Georgette Heyer's Romances 

Queen of Regency Romance 

Georgette Heyer’s sparkling regency romances have charmed and delighted millions of readers. Her characters brilliantly illuminate one of the most exciting and fascinating eras of English history—when drawing rooms sparkled with well-dressed nobility and romantic intrigues ruled the day. Heyer’s heroines are smart and independent; her heroes are dashing noblemen who know how to handle a horse, fight a duel, or address a lady. And her sense of humor is legendary.

Below, read about Georgette Heyer online: her regency romances, including original reviews, historical romance excerpts, and readers' comments.

Also check out a list of her historical fiction books, and download Georgette Heyer eBooks online!

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Cotillion

“Thus begins Cotillion, arguably the funniest, most charming of Georgette Heyer’s many delightful Regency romances.”

—Amazon.co.uk

“Triumphantly good…Georgette Heyer is unbeatable.”
—Sunday Telegraph

“Sparkling.”
—Independent on Sunday

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Read the original reviews:

            "Another in the Regency panels repeats the theme of country mouse (Catherine Charing) who comes to London, cuts a swathe in the Polite World and lands in the arms of the man of her choice. Kitty is heir to a fortune IF she marries on of Mr. Penicuik’s great-nephews: she turns down the offers as they are made and offers herself to fashion-plate Freddy for a month in London on the basis of an engagement which will be repudiated at the end of that time. She involves herself in the affairs of Dolphinton who is attempting to escape his Mama with on who is not of the bon ton: she champions the romance of Olivia and a gambler who is posing as a gentleman: she wakes up to the fact that her old love, Jack, is a cad and worthy only of being trampled on:--and in all this pulls unwilling Freddy n her wake. Freddy is the one who ties up the loose ends of her plotting, sets her straight on clothes and manners, and wins her heart for safe keeping. A diverting hum for those with a feeling (or a failing) for Heyer’s costume pieces."
—“Fiction,” Kirkus Reviews, 15 February 1953, p.132

            "In Miss Heyer’s new Regency novel she once more dresses the kind of story dear to all daydreamers wit some able character studies and an admirable knowledge of her period. The heroine is not an intellectual girl, but she is never slow at repartee, and her manoeuvres in face of her guardian’s decision that she shall marry on of his nephews or lose her heritage are entertaining enough. Readers will find in Cotillion an evening or two of pleasurable escape as they drive in imagination with Westruther, that splendid “Corinthian,” in his curricle to Richmond, or accompany Kitty in the scandalous excitement of attending a public ball, or watch Madame Fanchon, “one of London’s most renowned modistes,” as she brings out her display of exotic gowns, 'figured, embroidered, flounced and braided.'"
—The Times Literary Supplement, 20 February 1953, p. 117

            "A cotillion, as defined by Milord Webster in the New International Dictionary, is “an elaborate and complicated dance, executed under the leadership of one couple, consisting of dances of several kinds, and marked by the giving of favors and frequent changing of partners.” All of which provides a very apt description of Georgette Heyer’s latest excursion into the lighter side of early 19th century English manners.
            The book is, if not exactly an elaborate and complicated dance as indicated by the title, at least a tale in which the characters skip and dance rather than plod about. The plot development, moreover, is executed under the leadership of one couple (Freddy Standen, heir to miserly old Uncle Matthew Penicuik). Likewise, Cotillion consists, if not of dance routines of several kinds, then of vividly contrasting narrative patterns. And it is certainly marked by the giving of favors and the frequent changing of partners—dashed if it ain’t!
            Possibly the most entertaining thing about the book is the subtle way is seams along under a full head of the colloquial slang of the period, the generally understandable distortions of the king’s English cloaking a rapidly developing network of plot complication. Characters put themselves in puckers, they get in queer stirrups, and they go on mops. They make cakes of each other, shell out the blunt, and become nicely bubbled without resort to alcohol.
            Beneath this pattern of frothiness, Kitty, half French and volatile, rejects the half witted, stiff necked, and rascally suitors that Old Moneybags dangles before her at his country estate of Arnside. With a flashing show of ingenuity, she engineers her removal to London, and quickly loses the pastel shades of her country upbringing, meets the tip nosed matchmakers of tony society, and goes refreshingly in for a bit of matchmaking on her own.
            The book, in sum total, stacks up as something of a literary bubble bath, wherein readers so inclined may take a delightful and frothy dip among the gayer aspects of the author’s favorite ad well worked Regency period. The intellectual content is pitched at about the same level as a remark that Freddy makes about one of the balmier members of the cast: ‘Of course he ain’t a lunatic! Got no brains, that’s all.” But don’t be deceived about frolicsome Freddy; he’s the lad who turns all the tables."
—Henry Cavendish, “All Skip and Dance—a Sort of Literary Bubble Bath. Georgette Heyer’s Novel—With 18th Century Slang,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 12 April 1953, pt. 4, p. 4

