girlyswot | Why Heyer is not Austen

Since

megan29 is just discovering the joys of Heyer for the first time, and also since reading this ridiculous article (HT:

coughingbear) about her, I have been pondering the merits of Heyer a lot this week. Inevitably the comparison always comes, 'But of course, she's no Jane Austen.'

It seems to me that there are two important pragmatic reasons why Heyer's writing is different from Austen's. First, Austen wrote contemporary novels while Heyer is best known for her historicals. That Heyer's historical period often coincides with Austen's lifetime does not make this point any less significant. Austen wrote her world from the inside, as she lived and breathed it, for a readership who also lived at that time and in that social circle. Heyer has to create that historical reality for herself and her readers. There is a necessary consciousness of this in her work. I'm never certain with Heyer how far her depictions of various historical settings are accurate. What matters to me as a reader is that they are internally consistent and externally plausible.

And second, Heyer wrote to earn a living. I don't know how much Jane Austen earned from her books during her lifetime, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't a lot. Certainly she did not depend on them to keep a roof over her head or food on her table. Heyer wrote to support herself and her family. She had to keep to strict deadlines and to produce books that would sell. This seems to have been increasingly the case, so that her later novels are a mixed bag indeed. She matured as a writer, producing some of her most accomplished work later in life, but she also learned the tricks of writing potboilers at speed to pay the bills. For many years she wrote one romance and one detective novel every year. Other similarly prolific authors (yes, Barbara Cartland, I'm looking at you) paid for their quantity of output by sacrificing all pretensions to quality.

And yet, given these constraints, Heyer's achievements were extraordinary. She established, practically single-handedly, the genre of Regency romance (and more widely, the genre of historical romance) and the associated vocabulary (some of which she literally invented and some of which was the fruit of her research). Her books have been continually reprinted for almost 90 years with only one (The Great Roxhythe) having fallen into complete obscurity.

She's not Jane Austen, it's true. But she is Georgette Heyer and that is no mean achievement.

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I didn't see the comparison in that article. It seemed quite supportive of Heyer to me, so I don't understand why it's ridiculous. She sounds like an interesting woman, but I don't go for flashing eyes and Dukes and what-not, so I haven't (so far) read any of her books. I do like comedies of manners though, and didn't realise that was something she did well. It seemed to me the writer of the article was attempting to broaden her appeal to different markets, perhaps to people like me who are not fans of historical romances (I didn't even like Frenchman's Creek) but might be intrigued by descriptions such as 'almost parodic' and 'well-written'.

Comparing two writers doing completely different things at different times is just dense. Is Heyer obviously influenced by Austen or something? I can't see any other reason for putting the two of them together, unless it's a not-so-subtle put-down to Austen as well as Heyer. Which wouldn't surprise me, given the way she gets written off by critics who seem to me to be motivated by envy of the fact that she's head and shoulders above most writers even now, never mind what she was doing for the time she was writing...I don't like throw the word 'genius' around, but I can't think of another English novelist I'd put her alongside in terms of skill and achievement up to that point. Defoe...? Interesting, ground-breaking, but ...no. Fielding...? Maybe, although I can't say I madly enjoyed Joseph Andrews.

There may well be writers I would consider her equal from other traditions / cultures if I knew enough about those, but my degree was in English literature. /hedging

First, the major premise of the article is false. Heyer is not a forgotten author and to describe her as 'not entirely out of print' is like describing Shakespeare as 'still occasionally performed.'

Second, the descriptions of her books give a completely wrong impression of them. I cannot think of a single Heyer character who could be described as a 'wicked Duke' (Avon, perhaps? But that hardly does justice to the complexity of his character) or a hearty knight (no idea who he might be thinking of here.) Bosoms do not heave and ladies of quality do not faint. What makes her books so brilliant is in fact the quality of her characterisation.

The article seemed to me to be incredibly patronising and ill-informed.

I think the reason people compare Heyer and Austen is that both wrote romances set in the Regency era. That's it, as far as I can see. It is often intended as a put-down to Austen, I'm sure.

First, the major premise of the article is false. Heyer is not a forgotten author and to describe her as 'not entirely out of print' is like describing Shakespeare as 'still occasionally performed.'

