A Regency romance 🪭

- free extract from Henrietta, 'an official Georgette Heyer novel'

Sophie Irwin, the author of the bestselling A Lady’s Guide To Fortune Hunting, has been entrusted by Georgette Heyer’s estate to write ‘an official Georgette Heyer novel’. This whole concept makes me anxious, not least because it’s what I did with Nancy Mitford, and wildly flattering as it is to be asked, the process of actually writing is terrifying. Te-rri-fy-ing. You’re taking a revered and frankly unimprovable novel and putting your own stamp on it, and were it to go wrong, it would be the most crushing, career-ending humiliation. Brrr.

But rather than rewrite an existing Heyer novel and make it contemporary (a fun idea, though God knows how you’d do it), Sophie Irwin has written a new Regency romance in the Heyer style, and it’s heaven. If you’re not familiar, think Bridgerton x 100, minus the sex (though with raciness) and with the sharpest wit.

I am a huge Georgette Heyer fan and I was absolutely delighted by Henrietta - Sophie Irwin gets everything right, including the sharp intelligence, the vocab, the period detail, the verbal sparring, the charm and the wit. And, obviously, THE ROMANCE. Here is Matthew Sweet, hardly a pushover, writing about it in The Times on Wednesday.

(Matthew Sweet has written the most genius, compelling, jaw-dropping, access-all-areas biography of Barbara Cartland. It’s out in September - much more about it closer to the pub date).

Sophie Irwin

Anyway: Henrietta! Henrietta secretly loves Arthur, Lord Allerton, who she’s known since childhood. He is the only man who is interested in her rather than her vast fortune, but, in the delicious manner of these things, he is not interested in her romantically.

When he returns to London society from the Peninsular war, it is to find his finances ruined. He used to be rich. Now he is… well, considerably less rich. Really almost poor. What’s a man to do? A woman might marry for money, but could Lord Allerton countenance such a thing? Surely not. And besides, Henrietta appears to be otherwise engaged.

Here’s an exclusive look at the first chapter. Imagine me handing it to you with a playful tap of my fan. In Almack’s. Having arrived by phaeton. And shortly off to dance a cotillion with a roguish person in uniform, despite my guardian, the dashing and saturnine Earl of Snaresbrook, strongly cautioning against.

9781529963519 Henrietta 1stchapter

1.49MB ∙ PDF file

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And here is Henrietta on Bookshop, at Waterstones and on Amazon. It’s published on 13 August. Pre-orders are always hugely appreciated.

Back tomorrow with Lucinda’s August picks, and then on Saturday with a sort of weekend supplement. So much for easing off with the posts for summer (I will, though, I think, after those).

Happy Thursday! Though not so happy here - there is at the time of writing a terrible wildfire raging on Dunwich Heath, a site of spectacular beauty and magic that is filled with really special wildlife, including nightjars and nightingales. We walk the dogs there all the time. It is heartbreaking.

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