Georgette Heyer, History and Historical Fiction
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Georgette Heyer, History and Historical Fiction EthicsCanada and in the FrameAesthetics ofGeorgetteCopyright, Translation Collections Heyer, and Historythe Image of Canada, 1895– 1924 Exploringand Historical the Work of Atxaga, Fiction Kundera and Semprún Edited by Samantha J. Rayner and Kim Wilkins HarrietPhilip J. Hatfield Hulme 00-UCL_ETHICS&AESTHETICS_i-278.indd9781787353008_Canada-in-the-Frame_pi-208.indd 3 3 11-Jun-1819/10/2018 4:56:18 09:50PM First published in 2021 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Collection © Editors, 2021 Text © Contributors, 2021 Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2021 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Derivative 4.0 International licence (CC BY-ND 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy and redistribute the work providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. If you remix, transform or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. Attribution should include the following information: Rayner, S. J. and Wilkins, K. (eds). 2021. Georgette Heyer, History and Historical Fiction. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787357600 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-762-4 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-761-7 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-760-0 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-763-1 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-764-8 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787357600 This collection is dedicated to our mothers, Pamela Payne and Elaine Wilkins: thank you for introducing us to Heyer and a lifetime of reading pleasure. Contents List of figures and tables ix List of contributors xi Acknowledgements xvi Introduction: the persistence of Georgette Heyer 1 Samantha J. Rayner and Kim Wilkins Part 1: Gender 1. ‘Where History says little, Fiction may say much’ (Anna Barbauld): the historical novel in women’s hands in the mid-twentieth century 17 Kathryn Sutherland 2. The not so silly ass: Freddy Standen, his fictional contemporaries and alternative masculinity 36 Geraldine Perriam 3. Judith Taverner as dandy-in-training in Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck 53 Laura J. George Part 2: Genre 4. Pride and prejudice: metafiction and the value of historical romance in Georgette Heyer 75 Kim Sherwood ContEntS vii 5. Loving and giving: realism, emotional hypocrisy and generosity in A Civil Contract 88 Jennifer Clement 6. Georgette Heyer and redefining the Gothic romance 105 Holly Hirst 7. Heyer … in space! The influence of Georgette Heyer on science fiction 119 Kathleen Jennings Part 3: Sources 8. All’s Well That Ends Well: Shakespearean echoes in Heyer’s Regency novels 147 Lisa Hopkins 9. Georgette Heyer, Wellington’s Army and the First World War 162 Vanda Wilcox 10. Georgette Heyer and the language of the historical novel 187 Tom Zille Part 4: Circulation and reception 11. A reluctant movie? The Reluctant Widow on screen 215 Lucie Bea Dutton 12. Georgette Heyer – guilty pleasures 240 Amy Street 13. Data science: Georgette Heyer’s historical novels and her readers 250 Helen Davidge Appendix 1: List of Georgette Heyer’s novels used for the text analysis 279 Appendix 2: Survey questions 281 Appendix 3: A sample of the comical answers written by the Heyer readers while completing the survey 288 Index 289 viii GEoRGEttE HEYER, HIS toRY AnD HIStoRICAL FICtIon List of figures and tables Figures 10.1 A page from one of Heyer’s ‘Vocabulary’ binders. With permission of the Heyer Estate. Photograph by the author 191 13.1 Percentage of female to male description in Heyer’s novels. Source: the author 254 13.2 The reading level of Heyer’s novels using the New Dale-Chall Formula. Source: the author 255 13.3 The reading level of Heyer’s novels using the Automated Readability Index. Source: the author 256 13.4 Map showing the locations of the readers surveyed. Source: CC BY-SA 4.0, https://mapchart.net/ feedback.html 266 13.5 Pie charts giving information about the Heyer readers surveyed. Source: the author 267 13.6 Distribution of the ages of Heyer’s readers. Source: the author 267 13.7 Distribution of the ages at which Heyer readers were introduced to the author. Source: the author 268 13.8 Main methods by which Heyer readers were introduced to her work. Source: the author 268 13.9 Historical writers contemporary to Heyer. Source: the author 271 LISt oF FIGuRES AnD tAbLES ix 13.10 Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century female authors. Source: the author 272 13.11 Comedic writers contemporary to Heyer. Source: