3 For this sort of historical detail, Heyer continues to be a source for Regency romance authors. She was particularly interested in researching the famous locations and people of the Regency, and her books even contain dialogue that, according to primary sources of the day, was actually spoken by the Duke of Wellington. Heyer did not invent the historical romance, and indeed sought to imitate novels of manners by the likes of Jane Austen with her books set amongst the aristocracy and upper echelons of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British society.
2 Before Heyer, adventure romances had dominated the market. Over the course of her long career, Heyer transformed the conventions of the genre, popularizing the society-set romance in which the central struggle in a relationship between the two main characters (in Heyer’s case, always a man and a woman) often revolved around the tensions of searching for love in an era when dynastic marriages were still expected. Historical romance writers today are in constant conversation with the world that Heyer created. Her historical world-building was unique in its approach and application, and was imitated even in her lifetime.
Although she was an avid researcher, particularly when a subject interested her, she nevertheless invented a world full of aristocratic dandies and feisty heroines having adventures in the ballrooms and pleasure gardens of Regency England. 1 But Heyer’s fiction never reflected the realities of life in Regency England. From 1921 to 1972, Heyer published thirty-seven romances set in the Georgian or Regency eras. Georgette Heyer is widely considered to be the pioneer of the Regency romance.
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