Why Heyer is not Austen

[girlyswot]

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.

Comments

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

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.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

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

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

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.

[megan29.livejournal.com]

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