I’ve become obsessed, fairly recently, with books by Georgette Heyer. I’ve mentioned her previously as I started just last year reading some of her books. I have read several of her books so far and have really enjoyed them so much. I’m not sure how I’ve only heard of her this recently, as much as I have read throughout the years, but she slipped under my reading radar somehow.
However, right now I am currently reading a book by Jennifer Kloester Georgette Heyer’s Regency World and this book came about, as Kloester says in her introduction out of research and a love of Heyer. She says that she had long been a fan of Heyer’s books but never really took into account or appreciated the amount of historical research that she had put into her books until doing the research for her own book. Kloester hopes that by reading this book, the reader can more fully enjoy reading Heyer’s works as well.
As I type this, I do want to say that I am only partway through the book but it is such an interesting read so I wanted to make note of a few things so far in my reading. It’s fun to spot the characters from the books that I’ve read as I go through the different sections as the author uses the characters to better explain why or where things happened and people did things. Why people acted the way they did and lived where they did. The rules and etiquette. What people owned, how many servants they had, and what people thought about each other based on that. Where you were supposed to live and shop to be fashionable. Things that are often mentioned in passing in Heyer’s books, maybe in a character’s conversation, get explained a little more fully and with examples. I tend to be a visual learner and I like to have examples to compare and go by. If you are as well, you will like the pictures and diagrams that appear throughout the book.
As I continue to read and enjoy learning throughout this book, I am reminded more and more of why this is one of my favorite periods to study. So much was changing around these people and it’s fascinating to look at how they lived their lives.
- A Short Book List
- Jennifer Kloester – Georgette Heyer’s Regency World: The definitive guide to the people, places and society in Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels – 2005
- Anything by Georgette Heyer 🙂
- my favorites so far are Frederica, Venetia, and Arabella with an honorable mention to The Convenient Marriage as it’s Georgian and not Regency
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Teacups Upside Down 