Georgette Heyer

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. 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.