            "In Cotillion, regency England is again the background for a delightful novel by Georgette Heyer. Kitty Charing, the gay and spirited ward of old Matthew Penicuik, is the heroine, she being the half French, half English daughter of his friend.
            The life of London in the regency period and the customs of the “ton” (high society) make a gay picture, and the narrow escapes Kitty has as result of her kindhearted efforts to help the strange friends she makes provide a wealth of interest and humor."
—E. H. D., in “Recent fiction,” The Springfield Sunday Republican (Springfield, mass.), 7 June 1953, p. 8C

            "Georgette Heyer’s books start a bit slowly for some readers because the characters are always garbed in the costumes of Regency England and their language, like their clothing, is somewhat mannered. However, once past that hurdle, girls may settle down here to a delightful bit of humor and confusion. Penniless Kitty Charing will inherit her guardian’s fortune only if one of his nephews marries her. She is secretly in love with the one dashing nephew who makes her no offer, counting on his ability to marry her whenever he chooses. In her eagerness to get away for a season in London, Kitty persuades good-natured nephew Freddy to pretend an engagement with her. He does, and Kitty is at once plunged into all the intrigues, petty scandals and match-making of the society crowd. Gives her heart away, too, in the end and, surprisingly enough, not to the cocky Jack. Of course, there are some allusions to the seamy side of Regency life but always delicately handled."
—Margaret C. Scoggin, “Outlook tower,” Horn Book 29, August 1953, p. 289

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Friday's Child

"Reading Georgette Heyer is the next best thing to reading Jane Austen.”
—Publishers Weekly

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            "A lightsome, brightsome comedy of Regency days, this makes merry with the marriage of Sherry (his hand refused by the Incomparable Isabella), and orphaned, seventeen year old Hero, country raised, naïve, unsophisticated, but virtuous. Sherry, and his fellow bucks, treat her like a younger sister, and she, adopting their language, attitudes and respectable upbringing, together with the loyalty of Sherry’s friends, keep her from real trouble. Sherry, continuing his debonair, wild ways, has trouble when Hero will not curb her pleasant, free ways, so she manages her misadventures, brings Sherry to heel and settles the fate of the Incomparable with true femininity. Maybe thins out—but the period properties are colorful, and the protagonists likeable."
—“Fiction,” Kirkus Reviews, 1 December 1945, p. 534

            "If you have followed the graceless, lumbering pace of current historical novels, this nimble, light-hearted chronicle of high London society in the time of the Regency will seem almost too good to be true. The story (what there is of it) concerns a wealthy nobleman, his three fashionable boon companions, and an artless young wide who isn’t onto the ways of the great world. It is the sort of cheerful company in which you might find Bertie Wooster or some of Mrs. Thirkell’s decorous county people on an unexpected bender."
—“Briefly Noted. Fiction,” The New Yorker, 16 February 1946, p. 96

            "They order these things better in England. Friday’s Child is an excellent example of the pastime novel, transatlantic model; there’s no doubt that it is an abler job of its kind, at once more tasteful and more workman-like, than anything we’re showing over here this season.
            No one—least of all,  I am sure, the author—could take very seriously this pleasant story of regency days. It concerns the runaway match of the dashing Lord Sheringham—known to his intimates as “Sherry”—who marries a portionless orphan, Miss Hero Wantage, out of pique because the beautiful Bella Milborne thinks she’d prefer a duke; takes his bride to London, where they share a house (but not a bedroom suite); educates her in the ways of the fashionable world; and, then gradually, without meaning, falls in love with her.
            The fable is pure romantic fluff, and the female characters are rather stereotyped, particularly Hero, the “Friday’s Child” of the title, who seeks too “loving ad giving” to be quite credible. But Georgette Heyer knows the period thoroughly. Strangely enough, too, for a woman novelist, she has a very skillful touch with men. Sherry and his boon companions, Lord Wrotham, Gil Ringwood and the Hon. Ferdy Fakenham, are straight out of the Wodehouse—if you can imagine Wodehouse’s young men transplanted to the Mayfair of 130 years ago. They are nonetheless amusing for that, and are admirably presented on their own farce-comedy plane.
            The body of the prose is cast in a somewhat archly elaborate mold: all fawns are “startled,” all shots “Parthian”; and we have numerous other noun-and-adjective combinations, such as “choleric eye,” “afflicted parent,” “burning desire,” “inarticulate bliss” and the like, that have long since lost their freshness for the modern reader, but are well in place here, with their air of deliberate jocosity.
            My only real complain is that the book is a bit too long; however, Miss Heyer manipulates her strings with such deft good humor that somehow I kept on reading without becoming too impatient; and the closing chapters, where the scene shifts to Bath and comic complications pile up amazingly, are among the best. On the whole, here’s cheerful and civilized entertainment for just a few too many idle hours."
—Arthur Meeker, Jr., “Gay Regency Novel, British Style. Authentic Flavor Is Skillfully Conveyed,” The Chicago Sun Book Week, 17 February 1946, p. 12

