"A VERY nice book this time, with a New Plot!" (Georgette Heyer on Sylvester)
The thing that I like most about Sylvester is indeed the fact that it has a fresh plot. Lovely though it is to see Heyer shuffling the deck of her existing cards, and seeing all our favourite characters, tropes and motifs played with in subtly different combinations, it's great to see new characters and situations (mixed in with some old favourites like the scandalous old ladies, and the immature but adorable teenaged boy who keeps getting into scrapes).
Specifically, the novelist heroine and the fatal roman-a-clef is unique to Sylvester, and gives it a special and very Regency quality, and I don't think we've been overseas since Devil's Cub and Infamous Army, have we?
I found this from the Journal of Romance Studies, about an experiment using Sylvester to embed Georgette Heyer in a standard undergraduate Eng Lit degree as part of a module on historical fiction. The particularly interesting section comes in Fletcher's lecture at the end of part 3. I would recommend you reading it yourself, but, briefly, she discusses the way in which Sylvester is portrayed metafictionally as the victim of the "plotting" of Phoebe, Ianthe, the Duchess, and Lady Ingham, who between them enravel him in a Romance despite himself, and hence of course act as proxies for Heyer herself.
Because Phoebe is (I think) Heyer's only writer character, it's tempting to try to spot her own character and views reflected. Until reading Sylvester I think I'd have seen the more grotesque Heyer characters as pure fiction, but after it, I do wonder how many of her acquaintances ended up recognising themselves on the page - or failing to do so.
Questions for the Club:
Am I wrong in seeing a hint of inner vulnerability in Heyer revealed in the characterisation of Phoebe (and hence some of her other "shrinking" heroines as well)? Could she write an inner portrayal of those feelings if she didn't know them herself? She's always portrayed as such a strong person that it seems strange to think of her as socially vulnerable, but she was notoriously private.
Am I alone in seeing Sylvester as Heyer's only real Darcy-ripoff hero, both in his Fatal Flaw, and the way his true loveability is revealed through his relationships with his close family?
According to the Jane Aiken Hodge biography:
"Sylvester was running long, and she could not decide whether to cut it or let it rip. In the end she cut it and was sorry afterwards. 'It could and should have been better.And it was better until I got cold feet and cut out what wouldn't please the Fans."
Neither JAH or Jennifer Kloester give any detail as to what she cut. I would happily read a version of Sylvester that was 25% longer, but I'm not sure what is missing. What, or who, would you like to see more of? Which sections coul be expanded?
And lastly, has anyone actually read Glenarvon? Plot summary in attached link shows that it's totally the model for The Lost Heir. I'm a big Byron fan, and have read around the period a fair amount but I've never been able to face it. Apparently Lady Jersey cancelled Caroline's Almack's vouchers in retribution for the way she was portrayed in the book, and that alone almost tempts me to give it a try, but it is notoriously rubbish.
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Sylvester: Georgette Heyer Book Club no. 24
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LadyIsabellaWrotham · 09/07/2013 22:08
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