Showing posts with label
The Private World of Georgette Heyer.
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Showing posts with label
The Private World of Georgette Heyer.
Show all posts
Georgette was
so very private, but she reportedly told those who asked that they
would find her in her work. A very cryptic remark.
Critic and
novelist A. S. Byatt wrote a long memorial piece for The Sunday Times when
she died, based on interviews with her husband, her good friend, Carola
Oman, and two of her publisher friends. That is about the only written
source for any information on her early life. Hodge
supplemented that info with interviews with her surviving family and
friends and some of the letters to which she was given access when she
wrote The Private World Of Georgette Heyer, published in 1984.
Heyer's brother, Frank, asserted that the four suppressed contemporary novels (Instead of the Thorn, Helen, Barren Corn, and Pastel) were somewhat autobiographical in nature, in particular Helen. But it is still a guessing game, as far as I can see, as to which parts of the novels were autobiographical.
We
have Hodge's work, based on the only written and interview sources
available, and we have our own opinions or surmises as to what she was
really like and what her life was really like. She will forever remain
somewhat of a mystery. I guess it should be that way because she
obviously preferred it that way while she was living. But those of us
who have had a love affair with her work still crave more.
Next Entry: Simon The Coldheart
THE BLACK MOTH
was well received, and a compulsive writer was born. Her second,
third, fourth, and fifth novels were published by 1925 when she married,
so she must have been doing a lot of writing while she was being
courted by her husband-to-be.
Heyer met Ronald Rougier during Christmas of 1920. He was two years her senior. More about Rougier's background later.
Heyer
went out with Rougier for five years, and they became engaged in the
Spring of 1925, the year her fifth novel was published. A month
following that engagement, George Heyer died suddenly of a heart attack
after playing tennis with his future son-in-law. George Heyer's death,
besides being a personal tragedy, was an economic disaster for the
family, and Georgette became the central anchor for the famiy. Boris
and Frank were only 19 and 15 at the time; Boris was working, but Frank
would need to be put through school and Cambridge, and Georgette was
the one who would do this.
Now
she was not just writing compulsively, but because it was necessary to
help take care of her family. She was already a well-established
author, and when her sixth novel was published it was an instant
success. These Old Shades sold 190,000 copies on
publication without any publicity. It is speculated that this confirmed
Heyer's belief that it wasn't necessary for her to spend a lot of time
or effort on publicity, and this suited her very well. She and her
husband were very private people, especially after her father's death.
She was happy to be Mrs. Rougier in public and keep the author,
Georgette Heyer, extremely private and secluded from the public.
Information taken from The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge.
Next Entry: Pseudonym, Stella Martin