            "It is a relief to find a gay, light-hearted historical novel for a change,

...that is amusing to read, instead of the usual solemn, heavy-handed approach. Miss Heyer has thought of a new angle for her book about post-Waterloo London for w see it through the eyes of a Regency Dulcy. Like the poor, Dulcys are always with us and can be found in any age, in any period. This variant of the scatter-brained heroine is Hero Wantage, appropriately nicknamed Kitten, an attractive seventeen-year-old romp who is always getting herself into scrapes. This allows miss Heyer to give a fresh, lively, sometimes mocking picture of the fashionable life of the time.
            Hero, or Kitten, is poor, well connected, and doomed to life as a governess (for which she is ill prepared) or to marry a curate. When dashing Viscount Sheringham, called Sherry, saves her from this gloomy fate she is deeply grateful. Sherry’s motives in the affair are mixed. He had been refused by the reigning belle of the moment, Isabella Milborne. Partly out of pique, partly out of avarice since he can get his inheritance when e marries, and only slightly out of chivalry, he elopes with the penniless but loving Hero. He regards the marriage as one of convenience but he soon finds that it is anything but that. When he takes this wife to London he has more than he bargained for on his hands. Kitten is pretty, naïve, dotes on her husband, loves parties, loves life, and gets into one scrape after another always from the best and kindest motives. Her husband ends by telling her she is the most troublesome brat alive and trying to banish her to the country. Hero departs, taking, characteristically, an ormolu clock and a canary with her. Sheringham’s struggles with the role of protector which fate thrusts upon him furnish a good deal of comedy. The ending, needless to say, is happy. If there are any movie directors in our audience, this would make a good picture since it has both action and humor, and the costumes are notably becoming.
            The idea is engaging and is well carried out. The description of London a year or two after Waterloo is excellent. Miss Heyer manages to spoof the fashionable life of the time by presenting its foibles seriously. She does a wonderful picture of the current “Blood, or Tulip of Fashion, or Nonpareil,” the sporting Club Member, touchy about his honor and supposedly dashing and reckless, but actually both stuffy and timid and conventional. All the details of dress and fashion are here but they are not dragged in unnecessarily. She tells, for instance, exactly what a gentleman had to eat for dinner—“buttered crab, a dish of mutton fry with parsnips, a pheasant pie with several side dishes including some potted pie and a cold boiled knuckle of veal and a pig’s face, washed down with some excellent chambertin”; but the only reason she mentions it is because the gentleman said he had a cold and that therefore he couldn’t eat a thing.
            Though light, this is good history and an amusing tale. The author has read Jane Austen to advantage, but so she should. She manages to keep the light tone and still paint a clear picture of the fashions and foibles of the time which is something of an achievement. The period itself is rewarding and there is just the right mocking slant here thanks to the artless Kitten."
—Rosemary Carr Benét, “London During the Regency,” The Saturday Review, 23 February 1946, p. 39

"Regency London is the setting for his rollicking, historical love story of Hero Wantage and viscount Sheringham. A wholly delightful novel."
—“Fiction,” The Open Shelf (Cleveland Public Library), March 1946, p. 8

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False Colours

 
“A writer of great wit and style… I’ve read her books to ragged shreds.”
—Kate Fenton, Daily Telegraph

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            "In False Colours, we have a charming and delightful family—an irresponsible mother of identical twin sons. Kit, the younger of the twins, returns from the Continent to find his usually gay mother anxiously awaiting the return of Evelyn, the older twin, who has mysteriously disappeared. When Kit agrees to save his mother and Evelyn embarrassment by taking Evelyn’s place at a party where Evelyn was to be presented to his fiancée’s family, many complications arise and as the two, mother and son, get involved more deeply in the deception and involve more friends and relatives, the plot thickens.
            The plot is almost predictable, so it will not be any injustice to the reader to disclose that Kit and the would-be fiancée of Evelyn fall in love; that Evelyn finally returns only to reveal that he too has fallen in love with another girl; and the problem which is the cause of all this—Lady Denville’s debts—is still unsolved. Of course, the dilemma is finally resolved in a highly romantic, though improbable, manner.

