to write her war books. The final category examines the not very successful rendering of "The Reluctant Widow" on screen in the late forties, the 'guilty pleasures' of reading GH (she really and truly is NOT remotely pc or woke but she seems to transcend all that because of the joy she does offer -- and that essayist offers some though-provoking reasons for that). The last essay in this mixed bag section is all data mining -- education levels of readers, who recommended to reader, favourites, vocabulary changes and so on. Even the shift in her earlier books (with the exception of The Infamous Army and The Spanish Bride -- both war books of usage of male and female pronouns! (As she grows older women equalize and then surpass men.) This is a book for the GH afficionado much like the bio mentioned above and not at all disappointing. ****