Georgette Heyer

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GH was prolific in historical, mostly Regency, romances. She also wrote modern novels (which, however, she later suppressed as unsatisfactory to her), essays, and short stories, and published eleven detective novels written in collaboration with her husband. She published nearly sixty books in fifty years (a book a year from the beginning of her career and two a year between 1934 and 1941), and was translated into ten languages.
Dixon, Jay. An Appreciation of Georgette Heyer. http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/solander%20files/dixon.htm.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
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One of her novels, The Reluctant Widow, was turned into a film, and several others into stage plays. The romances, whose suspense and emotional intensity have held the attention of so many readers, do not have an entirely simple relationship with traditional gender roles. Heyer heroines tend to diverge fairly widely from the romance stereotype (often they are tomboyish or outstandingly capable), and find their eventual fulfilment in union with an equally not-quite-stereotypical hero.

Milestones

16 August 1902

GH was born at Wimbledon in Surrey.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.
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1921

GH published her first romance novel, The Black Moth, which she had begun writing at the age of seventeen.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.
16, 209

October 1926

GH published with Heinemann one of her most popular historical romances, These Old Shades.
Haas, Lidija. “Wholly Allergic”. London Review of Books, Vol.
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, No. 16, pp. 29-30.
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Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.
25, 209

4 July 1974

GH died in hospital from lung cancer; she had probably had this cancer for a long time, but it was diagnosed only two months before she died.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.
175, 206

Biography

Birth and Family

16 August 1902

GH was born at Wimbledon in Surrey.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.
13