May 1, 2020
What is the relationship between war and romance?
In this episode, Jessica, Chris and Angus talk to Vanda Wilcox (NYU Paris) about the romance novels of Georgette Heyer and how she used her perception of the First World War to write about the Napoleonic Wars. Along the way we discuss women’s magazines, swearing in wartime and why the Duke of Wellington may or may not be like Sir Douglas Haig.
References:
An Infamous Army by
Georgette Heyer
The Spanish
Bride by Georgette
Heyer
The Nonesuch
by Georgette Heyer
'Georgette Heyer, Wellington's Army and the First World
War' in Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction
edited by Samantha Rayner and Kim Wilkins, UCL Press (due 2020)
Kloester, Jennifer, Georgette Heyer. Biography of a
Bestseller (Random House, 2011)
Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining
of Masculinities by Graham
Dawson
‘The Blood of Our Sons’:
Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship in the
Great War by Nicoletta
Gullace
‘Best Boys and Aching Hearts:
The rhetoric of romance as social control in wartime magazines for
young women’ by Carol Acton
Strachan,
Hew, Wellington’s Legacy: The Reform of the British Army,
1830-54 (Manchester University Press,
1984)
Boys in Khaki, Girls in
Print: Women’s Literary Responses to the Great War,
1914-1918 by Jane
Potter
‘Tommy’ by Rudyard
Kipling
Traitor’s
Purse by Marjorie
Allingham