This novel cannot be dismissed as just another historical novel. It is excellent in its genre.

Miss Heyer has the ability to transport the reader back to the early 19th Century and actually sense the elegant mode of living during that time. Her novels abound with great houses staffed by servants and lackeys, with a society moving about by season from city to the country, to Bath or Brighton, to the races. The houses sparkle with the gentry of their guests. There is continuous dining and visiting. There are balls. There are beautiful and modish clothes and décor.
            It is also interesting that Miss Heyer’s style of writing is indigenous to the period of which she writes. False Colours is written in a leisurely detailed manner, reminiscent of Jane Austen. However, it is a comedy rather than a a satire. The principal characters, the twins and their mother are likeable, attractive people, who have a warm, loyal attachment for one another. Their peccadillos and shortcomings are treated lightly and humorously and in good taste.
            If the modern reader can adjust himself to the slow pace of this novel, he will find it soothing, enjoyable and worthwhile."
—Elizabeth O’Rourke (New Brunswick, N. J.), in Best Sellers 23, 23 (1 March 1964), p. 414

            "Georgette Heyer, prolific English author of droll flipperies in fiction, has a simple formula for the regency costume romances she has been writing for more years than this reviewer can remember offhand.
            She dreams up an amusing situation (such as a romantic mixup of identical twins with lovely lassies, as in the current production); then sets it against the background of uppercrust England somewhere between 1815 and 1820, and writes about it amusingly. In False Colours, she scores again.
            The handsome and socially charming Fancot twins, Evelyn and Christopher (Kit), are, at 24, the pink of the London vogue. Evelyn has just succeded to the title of earl of Denville upon the death of his father shortly after Waterloo, and Kit has inherited a more than modest competence from his godfather.
            The trouble is that mama, hreatened with being side-lined as the dowagr countess of Denville after the death of her husband, still is utterly exquisite tho in her forties and is as rattle-brained as they come.
            Unfortunately, too, Mama has run up debts of around $100,000 without her husband’s knowledge during his later years. The debts evelyn—as the new head of the clan—is determined to take care of to preserve the family honor.
            He proposes a marriage of convenience with Miss Cressida Stavely, not so much a beauty as well endowed wit bot papa’s money and common sense. Evelyn, however, messes things up at the start  by going on a harum-scarum mission to redeem a bauble Mama Denville had pledged at gambling.
            His carriage overturns and he is laid up with injuries, just when he is due at a fancy dress party to meet the Stavely inlaws. At that point, Kit shows up in the middle of the night from a diplomatic mission to Vienna, and he substitutes for Evelyn.
            He rest of the zany tale is concerned with Kit’s rising romance with Cressy and Evelyn’s defection to a Quaker-like beauty during his convalescence in the provinces. Mama succumbs to a filthy-rich elder suitor who had pursued her before she married Denville 25 years earlier. And the Stavely clan concurs in all the plot-resolving shenanigans the author can devise.
            It is all utterly ridiculous—and delightful."
—Henry Cavendish, “Regency Comedy in a Proven Formula,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1 March 1964, p. 9

            "What Edgar Rice Burroughs was to the African Jungle, Georgette Heyer is to Regency England. Neither writer had actually been there, but so far as legions of devoted readers are concerned they might have been. And who is to say whether Tarzan’s gorilla-dialect is any less authentic than Miss Heyer’s Regency dialogue? (“We shall be at fiddlestick’s end, for she is obviously starched-up, you know, and I collect, from something Stavely said to me, that she already doesn’t like it above half.”) In False Colours, Evelyn Fancot tries to extricate his Billie Burke-ish mother from near bankruptcy by marrying a young lady for money. But when Evelyn does not show up at a crucial audience with his intended, on Cressida Stavely, his place is taken by his twin Kit—and, by Jupiter, there is a proper mishmash. Evelyn, who is willing to sacrifice himself for a favorable balance of credit, is in love with another; brother Kit, who understudies him, is in love with Cressida; Sir Bomany [sic] Ripple, who has plenty of lot himself, is in love with mother Fancot; and plenty of period palaver is exchanged before everyone pairs off for the happy finale. Miss Heyer is in her element, which is somewhere between Jane Austen and Jeffrey Farnol."
—Martin Levin, “A Reader’s Report,” The New York Times Book Review, 5 April 1964, p. 48

