Vanda Wilcox shows how the author’s experience of the First World War significantly informs the representation of the Napoleonic Wars. Books such as The Spanish Bride and An Infamous Army feature portrayals of officers and leadership that draw on First World War-era values. (11)
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This chapter first positions Heyer’s work within the landscape of interwar fiction as shaped by the First World War. It then explores her depiction of Wellington’s army across several novels. Finally it considers Heyer’s construction of gender roles in wartime. (163)
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Her work – based on the deliberate assembling of a great barrage of detail and on the meticulous use of primary sources for historical figures to establish a concrete and entirely linear narrative, bolstered always by the known – was a tacit rejection of the entire modernist approach. There were no doubts or haziness, no unknowability or fog of war for Heyer. Instead, her work is a clear example of Bracco’s description of middlebrow’s inherent faith in tradition and continuity – values which almost all of her romantic and historical production embraces.
However, this does not mean that the war and its cultural representations had no effect on Heyer’s writing. Far from it: in her work we can identify many features common to other middlebrow authors of the period, both male and female, that derive directly from the problems and interpretative difficulties of the war. (165)
From the introduction to the volume:
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