Georgette Heyer - Regency Romances

Regency Romances

Heyer's earliest works were romance novels, most set before 1800. In 1935, she released Regency Buck, her first novel set in the Regency period. This bestselling novel essentially established the genre of Regency romance. Unlike other romance novels of the period, Heyer's novels used the setting as a plot device. Many of her characters exhibited modern-day sensibilities; more conventional characters in the novels would point out the heroine's eccentricities, such as wanting to marry for love. The books were set almost entirely in the world of the wealthy upper class and only occasionally mention poverty, religion, or politics.

Although the British Regency lasted only from 1811 to 1820, Heyer's romances were set between 1752 and 1825. As noted by literary critic Kay Mussell, the books revolved around a "structured social ritual — the marriage market represented by the London season" where "all are in danger of ostracism for inappropriate behavior". Her Regency romances were inspired by the writings of Jane Austen, whose novels were set in the same era. Austen's works, however, were contemporary novels, describing the times in which she lived. According to Pamela Regis in her work A Natural History of the Romance Novel, because Heyer's stories took place amidst events that had occurred over 100 years earlier, she had to include more detail on the period in order for her readers to understand it. While Austen could ignore the "minutiae of dress and decor", Heyer included those details "to invest the novels ... with 'the tone of the time'". Later reviewers, such as Lillian Robinson, criticized Heyer's "passion for the specific fact without concern for its significance", and Marghanita Laski pointed out that "these aspects on which Heyer is so dependent for her creation of atmosphere are just those which Jane Austen ... referred to only when she wanted to show that a character was vulgar or ridiculous". Others, including A. S. Byatt, believe that Heyer's "awareness of this atmosphere — both of the minute details of the social pursuits of her leisured classes and of the emotional structure behind the fiction it produced — is her greatest asset".

Determined to make her novels as accurate as possible, Heyer collected reference works and research materials to use while writing. At the time of her death she owned over 1,000 historical reference books, including Debrett's and an 1808 dictionary of the House of Lords. In addition to the standard historical works about the medieval and eighteenth-century periods, her library included histories of snuff boxes, sign posts, and costumes. She often clipped illustrations from magazine articles and jotted down interesting vocabulary or facts onto note cards, but rarely recorded where she found the information. Her notes were sorted into categories, such as Beauty, Colours, Dress, Hats, Household, Prices, and Shops; and even included details such as the cost of candles in a particular year. Other notebooks contained lists of phrases, covering such topics as "Food and Crockery", "Endearments", and "Forms of Address." One of her publishers, Max Reinhardt, once attempted to offer editorial suggestions about the language in one of her books but was promptly informed by a member of his staff that no one in England knew more about Regency language than Heyer.

In the interests of accuracy, Heyer once purchased a letter written by the Duke of Wellington so that she could precisely employ his style of writing. She claimed that every word attributed to Wellington in An Infamous Army was actually spoken or written by him in real life. Her knowledge of the period was so extensive that Heyer rarely mentioned dates explicitly in her books; instead, she situated the story by casually referring to major and minor events of the time.