Worth a Thousand Words: Regency Lady Reading

Regency lady reading, Journal des Dames et des Modes (1811) via Books and Art

This image goes delightfully with this wonderful Wall Street Journal article about one of my favorite authors, Georgette Heyer. Do go read it all.

The war—and paper rationing—consolidated her reputation. As an “established stalwart,” she was disproportionately represented in the books printed during the war, but what really attracted readers was the talent that she had begun developing in the first war of so effervescently distracting people from their cares. Her opinion of her work was often self-deprecating: “I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense, but it’s unquestionably good escapist literature; & I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter, or recovering from flu.” Indeed. Ms. Kloester tells the story of a fan letter Heyer cherished: Two Romanian sisters held as political prisoners told and retold from memory Heyer’s lively novel “Friday’s Child” (1944) to their fellow inmates. They wrote, “Never had an ancient poet had a more rapt audience.”