Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller
Jennifer Kloester
Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller
Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's bestselling authors. Despite her enormous popularity she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was seventeen in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success and ninety years later it has never been out of print. A phenomenon even in her own lifetime, to this day she is the undisputed queen of regency romance. During ten years of research into Georgette Heyer's life and writing, Jennifer Kloester has had unlimited access to Heyer's notebooks and private papers and the Heyer family records, and exclusive access to several untapped archives of Heyer's early letters.
2.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Literary Studies & Criticism, Biography |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
464 |
| RRP |
£20.00 |
| Date of Publication |
October 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0434020713 |
| Publisher |
William Heinemann |
| |
Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's bestselling authors. Despite her enormous popularity she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was seventeen in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success and ninety years later it has never been out of print. A phenomenon even in her own lifetime, to this day she is the undisputed queen of regency romance. During ten years of research into Georgette Heyer's life and writing, Jennifer Kloester has had unlimited access to Heyer's notebooks and private papers and the Heyer family records, and exclusive access to several untapped archives of Heyer's early letters.
Reviews
The Spectator
Juliet Townsend
“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 ... Kloester rightly points out that the two things which set Georgette Heyer apart from other writers of historical romances are her erudition and her sense of humour.”
29/10/2011
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The Sunday Times
Daisy Goodwin
“Heyer fans, who include AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble (one of the few subjects they agree on), will struggle to find the charm of her novels in this largely uncritical but solid and well-researched life of a woman even the Queen described as “formidable”. But as a picture of just how much work and how little glamour make up the lot of a bestselling novelist, it should be read on creative writing courses everywhere.”
25/09/2011
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The Daily Express
Juliet Barker
“Kloester has had unprecedented access to Heyer’s letters and the family archives but even she struggles to produce a rounded portrait of this clever, driven woman ... It is impossible to tell whether this is the fault of the biographer or her subject since the book lacks any source notes: a deplorable omission particularly in a work which claims to tread new ground. One is left longing to hear more from Heyer herself because, when she does speak, the book springs to life.”
23/10/2011
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The Guardian
Kathryn Hughes
“The chief problem with this book [is] the way that Kloester is in thrall to the much-vaunted letters and other material that she has tracked down in archive collections around the world. Heyer was an emotionally contained woman who wouldn't have dreamt of dumping her inner life on to paper. Yet Kloester is determined to lay out her dusty treasures, and the result is a narrative that often reads like a particularly pedestrian round-robin, full of golfing holidays in Scotland, ailing sisters-in-law and spats with the dratted tax man. In short, she has managed to pull off something you might have thought impossible: she has made the creator of Regency Buck and Lady of Quality sound like a bit of a bore.”
29/10/2011
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The Observer
Rachel Cooke
“What, I wonder, is the point of this book? Who is it for? According to its jacket, Jennifer Kloester is "the foremost expert on Heyer" (as if the world's universities were crammed with her competitors, all of them writing PhDs on The Grand Sophy and Regency Buck). What this means in practice is that she tells you everything – I mean everything – about a woman whose life was simply not very interesting ... As for the mystery of Heyer's writing — how it works; why so many intelligent people love it — Kloester simply does not go there, and her book is thus squeezed dry of all the joy it might have had.”
09/10/2011
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