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.

DH and I have a running joke about how very crowded the Duchess of Richmond's ball would be if every fictional character that's ever been put there on the eve of Waterloo really existed and was there. Only DH, being DH, has the place exploding from the unworkable physics of the thing while I'm still having fun mixing the characters.

I love Heyer's voice to death. The little observational things about the characters which make me smile in delighted recognition, her throwaway asides which can be so snarky and fun , the facility of her description. And she writes with wit--I haven't found another Romance writer who seems as smart and as funny as she does. (I admit I have only tried 8 or 9 before giving up in despair).

I think Thackeray knew he couldn't pull it off

I think you're right. You can't handle something like that with that sort of one-eyebrow-up sensibility, at least I don't think so.

There's a scene in An Infamous Army that was so vividly perfect in summing up the characters involved that it's burned into my memory. Judith and Barbara have been out on the street, helping the wounded as they trickle into Brussels. Neither has ever come into contact with anything more bloody than a child's scratched finger, and they've been out there, helping in the streets in a torrential downpour (historically accurate; the weather had been godawful). They get back to the Worth's house and Judith looks at Barbara and Barbara is standing there, just standing there, swaying. And Judith says, are you all right, and Barbara says, very detached, well, no - I feel sick. Or faint - I'm not sure which. And Judith says no, no, if you're sick I'll never forgive you and if you're faint, wait, let me get my smelling salts - and she stops and says I forgot - I gave them to that boy whose ear had been shot off. And they melt down.

That scene is engraved in my brain. The first 200 pages, the scenes on the battlefield, everything is right there in that scene, the biggest thing of all: the effect on the people not fighting.

Killer stuff. I had to consciously try not to let her affect me when I was writing Weaver, since the ghosts were in that period.