Georgette Heyer Fans discussion

I'm doing a presentation on The Grand Sophy in my Senior Writing college class, and I'm surprised how little there is online about Heyer and her books, considering there's almost 50 of them.

Anyway, I have to prepare a handout with 20 discussion questions, and I was hoping to get some help from those who have already read it. What are some good questions that would inspire some great discussion about this book? It can be about anything really - language, character, plot, history, politics, etc.

Throw them at me! And thanks in advance!

Hi Courtney & welcome.

There is an old Grand Sophy thread in the books folder. I don't know if there is anything helpful in there as I have only become a moderator this year - & I don't go into threads of books I haven't read for a while in case its spoilt for me.

For me personally this request is a bit of a problem. for one thing, this is a book we are looking at doing as a group read. We are a democratic bunch, so we usually vote on this. if TGS is selected that won't be happening until August at the earliest.

& again, for me personally this comes a bit close to "help me with my homework."

What does the rest of the group think?

It's been too long since I read it. I do recollect a brief scene with a dislikeable Jewish character (if I recall correctly he's a moneylender) that some readers think smacks of anti-Semitism. That might be worth examining.

Courtney, I recommend that you read through people's reviews of this book, to see what they liked or disliked, for ideas for other questions. Good luck.

First,I don't think the request is a "Help me with my homework" one, although I also don't think that helping someone with her homework means doing it for her. What we would be doing is brainstorming, getting the mental juices flowing. (For what it's worth, I'm a longtime English professor who can be downright paranoid about cheating, but I don't think this is an example of it.)

Now, what I remember best about the moneylender episode (besides the fact that Sophy pulls a gun on him) is that he says to her, "Thank God you are not my daughter!" and she responds something like "Don't. If I were your daughter, I would scrub that floor and see to it that you had a clean shirt to wear." It seems to me that GH is suggesting that character transcends class. Any discussion thoughts on that?

Other possibilities might include whether or not GH treats certain characters fairly. I'm thinking especially of Eugenia Wraxton and Augustus Fawnhope. Another (and this subject actually came up here a while back) is the fact that Hubert is actually older than Sophy--so what does the nature of their relationship say about the respective roles of young men and girls in their society?

Then, at what point in the story does each reader realize that Charles and Sophy are destined for each other? (TGH was the first GH novel I read, and maybe if I had been familiar with some of her others, I'd have realized much sooner that Charles was the romantic lead.)

Well, enough for tonight! :)

Hi, Courtney, maybe since it is a writing class, you could have some questions that explore how Georgette Heyer used her historical research to create a world that might be unfamiliar to her readers. Examine the techniques she uses to convey Regency society’s rules and practices without interfering with her storytelling. (I’ve always thought she was especially good at that.)

On the less positive side, I find her early chapters sometimes problematic in terms of exposition. She usually has a scene at the beginning in which one character goes to visit another, and one of them is grieved about the primary conflict of the book, and goes on in detail about it, in the process introducing all the principal characters. It has been too long since I’ve read The Grand Sophy to remember whether that’s the case here. You could ask a question about how she goes about establishing the main characters and the main conflicts, and whether there are other ways she could do it.

I hope these are helpful suggestions!

(BTW, since you’re leading a discussion, I understand that Heyer pronounced to rhyme with Mayor, not “Higher.”)

Something that I think is worth exploring in a Writing class is how Heyer effectively established the Regency romance as a genre. When she started writing her books, the genre basically consisted of Jane Austen and those books were 100 years old.

Heyer developed the language and the basic structure of every subsequent Regency romance. So what does it take to establish a new genre? And why was Heyer so successful?

Thank you, Tadiana, Mary, Abigail and Carolien! Those are exactly the things I needed, just some ideas to jumpstart my brain and get me going in the right direction.

And Abigail, thank you for clarifying her name. I've only ever heard it pronounced like "Higher" but now I'll change just in time for my presentation :)

I've been saying her name wrong all these years??? :D

Tadiana ♕Part-Time Dictator♕ wrote: "I've been saying her name wrong all these years??? :D"

Yep, apparently so have I!

Tadiana wrote, “I’ve been saying her name wrong all these years???”

Me, too! But in the news coverage of the blue plaque that was placed at her birthplace a few weeks ago, I read a correction by a family member of that pronunciation. Am trying to retrain my brain.

Glad it was helpful, Courtney!

I've never heard it pronounced 'higher', only ever 'hay-er'. However, I'm sure I read a book that mentioned how GH pronounced it and I remember being surprised, so maybe 'hay-er' isn't the right way.

Edited to add: neither are correct apparently! According to Wikipedia... 'Although the family's surname had been pronounced "higher", the advent of war led her father to switch to the pronunciation "hair" so they would not be mistaken for Germans'

However, I would assume that 'hay-er' is just a less poshly pronounced version of 'hair' ;)

Here's an interesting read; technically, we're all right! :)

http://www.anglophilebooks.com/heyer.htm

Am I the only one who has been pronouncing it "high-air"? After so many years, I don't know if I can retrain myself to say it differently...

I've always given it the original German pronunciation of "Higher." I think I can retrain myself to say Hay-er but I dunno if I can get on board with the "Hair" pronunciation that Georgette favored. :)

We've always said Hey-er (Hay-er)

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