            "When Kit comes home on a visit from his diplomatic post abroad, he finds that his brother, the Earl of Denville, has vanished at a most crucial time. The Earl is about to become engaged to a wealthy girl whose fortune could bail their mother out of vast indebtedness, but the Earl must appear at the engagement party; otherwise, no engagement. Kit, somewhat reluctantly, agrees to masquerade as his brother, as the two are identical twins. When the Earl delays his return, complications mount. So it goes—Regency England with its costumed aristocracy is re-created in a lighthearted, wholly improbable tale, which ends with all themes neatly tied into a pretty bowknot. Heyer has fans among the girls, and I though this one of her best stories."
—M.C.Scoggin, “Outlook tower. Something for the Girls,” The Horn book 40 (June 1964), p. 306

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Lady of Quality 

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            "In this delectable new Georgette Heyer novel of early 19th century Bath, a “sweet hornet” of “ a certain age” (29) meets up with the “rudest man in London.” Despite the intrusions of a priggish “gabble-grinder” of an old maid companion and a “young sprig” and “green girl” who have their own “amusing rattles” to pursue, the lady of quality and her bit-of-a-rake swain are the ones on whom our eyes are fixed. They don’t play us false. Miss Heyer is in top form in this, her umpteenth period novel of early 19th century England, romantic, amusing and full of tart-tongued comment on the mores of the time. Any number of emancipated young women of the 19th century will still encounter more than a twinge of sympathy with Miss Wynchwood, whose brother and sister-in-law will insist on telling her what is best for her to do with her spinsterhood. Perhaps the reason Georgette Heyer’s novels sell so superlatively well is not simply their elegant escapism, but the fact that they always touch upon a very human situation. Special Literary Guild selection."
—Barbara a. Bannon, “PW Forecasts. Fiction,” Publishers weekly 202 (4 September 1972), p. 40

            "No here and thereian but slap up to the mark is Georgette Heyer who has been playing variations on the Regency romance for lo these many years. Miss Wynchwood, still unmarried though not yet “an ape leader,” is almost thirty. Possessed of a considerable independence, she has left her brother’s estate to set up a housekeeping in Bath, chaperoned by the garrulous miss Farlow who is “more like a skinned rabbit than a woman and a regular gabble grinder into the bargain.” The rest in standard Heyer, as the beauteous Miss Wychwood takes a runaway seventeen-year-old heiress under her wing and then falls inevitably in love with that young lady’s guardian. The usual elegant trifle."
—“Fiction,” Kiskus Reviews 40 (1 September 1972), p. 1044

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Black Sheep

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"Miss Heyer has never been in better form than in this very funny regency romance

...set in Bath, wherein a seemingly sedate maiden lady who is all of “eight and twenty” undertakes to save her young niece from a “ramshackle youth” who is a fortune hunter. In doing so she, herself, falls victim, very prettily, to the young man’s “black sheep” uncle. The conversation is delightful, full of all sorts of quizzical period slang, and the hero and heroine (older style) make a most spirited Beatrice and Benedict."
—Barbara A. Bannon, “Forecasts. Fiction,” Publishers Weekly 191 (23 January 1967), p. 256

            "This is one of Georgette Heyer’s dimpled diversions, indeed, sunny as a buttercup, somewhat more simply plotted than some of her earlier low intrigues in the high society of Bath during the Regency. For the most part it concerns Miss Abby, “a mere twenty-eight years in her dish,” and the surrogate guardian of her niece Fanny now falls in love with Stacy Calverleigh, a fortunate hunter, who proposes—heavens, horrors, and elopement to Gretna green, while Abby falls in love with his uncle who is none other than the man Fanny’s mother had run away with…Black Sheep, more lace than wool, and triumphant trivia."
—Kirkus Reviews 35 (1 February 1967), p. 155

