Georgette Heyer: Meticulous craftswoman

The Tedettes Jane Austen Book Club have branched out into more Regency novels.  Now they are absorbing the novels of the Queen of Regency Romance, Georgette Heyer. They’re learning about their heroine from Jane Aiken Hodges biography.  It’s called  The Private World of Georgette Heyer  (Quotes from the Chivers 1984 edition).

Hodge’s Foreword:  “She was .. an immensely skilled and meticulous craftswoman.  She did her best to conceal her high standards and stern moral code behind the mask of romantic comedy.”

Plots and technique

(From Chapter 2). ‘Heyer once said, “My plots are abysmal and I think of them with blood and tears”.  Her family confirm she did indeed work at her plots with book and tears .. plunged in black gloom when things went badly, prowling restlessly about the house until she had her plan worked out, when she would sit down and write … at high speed, often late into the night.’

Heyer said of her own work in one letter to her publisher:

“ … The Unknown Ajax and Venetia are the best of my later works. My style is really a mixture of Johnson and Austen – what I rely on is a certain gift for the farcial … I know its useless to talk about technique in these degenerate days – but no less a technician than Noel Coward reads me because he thinks my technique is so good.  I’m proud of that.”

(From Chapter 8)  She kept a single fan letter, received in 1963 from former political prisoner in Romania. The writer spoke of how she had read Friday’s Child before her arrest, and for 12 long years had told and retold the story, committed to memory, of “what Kitten did next” to her fellow inmates.

“Truly, your characters managed to awaken smiles, even when hearts were heavy, stomachs empty and the future dark indeed”.

Praise that would astonish any writer. Certainly a letter to keep.

Much in Hodge’s biography is of technical interest to writers: Heyer’s dealing with her several publishers and agents, and her views about the blurbs and jackets. There is a lesson to be learned by all too from reading about Heyer’s decades-long tax problems and, even though she always earned a lot, her occassional cash flow problems. These mangled finances were caused by her and her husband not taking a business-like approach at the outset.

The Tedettes leave you with their favourite observation from Hodge’s biography:

“She had no patience for .. Russian gloom.  If she had been one of Chekhov’s three sisters they would have got to Moscow.”

Thanks for joining the Teddettes as they explored the Regency world of Georgette Heyer.

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