Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester

Those of us who have spent an embarrassing number of hours immersed in the Regency novels of Georgette Heyer have learned to live dangerously. We have been overturned in high perch phaetons, held up innumerable times by highwaymen, been kidnapped and spirited across the Channel, lost several fortunes at Faro or Bassett and have even witnessed and survived every moment of the Battle of Waterloo.

The same cannot be said of the author, whose life was somewhat less eventful. Heyer was a creature of habit and for many years followed a regular annual routine: two novels published, one detective story and one Regency romance, a summer holiday in the same hotel in Scotland, with golf for her husband and son, a dispute with her publisher or agent and a real or imagined crisis in her finances. Add to that the fact that she never gave interviews and was reluctant even to be photographed for publicity purposes and it will be seen that life cannot have been easy for her biographer.

Jennifer Kloester has had to battle gallantly to bring the enigmatic writer to life. She is an expert on her subject and had access to all the Heyer papers, and gives an interesting account of Georgette’s family background and childhood in Wimbledon, and her exceptionally close relationship with her delightful and talented father whose encouragement was vital in helping her to complete her first published novel at the age of 17, and whose death only five years later was a bitter blow. Perhaps it was because of this steady, invigorating and satisfying bond that Georgette, who had a limited talent for friendship outside the family, was able to enjoy such a long and happy marriage.