Georgette Heyer's Regency England

If Georgette Heyer did not indeed invent a whole genre of fiction, she certainly brought it both to a mastery and a popularity that sparked a flood of imitations. Her Regency Romances are written with a verve, accuracy and feel for the period that few other writers have equalled. The results of her painstaking research, however, are always used as a backdrop to the narrative, and are taken for granted both by the characters and by the author: there are no discursions into explanation for modern readers who might (perhaps) wonder what a phaeton is, or precisely where Mount Street might be. The answers to these and similar questions may be found in the present work, which gives (for the most part) an extremely able account of Miss Heyer's world, including its pastimes, clothing, vehicles and social customs. There are sections on the practice of duelling, and maps and descriptions of London, Brighton and Bath, both as they were then and as they are now, so that one may use the book as a tourist guide to find what remains today of the Regency world. Not unnaturally, a large part of the book consists of references to persons and events in Miss Heyer's romances; and it is here (unfortunately) that we find something so sloppy that it's hard to see how it got past the most cursory editing: the names of Miss Heyer's characters are garbled almost beyond belief. For instance, the Countess Lieven is referred to, repeatedly, as Countess Leiven. That might be forgiven, but from Friday's Child alone Sherry is referred to as "Stacy" (p.31), and Sir Montague Revesby as "Sir Mark Ravensby" (p.23), even though it is Revesby on p.13. Augustus Fawnhope (from The Grand Sophy) becomes "Endymion Fawnhope" (p.56), but Endymion Dauntry (from Frederica) becomes Endymion Daventry (p.89). Presumably the author wrote these names from memory and never bothered to check them. So all in all, this is a worthwhile book for fans of Georgette Heyer, but a revised edition would be a fine thing.