Georgette Heyer

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Georgette Heyer (born August 16, 1902 in Wimbledon , † July 5, 1974 in London ; pronunciation: / ʒɔʁˈʒɛt ˈheɪə / ) was a British writer .

Life

Georgette Heyer's father, George, was a lecturer at King's College London and supported her literary endeavors. At the age of seventeen, for the entertainment of her sick brother, she wrote her first novel, The Black Moth , which was published in 1921. At the age of twenty-three she married the mining engineer Ronald Rougier, but used her maiden name as a pseudonym for her books. She and her husband moved to Tanganyika and Macedonia for a few years . Little is known about her private life, as she resisted any form of publicity and always dismissed questions about her personal circumstances by referring to her books (“You will find me in my work”). A few letters have survived from the forties of the twentieth century in which she expresses herself relatively disparagingly about her work. As she said in 1943: “Personally, I think I should be shot for writing such nonsense, but it is good literature for someone trying to escape reality, and I think I would quite like it if I was sitting in an air raid shelter or I was recovering from the flu ”. In the foreword to her last book, Lord John , her husband explained that his wife's favorite epoch was by no means the Regency period, in which her most successful novels are set, but the Middle Ages . For her work on the Lancaster kings based on the life of John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford , she did intensive research for years and even learned Middle English . Since they do the work, u. a. for financial reasons, always had to interrupt to write the popular romance novels, only the first part of the planned trilogy was finished.

plant

Georgette Heyer wrote primarily historical novels with a circulation of several million. Until 1972, she published 57 books, mostly historical romances, which at the time of the Regency in England or France play ( Regency Romance ) . They are characterized by very well-researched detailed knowledge of the living conditions at that time as well as quick-witted dialogues and vivid characters. She has also published a dozen detective novels and some novels and short stories that have not been translated into German and set in the 20th century.

Works

The Black Moth, 1921

Film adaptations

Others

In June 2015, Heyer was honored with a Blue Plaque at the house she lived in for the first four years of her life at 103 Woodside, Wimbledon.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georgette Heyer, queen of Regency romance, honored with blue plaque in: The Guardian , June 5, 2015, accessed June 6, 2015

literature

  • Jennifer Kloester: Georgette Heyer. Biography of a bestseller. Heinemann, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-434-02071-3 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Heyer, Georgette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Wimbledon , England
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1974
Place of death London , England