            "Black Sheep is another of Georgette Heyer’s delightful frothy Regency romances, replete with a high-spirited heroine, a rakish hero, an intriguing plot and wonderful characterizations.
            This new novel is set in Bath, where Abby Wendover lives with her older sister Selina and her niece Fanny. At 28, Abigail, witty, attractive, and still sought after, has no inclination to marry but expects to devote herself to hypochondriac Selina, while finding a suitable match for her heiress niece, Fanny. Returning from a visit to London, Abby finds Fanny infatuated with a very attractive but undesirable young man, Stacy Caverleigh [sic], and after appraising the situation, she is for once in accord with brother James’s opinion that young Stacy is a fortune-hunter. Although absent on the family estates in Bedfordshire, James Wendover’s presence is felt and opinion is weighted before any decision is made by the Wendover sisters.
            Quite unexpectedly, Caverleigh’s uncle, Miles, the “black sheep” of the Caverleigh family has come to Bath with no knowledge of his nephew’s involvement with the Wendovers, or presence in Bath, for that matter.
            From then on, the delightful plot and counter-plots develop, with Miles courting Abby to the consternation of Selina, James, and their conservative Bath friends.
            Illness, circumventing Fanny’s elopement with Stacy, allows time for the intervention of another supposed heiress, who attracts Stacy’s attention, thus disillusioning Fanny.
            Finally, all of the problems are happily resolve, and after a surprise climax, there is the inevitable happy ending.
            Miss Heyer’s thorough knowledge of the regency period provides the novel with an authentic background. However, in this book, she does not allow herself to overindulge in descriptive passages, nor the language of the era, which in some of her former novels had a tendency to intrude on the storyline.
            A thoroughly enjoyable book, Black Sheep is recommended for summer reading."
—Elizabeth O’Rourke (New Brunswick, N.J.), Best Sellers 27, 9 (1 August 1967), p. 171

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Faro's Daughter

"My favourite historical novelist--stylish, romantic, sharp, and witty. Her sense of period is superb, her heroines are enterprising, and her heroes dashing. I owe her many happy hours."
--Margaret Drabble

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            "Miss Heyer is a most versatile writer whose works come under three very distinct headings. She is the author, first, of excellent detective stories which are justly popular for their amusing sketches of character; secondly, of seriously conceived historical novels; and third, of cheerful romances against a period setting, which make no pretensions towards “importance” in any way. This present story falls into the third class, and is set in the late eighteenth century, a period of whose manners and customs Miss Heyer has made a particular study.
            Deborah Grantham finds herself n the unfortunate position of running a faro-table in her aunt’s polite and select gambling establishment; unfortunate, because, however polite and select gambling may be, it is still undoubtedly a gaming-house, and a girl who helps to run it cannot be considered an eligible bride. The family of a certain wealthy young gentleman becomes alarmed when it appears that she is trying to entangle him into marriage and the young man’s trustee takes every possible measure to choke her off, succeeding only in rousing in her a storm of indignation at the idea that she should be though open to bribes. There follows a most entertaining battle of wits, ending in a way which may be unexpected as far as the plot is concerned, but which will be no surprise to confirmed romance-readers. The story is redeemed from the ruck of such predictions by the author’s light-hearted wit and the peculiar skill in the delineation of silly women."
—“Battle of Wits,” The Times Literary supplement, 8 November 1941, p. 553

            "The mettlesome maid Deborah, though no better than a decoy in the gaming-house run by her aunt Lady Bellingham, was pleased to take umbrage when Mr. Ravenscar offered twenty thousand pounds for the relinquishment of all pretensions to the hand of the very young Lord Mablethorpe. The ending of Faro’s Daughter, a Regency comedy, is early in sight, and the only question is how that ending is to be arrived at. Arrival is expertly made, with some good phrasing in dialogue but with invention hardly fresh enough. The sound construction calls for a compliment."
—Harold Brighthouse, “Books of the Day. New Novels,” The Manchester guardian, 14 November 1941, p. 3

           "The other books are without value this week. Faro’s Daughter may appeal to unsophisticated readers, for it is a lively enough effort in “period” stuff. High play, high life, high spirits, and all rather better done than in The Man in Grey [by Lady Eleanor Smith]…"
—Kate O’Brien, “Fiction,” The Spectator, 14 November 1941, pp. 474-5

            "Georgette Heyer continues to delve with profit into the habits and manners of the Regency period when the marks of a gentleman were the quality of his tailoring, his horsemanship, his taste in women and his ability to live exceedingly well without soiling his fingers in trade or toil, and when a young girl’s destiny was fulfilled when she acquired one of them as a husband. Her narratives reflect cushioned complacency of the upper classes, with their well stocked cellars and stuffy drawing rooms, their open fireplaces and their closed minds. It was a time when men still wore ruffles but it was no longer fashionable to carry a sword, when those of the old school still powdered their hair, but young blades had their locks but in what was called the Bedford crop.
            Faro’s daughter has the stock situations and entanglements—rivalries, flirtations, whispers of scandal, impetuous youth and shocked elders. Dashing young Lord Marblethorpe [sic] has stirred up a family hornets’ nest by falling in love with Deborah Grantham, who operates a fashionable gaming place in London. An affair would have been winked at, but he wanted to marry the girl. His uncle tried to buy the young lady off and discovered that—whether or not she was a good match for the nephew—she was more than a match for him."
—Lisle Bell, “New Popular Novels,” New York Herald tribune Books, 17 May 1942, p. 14

