Susan, I have a deep fondness for Heyer, which I know you don't share - but I love her acknowledgements at the front of her amazing novel about Waterloo, An Infamous Army. It's basically an acknowledgement of stealing from Thackeray. Not sure if she meant it to be funny, but I found myself nodding and laughing.

I need to read An Infamous Army one of these days, but AFAIK it hasn't yet been reprinted in the Heyer reprint bonanza of the last few years.

And it's not that I don't like Heyer, it's just that I don't think she's the be-all and end-all of everything Regency--her work reflected her own times as much as the ones she was writing about, IMO. If I'm going to worship at an author's altar, I'll stick with Austen, whom I adore beyond all reason.

her work reflected her own times as much as the ones she was writing about, IMO

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

I love Austen, but from a distance; it's a similar reaction to the one I have for Emily Dickenson. But Persuasion kills me. I just adore it.

I don't know that Heyer is the be-all and end-all, but she's certainly the gold standard, and I think she earned it. Unbelievably meticulous researcher; I would kill for her library. Something like 40,000 books and original manuscripts from the period.

One nice thing about An Infamous Army is that it unites two families from two of her other books, the Alastairs and the Worths. And the blow by blow of Waterloo, leading up to it and the days following, had me in the kind of suspended state of "ogodogod" that Thackeray never managed to pull up in me.

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

Yep. That's my take.

One nice thing about An Infamous Army is that it unites two families from two of her other books, the Alastairs and the Worths.

I'm sure I've read that one, but it's been so many years, now, I don't really remember it. I've enjoyed the glut of reprints, because it gave me an opportunity to reread some of my favorites. Now I think I'm going to have to search this one out, again. Maybe I can find it in the library.

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

Well, of course. I know that. But you don't know how many people I've seen go on like Heyer's books are perfectly researched, reflected the era as it was, yadda yadda yadda, and seem to think you can write a good Regency romance without doing any proper research of your own--just read Heyer and you're ready to go!

Sorry. Don't wanna. I'd rather do my own research. And while it's inevitable that my work is colored by my times and by the fact that I'm an American, I don't feel my work would benefit by adding yet another distancing filter to the mix, and to me that's what relying on Heyer's version of the Regency era would mean.

you don't know how many people I've seen go on like Heyer's books are perfectly researched, reflected the era as it was, yadda yadda yadda

No, I don't. Which is why I asked. I didn't think anyone would assume that someone from another period could perfectly capture any given time. Fuck, it's hard enough to do when you're breathing it. I'm sorry you've had to field the fangirls.

the blow by blow of Waterloo, leading up to it and the days following, had me in the kind of suspended state of "ogodogod" that Thackeray never managed to pull up in me.

I think Thackeray knew he couldn't pull it off. That's why the narrative of Vanity Fair is so elliptical around Waterloo. I mean, it's also about Becky (and Missy Milksop), and not about Idiot George, which is another reason to follow them and not him; but really, I think he didn't feel he could hack battlefield description without losing his arch tone.

OK, Susan just brought up a humongous bugbear of mine.

Memo to aspiring writers, published writers, any writers of fiction at all: You can't ride other peoples' research.

And Susan, Heyer is beautifully researched. She just winnowed it down to meld with her presentation. And the result, for me, is that she got me interested in the early 19th century, particularly the late Peninsular campaign, to the point where I went and found a copy of "Random Shots From A Rifleman", and devoured it, and then moved on to various memoirs. And I'm a medievalist; that was what I tutored, that's my period. I end at Bosworth, basically. Anything after that is modern.

So Heyer managed to get me interested in a period I would otherwise never have touched. Thackeray didn't do that for me, Austen didn't do that for me, Byron didn't do that for me. But Heyer did. She triggered my interest with her writing to the point where I wanted to go do my own research on that period.

I call that effective period writing.