Comments on: GUEST REVIEW in Limerick Form: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

By: The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer – A Review « Austenprose

The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer – A Review « Austenprose — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:16:30 +0000

[...] Dear Author [...]

By: The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer: A Review « Jane Austen’s World

The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer: A Review « Jane Austen’s World — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:17:47 +0000

[...] villainous Mr. Goldhanger, is old-fashioned and ruffles our modern sensibilities. For many readers, this scene is a deal-breaker (see comments). Some stop reading the book at this point, others feel that the book loses some of [...]

By: votermom

votermom — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:47:38 +0000

The Grand Sophy was also my first Heyer regency and got me hooked. My all time favorite is Cotillion. I love her comedies. Faro's Daughter is also great -- very spunky heroine! I read somewhere that she wrote many of her regencies during the war, when London was being bombed, and they are meant to be an escape. They make wonderful comfort reads, imo. I like her mysteries too, specially Envious Casca. I think Penhallow is very dark & unforgettable, and an excellent picture of class structure. The only Heyers I really didn't like are the medieval ones -- just not her period. I do see the racial prejudice in Heyers books ( & in Dorothy Sayers mysteries too), but I do find that reflects the settings a lot, as well as the attitudes of the readership at the time the books were written. So I can sort of compartmentalize them when I read them, in a way that I could not in books recently written.

By: SarahT

SarahT — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:07:38 +0000

@Carolyn: I’m meticulous about my books but my Heyer collection looks distinctly dog-eared from all the re-reading!

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:42:02 +0000

I think I can say I have all of Heyer’s Regencies and mysteries. They aren’t in such good shape, but then they’re my original buys over 40 years ago. I’m looking at my copy of Cotillion as I type. It’s missing the back cover, the pages are browned, but it’s still holding together, it’s readable and I bought it new for 60 cents!

I read Heyer mainly for her romantic comedies, although I loved The Quiet Gentleman and A Civil Contract. (The latter is true to the real Regency, I think and I was pulling for Jenny all the way.)

The Infamous Army is an amazing book, and I squeed the first time I read it when I realized she’d brought together characters from Devil’s Cub and Regency Buck.

The majority of her heroines are strong women, but they usually live within the rules of their society. This doesn’t by any means make them pushovers, but is instead the basis of the comedy aspects of the stories.

I could talk about her books all day, and I guess it’s time for another re-read marathon, lol.

By: SarahT

SarahT — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:19:19 +0000

@Sunita: I agree Heyer’s Regencies are superior. Although I like almost all of them, I think she particularly excelled at romantic comedy, e.g.: ‘The Nonesuch’, ‘The Unknown Ajax’ & ‘The Reluctant Widow’.

I only recently found out that ‘The Reluctant Widow’ was made into a film in 1950, starring Jean Kent.

By: Sunita

Sunita — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:12:13 +0000

I have them all as well. I enjoyed them; I agree that they’re in the Ngaio Marsh/Margery Allingham line. Not quite cozies, but not dark, except maybe for Penhallow.

I also read the 4 contemporaries that Heyer suppressed during her lifetime. But I don’t remember them very well!

ETA: I do remember that they lacked the sparkle and wit of her Regencies.

By: SarahT

SarahT — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:45:48 +0000

I love Georgette Heyer’s novels and ‘The Grand Sophy’ is one of her best. I own all of her historicals and re-read my favourites every couple of years.

Has anyone read her mysteries? I have several of them and they’re quite good. If you like Agatha Christie/Dorothy L. Sayers/Ngaio Marsh, you’d probably like them.

By: Aoife

Aoife — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:28:27 +0000

@Trudy Shelby I honestly have no idea which heroines you are referencing. Which books and heroines are you referring to? Heyer’s best heroines, IMO, are Drusilla (The Quiet Gentleman), Frederica, Venetia, Sarah Thane (The Talisman Ring) Phoebe (Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle) and Mary (The Devil’s Cub, in addition to the heroines listed by Sunita and others, above. None of these women could be viewed as either simpering or namby-pamby, whether you like them or not. And her later novels almost exclusively featured heroines in their mid-twenties or older.

By: Sunita

Sunita — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:35:00 +0000

Heyer has quite a few relatively mature heroines. In addition to those mentioned already, there are the heroines in Sprig Muslin, An Infamous Army, Faro’s Daughter, Lady of Quality, The Nonesuch, Black Sheep, Charity Girl, Bath Tangle, and The Talisman Ring. I agree that if you read the ones with ingenue heroines one after the other, they can get a bit wearing. But I find her older heroines, as well as her younger but still on-the-shelf heroines, very appealing, and they’re not all the same.

One of my favorite Heyer novels is The Foundling; the hero is written against type, he’s beyond beta, and the heroine is shy and sweet. They are set up in an arranged marriage but over the course of the novel they discover that they really suit each other and fall in love.