{"id":34502,"date":"2017-08-28T06:30:48","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T18:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=34502"},"modified":"2017-07-05T15:25:47","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T03:25:47","slug":"georgette-heyer-a-favourite-putting-good-into-the-world-anecdote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2017\/08\/28\/georgette-heyer-a-favourite-putting-good-into-the-world-anecdote\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgette Heyer & A Favourite “Putting Good into the World” Anecdote"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last Monday I talked about writing and (I hope) adding to the positives in this world. One of my favourite anecdotes in this regard concerns the famous historical-romance author, Georgette Heyer, and her Regency novel, Friday’s Child<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In summary, Friday’s Child<\/em> is a romp: a swashbuckling account of the relatively lighthearted activities of a group of ridiculous young men and equally frivolous young women. Being a Heyer tale it’s a huge amount of fun, based on excellent historical research, but with no pretensions to being anything but a light read.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Yet in Jane Aiken Hodge’s biography of Heyer (The Private World of Georgette Heyer<\/em>, 1984) we learn that Heyer only ever kept one fan letter. The letter was from a Romanian political prisoner who kept herself and her fellow prisoners sane for twelve years by telling and retelling the plot of Friday’s Child.<\/i><\/p>\n

I have always been very moved by this story and think it definitely is a great example of a book adding to the positives in the world. It’s also proof that a book doesn’t have to be a serious read or a weighty treatise in order to do so. In fact a good light read and the laughter that ensues may be just what the doctor ordered, even for those who are not political prisoners…<\/p>\n

I’ve certainly smiled and even laughed outright a good deal when reading Georgette Heyer’s historical romances (I don’t care for her whodunnits so much), possibly more than with any other author, Terry Pratchett not excluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Monday I talked about writing and (I hope) adding to the positives in this world. One of my favourite anecdotes in this regard concerns the famous historical-romance author, Georgette Heyer, and her Regency novel, Friday’s Child. In summary, Friday’s Child is a romp: a swashbuckling account of the relatively lighthearted activities of a group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-funstuff","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34502"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34509,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34502\/revisions\/34509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}