Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) was an English novelist who established the Regency romance as a genre and also wrote detective fiction. She was born in Wimbledon, London, on 16 August 1902 and died in London on 4 July 1974.

Her first novel, The Black Moth, began as a serial story for her younger brother Boris and was published in September 1921, when she was nineteen, by Constable in London and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. These Old Shades (Heinemann, 1926), which reworked characters from it, sold 190,000 copies despite appearing during the General Strike. Regency Buck (1935) was her first novel set in the Regency, the period of the romances for which she is best known. From Footsteps in the Dark (1932) she also wrote thrillers and detective novels, several featuring Superintendent Hannasyde and Inspector Hemingway, which Hodder & Stoughton published until it rejected Penhallow. Heinemann was among her British publishers, with Doubleday in America. Forty-eight of her titles were in print when she died.

For collectors

The September 1921 Constable first edition of The Black Moth is a notable rarity: it was her only book with that firm, which paid £100 for the rights, and her biographer Jennifer Kloester reports that she has never seen an original dust jacket for either the British or American first. Heinemann reissued the book in 1929 with a new jacket. Heinemann firsts of her Georgian and Regency novels, from These Old Shades (1926) onwards, are another focus for Heyer collectors.