My friend Lisa sent me a link to this blog post on Georgette Heyer. The author, initialy finding it hard to get stuck in to Austen discovered Heyer. My personal experience was almost the polar opposite to this. The novel on our english syllabus for the year I was sitting the junior certificate (roughly equates to the O-Level or GSCE) happened to be Pride and Prejudice and I was hooked. My worn edition was/is the same Penguin Classics that Amanda Price reads over and over. The exam was in the summer of 1995 before the BBC’s enduring adaption which in retrospect was probably just as well. Otherwise discussions would have revolved around a wet shirted Colin Firth and not the novel. One of my friends was hooked on Heyer and always had one of the iconic covered novels with her and she’d alternate between Heyer and Austen. I tried and failed to read Sprig Muslin at the time, my mother being a huge fan, but I just couldn’t get very far.
To be fair I had the same trouble with the Chronicles of Narnia books. We had two that I’d inexplicably hide under chair cushions rather than read. Then a family friend visited with a copy of Prince Caspian and I couldn’t get enough of them. And have been known to stay up all night reading all 7 one after the other.
However, back to Heyer. My block about reading them didn’t however stop me from buying up as many of them as I could at the annual Trinity secondhand book sale. These old editions are still at my parents. But they didn’t come with me to England when I moved 8 years ago. �Then, one day at the train station at Cambridge I’d realised I’d run out of Terry Pratchett to read, they didn’t have any more at WHSmiths that we didn’t have but they did have some Heyer. This set in motion a weekly Heyer purchase that lasted for about 5 weeks, or until I’d a copy of the novels they stocked. I was at this point hooked. I think I started with Cousin Kate, a rather gothic tale. The Toll Gate was another early read. I then started buying them in bulk from Amazon, about 5 at a time! At the same time I was under going fertility treatment and I was reading The Infamous army up to and on the day when I had the successful IUI that resulted in Amelia. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t opened it since the 18th of July 2007. I may hold off until we have a second.
I haven’t yet read all of the Heyer Cannon but I’d say that i’ve read about 80-90% depending on whether you count the “contemporary” mysteries.
As for Jane Austen… I’ve read Emma and Sense and Sensibility but not Nothhanger Abbey nor Mansfield Park, I’m not even sure that I’ve copies of any of them here. Something that should be remedied.