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The Reluctant Widow

“Laced with ribands of mystery and intrigue...You must enter the spirit of the tale whole-heartedly to feel the proper pang for Elinor Rochdale.”
—The New York Times Book Review

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            "An assured touch for whimsical turns and a lively, amusing handling of historical romance...

...for the story of Elinor, who arrives at the wrong house for a job She is unavoidably married to a shocking fellow on his deathbed, and is led into involuntary participation in the ambition of the dead man’s uncle, Lord Carlyon, to penetrate the treasonable activities of Bonaparte agents. All of a pucker, Elinor finds her enforced widowhood dominated by Carlyon, whose monstrous conceit and doubtful behaviour keep her enraged. She also finds that strange visitors to her new estate are murdered, that she is herself in danger, that Carlyon’s brothers and sisters combine to placate her. She is at last persuaded that the day is saved for England and that Carlyon’s conceits are chivalrous and her widowhood will end in a real wedding. Mistakes done to a turn, in Georgette Heyer’s skilled manner."
—“Fiction,” Kirkus Reviews, 1 January 1947, p. 11

            "This pleasant, preposterous period piece on Regency England may pass some otherwise tedious hours for the habitués of lending libraries wit nothing better to do. It is not, strictly, a historical novel, though the Prince Regent, Bonaparte and Beau Brummel [sic] are occasionally mentioned. It is a novel of pure escape, based on the perennially “successful” Cinderella Theme.
            Via a chain of rapid and highly unbelievable events, Elinor Rochdale, an impoverished girl of good but unlucky family, finds herself in the course of on hectic night, married, widowed and installed as mistress of an extensive estate…instead of as governess to a stuffy county family as she had intended.
            Prime mover in this extraordinary turn of fortune is Lord Carlyon, handsome, strong-willed and sagacious. He desperately wanted a wife for his wastrel cousin Eustace, because, for reasons of his own, he did not want to inherit his cousin’s estate. Elinor appears quite by chance; Carlyon seizes his opportunity and forceful brings about her marriage to Eustace on his deathbed.
            From this point, the plot boils merrily on to the obvious conclusion, complicated by night intruders seeking a lost document involving Wellington’s plans to defeat the French, Bonaparte’s agents, and a few other distractions for good measure.
            All this strains the reader’s credulity time and again. But if you want to read to avoid a chilling trip to the neighborhood movie—maybe this is your meat."
—Ricker Van Metre, Jr., “Cinderella in English Castle. Preposterous Tale Is Pleasant Reading,” Chicago Sun Book Week, 2 March 1947, p. 11

            "Another Heyer novel with a Regency background,

this lighter-than-usual romantic period piece is (as usual) laced with ribands of mystery and intrigue.

You must enter the spirit of the tale whole-heartedly to feel the proper pangs for Elinor Rochdale, the virtuous little governess. By stepping into the wrong post-chaise and arriving at Lord Carlyon’s house instead of the house of her new employer, Elinor finds herself reluctantly talked into marrying Eustace Cheviot, the dying cousin of lord Carlyon. That Carlyon especially wants a widow for his expiring cousin so that he, Carlyon, won’t inherit the Cheviot estate adds to the confusion: Elinor, of course, keeps her wits about her and wins Lord Carlyon’s love to boot."
—“Regency Rakes,” The New York Times Book Review, 16 March 1947, p. 39

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Charity Girl

Read the original reviews:

            "This is the most delightful new Georgette Heyer Regency romance in several years...

...It is witty, full of dashing period slang, and it trifles with the affairs of several maid and men with such style and gentle irony that readers of good “ton,” as Miss Heyer herself might put it, will find reading it a very “comfortable cose” indeed. It all begins when a chivalrous and rich young gallant takes pity on a pathetic poor relation in a neighboring family. Before long he is so entangled in his efforts to help her that every step he takes leads to some hilarious new confusion. There is an engaging case of supporting characters, including an old miser and the girl’s rapscallion father. The romantic conclusions are not what you may expect, but that adds to the fun."

