Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of Regency Romance

Publication year
2013
Journal
Journal of Popular Romance Studies
Volume
3.2
Comment

Here's the abstract:

Georgette Heyer is one of the most influential authors of popular romance novels and it is a mark of her continuing popularity that after her death she became the subject of two biographies: Jane Aiken Hodge’s The Private World of Georgette Heyer (1984) and Jennifer Kloester’s Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller (2011). However, as reported in the former, Heyer once stated that “You will find me […] in my work”: this essay finds Heyer in The Nonesuch (1962) and argues that there are parallels between Heyer’s life and work and that of her eponymous hero. It also suggests that there are a number of points of resemblance between her novels and the entertaining yet educational and “quite unexceptionable” gifts which the Nonesuch bestows upon young Charlotte Underhill to ease her convalescence.