I see how that could be misleading to non-fans. Not to apologise for poor journalism, but to me it did also come across that he was positive about her writing (if very condescending, but then, so what's new from the 'quality' press when writing about genre fiction?). I suppose it makes for a better article if there's a hook, however false. I would say the writer seems to be calling for some kind of critical reappraisal / dialogue to open up her work to more readers.

Personally, I'd now like to read a response in the Independent by someone who really knows Heyer's work...

It would be interesting to know how well reprinted Heyers sell, compared to how many get borrowed from libraries. If even a few readers go into a bookshop looking for this so-called 'forgotten' writer, instead of lapping up more of the pseudo-literary contemporary drivel that gets published by the bucketload, something positive will have been accomplished!

Have a good rest of the day!

I assume they sell well enough. I started reading her about twenty years ago and in that time they've gone through at least three, if not four, new editions. So presumably people are still buying them. And the detective stories which were out of print for a long time have recently been reprinted too. I don't know how well they will do among crime readers, but I suspect a lot of Heyer fans will be buying them. I have a few.

Heyer does comedy of manners extremely well. Why this article seems ridiculous to me is that it describes something (heaving bosoms and fainting heroines) that Heyer most pointedly didn't write and if she did she would disparage it (Julia in A Civil Contract for example). I can understand that she isn't everyone's cup of tea, which is why I seldom recommend her unless asked (as Megan did recently) but the article writer seemed to be describing what he or she expected to find and not what Heyer actually wrote so it felt a if he/she had never read the books. Heyer was very ascerbic in her observations of society and it's hypocracies, which is, I suppose, another comparison with Austen, and tended to be matter-of-fact, at least once she'd got a bit older (her first published novel was written when she was a teenager) rather than going for out-and-out romance.

I think that Austen and Heyer are put together because the majority of Heyer readers read Austen and want more (even if they read Heyer first). In my experience, Heyer is the only one who satisfies my Regency cravings anywhere close to how Austen does. I've tried a couple of other writers and the feeling is all wrong - I couldn't get into them at all. I know Heyer isn't in the same league as Austen but I enjoy (most of) her books anyway. Plus both of them are extremely funny when they want - which I always like.

Well, that makes a lot of sense - and makes her sound quite appealing to me at least!

If you do try any of her work, ask for recommendations first. Because she was under pressure to write to support her family, some aren't as good as others. Only the first few books are as melodramatically romantic as du Maurier's books and even then, Heyer has more wit and more observation in her books. The Black Moth for example, isn't a particularly good book but when you think the author was only 19 when she wrote it and went on to get it published, it's pretty impressive. But it's still one for the fans to go back to rather than a good one to start with.

Here, here! Methinks we should exchange book rec's more often, since we appear to have similar tastes and opinions.

It seemed quite supportive of Heyer to me, so I don't understand why it's ridiculous.

It seemed quite supportive to me, too, but I think Ros focused on the snotty (and quite inaccurate) second paragraph, whereas you and I, who know much less about this author, paid attention to the general tone of the article. The 2nd para was intended to put her down as no more than a romance writer - which is mostly true - but it put her down for all the wrong reasons. Her books are fluffy, but not silly. It was only her subsequent imitators who wrote the kind of nonsense described in that para.

What seemed ridiculous to me was that an article apparently commending Heyer seemed to have been written by someone with no clue at all about her writing, her genre and her current status as an author. So although it's nice that he said nice things about her, they don't carry a whole lot of weight since they come from a position of ignorance.

Well, I don't know how popular she is in UK, but in US I had a heck of a time finding "Venetia." I eventually found an old old old edition in a library 2 towns over. The book is basically falling apart at the seam, and the pages look yuck! (As you can tell, I really wanted to read it - and that's b/c I trust TDU's recs - thanks, Bel!)

Some of her books have newer editions, and bookstores sell about 10 titles. But I'm not sure I'd call her popular in US. I pretty much heard of her from my flist.

If you want ones that you can't find in the US, you could try buying them from The Book Depository. It has free international postage.

Why Heyer is not Austen

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