—Barbara A. Bannon, “Forecasts. Fiction,” Publishers Weekly 198 (27 July 1970), pp. 66-7

            "For the coterie of Georgette Heyer fans, another divertissement, Charity Girl, has appeared on the literary scene. Essentially it is a comedy of manners, and if there is any redeeming social significance in the plot, it is that we consider the plight of the poor relation, forced to live on the largesse of any relative who will grant her shelter. And that is bestowed, more often than not, out of selfish ulterior motives, rather than generosity of spirit. The charity girl is an unpaid servant, forced to “fetch and carry” for the entire family, governess for the young, nurse for the ill, subject to the whims of her patron. She has no status above or below the stairs in the highly structured society of the Regency Period of England.
            Such is the plight of aptly named Charity Steane, abandoned daughter of an unconscionable rake, Wilfred Steane, who in turn was disinherited by his irascible, miserly father, Lord Nettlecombe. Her maternal aunt, Lady Bungle, an ambitious, grasping woman with five daughters for whom she must make suitable marriages on the modest income of a small inheritance, takes her in and treats her unmercifully. When the situation becomes untenable for Charity, she runs away, with plans to throw herself on the mercy of her grandfather.
            Viscount Desford, a man of impeccable antecedents, handsome, intelligent, independently wealthy, a “pink of the ton,” a catch of the first water, happens upon Charity on the road to London. Taking pity, he magnanimously offers her refuge at the estate of his old and dear friend Henrietta Silverdale, whom he cherishes as a sister, and whose hegemony is as flawless as his own.
            After depositing Cherry, as she is known, he sets off to track down Lord Nettlecombe, who has left London to take the waters. Tearing around England in his curricle with his perfectly matched horses, he manages to overtake Cherry’s grandfather at Harrowgate, only to discover that the Lord has married his common housekeeper, and that were Cherry to live under his roof, she would only be exchanging on form of bondage for another.
            Meanwhile Wilfred Steane has returned from the continent, chances upon Simon Carrington, Desford’s amiable younger brother, and demands to know Desford’s whereabouts, so that he can force him into marriage with Cherry to redeem his little girl’s reputation which he claims has been hopelessly compromised. To forestall this, Simon fibs that Desford is indeed engaged to Henrietta, that he acted only with the purest motives.
            At the final confrontation, it is revealed that Cherry, with her tarnished bloodlines, had found a suitable mate in a likeable commoner, of good nature and study yeoman stock; and that both Desford and Henrietta find that Simon’s little lie has much merit, and so all ends happily.
            Because of the heavy reliance on coincidence and chance, it is impossible to take the excessively romantic plot of Charity Girl seriously, but one must be impressed with miss Heyer’s scholarship, for it is evident from the detail throughout the novel that she has made a comprehensive study of the manners of the Regency Period.
            Those who read Heyer faithfully will find Charity girl agreeable; those who read it as escape will find it high camp."
—Ruth A. grossman (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Best Sellers 30, 14 (15 October 1970), p. 273

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Regency Buck

Readers say:
“Wholly captivating!”

“I have read all of Georgette Heyer's books, and Regency Buck remains my favorite—after a few dozen readings! The mysterious plot, the wonderful dialogue, the splendid Regency settings, the chemistry between the impulsive heroine and the sardonic hero—all these add up to a Regency masterpiece and the ultimate rainy night comfort read!”

“Georgette Heyer has no equal when it comes to that wonderful brand of Regency fun and laughter. Her research is so true to that age I feel as though I am riding in Hyde Park with the characters, or on the battlefield at Waterloo, Regency Buck lead me to read An Infamous Army and many of her other wonderful books.”

Read the original reviews:

            "Light and frothy, in the vein of the author’s other Regency novels this follows the fortunes of Miss Judith Taverner and her brother, Sir Peregrine, recently orphaned and appointed wards of the elegant Lord Worth, a stranger to the young Taverners. A mystery develops as Lord Worth turns away Miss Taverner’s suitors and it becomes apparent someone is trying to kill Peregrine. A good introduction to Heyer’s period stories…"
—The Booklist 63, 14 (15 March 1967), p. 765

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Martha Johnson said:

... love the books but why are you changing covers mid-stream? I have copies of Cotillion, The Nonesuch and The Talisman Ring from your company purchased within the last year and now find new pictures of the covers in Arabella which just came. I also find that both your company and Harlequin seem to have rights to These Old Shades, The Black Moth and Devil's Cub. Are you going to be publishing *all* of Ms Heyer's works? If so, do you have a timeline so I can stop purchasing from Harlequin?

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