Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer was a publicist’s worst nightmare. She refused to grant interviews, rarely answered fan mail, and firmly believed that her personal life was nobody’s business but her own. Yet she became one of the most popular novelists of the twentieth century, and her Regency romances are now considered classics in the genre. Though Kloester’s is not the first biography of Heyer—credit for that literary achievement goes to Jane Aiken Hodge, whose The Private World of Georgette Heyer (1984) was recently reprinted by Sourcebooks—Kloester, the author, too, of Georgette Heyer’s Regency World (2010), spent 10 years researching Heyer. Granted unlimited access to private papers, Kloester also mined a newly discovered archive of Heyer’s early letters for insight into this very private writer. She effectively builds on Hodge’s biography by providing extensive details on Heyer’s entire literary output, including her contemporary novels, historical fiction, and mysteries, as well as covering her often-stormy relationships with her publishers and agents. The result is an absorbing and enlightening biography, a must-read for Heyer fans and all who cherish Regency romances. --John Charles