Georgette Heyer - Financial Problems

Financial Problems

In 1939, Rougier was called to the Bar, and the family moved first to Brighton, then to Hove, so that Rougier could easily commute to London. The following year, they sent their son to a preparatory school, creating an additional expense for Heyer. During World War II, her brothers served in the armed forces, alleviating one of her monetary worries. Her husband, meanwhile, served in the Home Guard. As he was new to his career, Rougier did not earn much money, and paper rationing during the war caused lower sales of Heyer's books. To meet their expenses Heyer sold the Commonwealth rights for These Old Shades, Devil's Cub, and Regency Buck to her publisher, Heinemann, for £750. A contact at the publishing house, her close friend A.S. Frere, later offered to return the rights to her for the same amount of money she was paid. Heyer refused to accept the deal, explaining that she had given her word to transfer the rights.

After having lunch with a representative from Hodder & Stoughton, who published her detective stories, Heyer felt that her host had patronized her. The company had an option on her next book; to make them break her contract, she wrote Penhallow, which the 1944 Book Review Digest described as "a murder story but not a mystery story". Hodder & Stoughton turned the book down, thus ending their association with Heyer, and Heinemann agreed to publish it instead. Her publisher in the United States, Doubleday, also disliked the book and ended their relationship with Heyer after its publication.

The Blitz bombing of 1940–41 disrupted train travel in Britain, prompting Heyer and her family to move to London in 1942 so that Rougier would be closer to his work. To earn more money, Heyer reviewed books for Heinemann, earning 2 guineas for each review. She also allowed her novels to be serialized in Women's Journal prior to their publication as hardcover books. The appearance of a Heyer novel usually caused the magazine to sell out completely, but she complained that they "always like my worst work".

To minimize her tax liability, Heyer formed a limited liability company called Heron Enterprises around 1950. Royalties from new titles would be paid to the company, which would then furnish Heyer's salary and pay directors' fees to her family. She would continue to receive royalties from her previous titles, and foreign royalties – except for those from the United States – would go to her mother. Within several years, however, a tax inspector found that Heyer was withdrawing too much money from the company. The inspector considered the extra funds as undisclosed dividends, meaning that she owed an additional £3,000 in taxes. To pay the tax bill, Heyer wrote two articles, "Books about the Brontës" and "How to be a Literary Writer", that were published in the magazine Punch. She once wrote to a friend, "I'm getting so tired of writing books for the benefit of the Treasury and I can't tell you how utterly I resent the squandering of my money on such fatuous things as Education and Making Life Easy and Luxurious for So-Called Workers."

In 1950, Heyer began working on what she called "the magnum opus of my latter years", a medieval trilogy intended to cover the House of Lancaster between 1393 and 1435. She estimated that she would need five years to complete the works. Her impatient readers continually clamored for new books; to satisfy them and her tax liabilities, Heyer interrupted herself to write Regency romances. She only completed volume one of the series, My Lord John, which was published posthumously.

The limited liability company continued to vex Heyer, and in 1966, after tax inspectors found that she owed the company £20,000, she finally fired her accountants. She then asked that the rights to her newest book, Black Sheep, be issued to her personally. Unlike her other novels, Black Sheep did not focus on members of the aristocracy. Instead, it followed "the moneyed middle class", with finance a dominant theme in the novel.

Heyer's new accountants urged her to abandon Heron Enterprises; after two years, she finally agreed to sell the company to Booker-McConnell, which already owned the rights to the estates of novelists Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie. Booker-McConnell paid her approximately £85,000 for the rights to the 17 Heyer titles owned by the company. This amount was taxed at the lower capital transfer rate, rather than the higher income tax rate.