Heyer was neither romantic nor funny nor zippy. She was a sour and rather cynical snob, rapacious when it came to money, mean-spirited when it came to other writers and to her readers, whose fan letters she liked mostly to drop straight into the nearest wastepaper basket, and with a strangely overdeveloped sense of her own importance. Full text of the review is here on the Guardian website.
In some way I clearly want Heyer to have been as witty and generous as her heroines, and this raises the question of whether the views of the creator affect their creations. Certainly there are snobbish elements in Heyer's writing. She admires the world of the haut ton, the Upper Ten Thousand, and while there are no shortage of sympathetic cheeky urchins, hard-working lower orders etc, her greatest scorn is for the 'cits' - the vulgar nouveau riche upstarts who lack the instinctive elegance and taste of those born into high society (if not money - there are plenty of impoverished aristocrats in her books).
Reading the comments at the bottom of the online edition of the review, though, I can see that other readers dispute both Cooke's analysis of the biography and Heyer's snobbishness, preferring to describe her as "of her time". Now there's a label that can cover a multitude of sins! Still, I don't think this is enough of a concern to stop me enjoying her books - it's not the worst thing an author can be accused of, after all. I think I will put the biography, as well as Jean Aiken Hodge's The Private World of Georgette Heyer , on my reading list and judge for myself, as well as leaving worrying about Wagner for another day!
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