When Jealousy is Not a Curse – My Georgette Heyer Addiction: Guest Post by Avril Tremayne
Today, I am very pleased to welcome author and fellow #DashItAll Avril Tremayne with a guest post on Georgette Heyer!
I’m admitting upfront to a case of author envy when it comes to Georgette Heyer – even though I write super sexy, ultra-contemporary romances that are a world away from Heyer’s bygone eras full of heroes and heroines who fall in love before they even kiss.[…]Continue Reading
The "Dash It Alls" on Romance, Writing, and the Influence of Georgette Heyer
As some of you may remember, during the RWA Beau Monde’s 2015 celebration of the eightieth anniversary of the Regency romance novel, I wrote a weekly Georgette Heyer poll here on my site as my way of contributing to the festivities. These polls were quite popular at the time and a great way for Heyer lovers to connect over favourite characters, favourite scenes, and best loved phrases. It was during this time that romance authors Avril Tremayne and Jane Godman, editor Ali Williams, and I formed our own little Heyer group which Ali affectionately named the “Dash it Alls” in honour of Freddy Standen from Heyer’s 1953 novel Cotillion. […]Continue Reading
The Pet Parrot: As Depicted in 18th and 19th Century Art, Literature, & History
When thinking of 18th and 19th century pets, we inevitably imagine dogs or cats or small, caged canaries. Large and colorful exotic birds are not generally the type of animal we envision inhabiting the pages of a Georgian or Regency novel, much less an actual Georgian or Regency home. It may surprise you to learn that parrots were, in fact, quite popular as pets during the 18th and 19th centuries.[…]Continue Reading
Adaptations and Accuracy: Literary Favorites from Page to Screen
“If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul, and I love…I love….I love you.”
(Pride and Prejudice, 2005.)
Photograph: Focus Features.
If you are a serious, literary-minded Jane Austen fan, it may raise your blood pressure a bit to learn that there are many people who believe the above quote was actually said by Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Similarly, there are those who are convinced that the famous scene where Darcy leaps into the lake at Pemberley is an accurate depiction of something that Austen wrote on the page. In fact, as most of you reading this will know, the above lines are said by actor Matthew Macfadyen in the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice and the scene with Darcy in the lake is enacted by Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC miniseries. Neither scene is in the book.[…]Continue Reading
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Historical Romance Heroine
“If you don’t take care my gel, you’ll turn into a radical like that Wollstonecraft woman.”
The Stanforth Secrets, Jo Beverley, 1989.
by John Opie
(The Tate)
Born on April 27th 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792 when she was only thirty-three years old. In it, she argued against the natural inferiority of women, writing that “…it cannot be demonstrated that woman is essentially inferior to man, because she has always been subjugated” and that it was the neglected education of her “fellow creatures” that was the primary source of their misery.
As modern readers, it seems to be a perfectly reasonable, wholly uncontroversial argument. Indeed, basic commonsense. But what of readers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, you ask? Surely they must have been scandalized by Wollstonecraft’s arguments for equality.[…]Continue Reading