the author 272 13.12 A word cloud of the words used to describe Heyer and her writing. Source: the author 275 Tables 13.1 The ten most popular Heyer novels in descending order 261 13.2 The ten least popular Heyer novels in descending order 262 13.3 The ten most popular Heyer heroines in descending order 262 13.4 The ten least popular Heyer heroines in descending order 262 13.5 The ten most popular Heyer heroes in descending order 262 13.6 The ten least popular Heyer heroes in descending order 263 x GEoRGEttE HEYER, HIS toRY AnD HIStoRICAL FICtIon List of contributors Jennifer Clement: Jennifer Clement is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Queensland, where she teaches Shakespeare, book history and an introduction to literary studies course. She is the author of Reading Humility in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2015) and of numerous articles on early modern sermons, adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, Elizabeth I’s prayers and book history. She is a huge fan of Georgette Heyer’s books. Helen Davidge: Helen Davidge has worked as a professional actor, run a children’s drama business and completed a PhD in Astronomy. She has worked as a Data Scientist for various companies including Barclays Bank and Sainsbury’s Argos, and is currently a Data Scientist Consultant at Deutsche Bank. Since the age of five she has had a fascination with history, which has also led to a love of literature. Her interest in the Georgian period was kindled when she was introduced to Georgette Heyer’s works in her teens. She is an active member of the Georgette Heyer Appreciation Group and has organised national meet-ups. Lucie Bea Dutton: Lucie Bea Dutton was awarded her PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 2018 for her thesis about the early career of British film director Maurice Elvey. Her interest in British cinema was sparked as an undergraduate at the University of Kent, where she read Film Studies and History. After graduating, she developed a completely unrelated career in charity governance before returning to education as a part-time mature student – firstly with the Open University, where she was awarded a MA with LISt oF C ontRIbutoRS xi Distinction in History, and then at Birkbeck. Her introduction to the historical novel was reading Mary of Carisbrooke by Margaret Campbell Barnes at the age of 10; she proceeded to devour the rest of Campbell Barnes’s books before moving on to Jean Plaidy. Lucie introduced The Reluctant Widow at BFI Southbank in 2015. Each December since 2017 she has put together the Georgette Heyer Advent Calendar on Twitter, made up of vintage editions. During the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown she set up the popular Georgette Heyer Readalong on Twitter, aiming to provide relief and companionship to isolated readers. She blogs at www.isthereroom formetosew.com. Laura George: Laura J. George is a Professor of English Literature at Eastern Michigan University. Her research focuses primarily on representations of masculinity during the Romantic period. Relevant publications include ‘The Emergence of the Dandy’, Literature Compass (January 2004), ‘Reification and the Dandy: Beppo, Byron, and other queer things’, Romanticism on the Net 36–7 (November 2004–February 2005) and ‘Fashion, Self-Fashioning and the Body’, Byron in Context, edited by Clara Tuite for Cambridge University Press (2019). Holly Hirst: Holly Hirst recently completed a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University in ‘Theology and the Early British Gothic 1764 –1833’. She completed her MLitt in the Gothic Imagination at Stirling University with a dissertation on the Gothic and the works of Georgette Heyer. She has published on Radcliffe, Byron, Georgette Heyer, Gothic fairy-tales and Gothic romance, and has presented at conferences all over the country. She runs the online education project ‘Romancing the Gothic’. Lisa Hopkins: Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University. She is also co-editor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association, and of Arden Early Modern Drama Guides. She works mainly on Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ford, but also has interests in Jane Austen, Bram Stoker, Georgette Heyer, crime fiction and literature on screen. Her recent publications include ‘Waltzing with Wellington, Biting with Byron: Heroes in Austen Tribute Texts’, in Jane Austen and Masculinity edited by Michael Kramp (Bucknell University Press, 2017), ‘Shakespearean Allusion and the Detective Fiction of Georgette Heyer’, Palgrave Communications 2 (2016) and Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare (Palgrave, 2016).