Georgette Heyer - An appreciation by Stephen Fry

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Catlady

OMG, no thank you; I will never read Heyer if those paragraphs are indicative of her writing!

Yes, they are definitely indicative of her writing, at least in the few books I tried.

Question for those who have read a lot of Heyer - does the amount of slang change at all? Are earlier books different from later books? It's been awhile since I tried reading Heyer so I'm not sure which books I read or what part of her career they were from.

[Quoth]

A search suggests that name badges or tags originated in USA Fast Food Franchises, which took off in the 1950s, but the earliest chains seem to have started about 1919 to 1922 in the USA.
However I can't find any information suggesting when the use of name badges or tags started for staff serving customers, so I'd not have put it in a story set in 1909.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Question for those who have read a lot of Heyer - does the amount of slang change at all? Are earlier books different from later books? It's been awhile since I tried reading Heyer so I'm not sure which books I read or what part of her career they were from.

I've read quite a few. I can't remember how representative it is. I find coarse language in "modern" books more unreadable.

Perhaps she's like Marmite, you either like it or hate it.

[CRussel]

Some books have more, some less. Part of it depends on who the characters are in a particular book.

Ultimately, the slang is one of the least important elements of a Heyer Regency. For me, the humour is the part I like the best.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A search suggests that name badges or tags originated in USA Fast Food Franchises, which took off in the 1950s, but the earliest chains seem to have started about 1919 to 1922 in the USA.
However I can't find any information suggesting when the use of name badges or tags started for staff serving customers, so I'd not have put it in a story set in 1909.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions! This was the author's debut novel. I wish the publisher (it was a big one) had set an editor with some experience with the period to read through -- it could have been quite good, but the reading experience was ruined for me by lots of anachronisms of this type.

Originally Posted by Catlady

OMG, no thank you; I will never read Heyer if those paragraphs are indicative of her writing!

I did look for especially slang-heavy paragraphs. The ones preceding the last quote are here (context: Louisa wants her brother Alverstoke to host a ball for Louisa's daughter Jane, he refuses):

‘Have you no proper feeling?’ she said tragically.

He had drawn an enamel snuff-box from his pocket, and was critically studying the painting on its lid. ‘No, none at all. I wonder if I made a mistake when I purchased this? I liked it at the time, but I begin to find it a trifle insipid.’ He sighed, and opened the box, with a practised flick of his thumb. ‘And I most assuredly do not like this mixture,’ he said, inhaling an infinitesimal pinch, and dusting his fingers with an expression of distaste. ‘You will say, of course, that I should have known better than to have permitted Mendlesham to thrust his Sort upon me, and you are perfectly right: one should always mix one’s own.’ He got up. ‘Well, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave of you.’

‘It is not all!’ she uttered, her colour much heightened. ‘I knew how it would be, of course – oh, I knew!’

‘I imagine you might, but why the devil you wasted my time –’

‘Because I hoped that for once in your life you might show some – some sensibility! some apprehension of what is due to your family! even some affection for poor Jane!’

‘Rainbow-chasing, Louisa! My lack of sensibility has distressed you for years; I haven’t the least affection for your poor Jane, whom I should be hard put to it to recognise, if I met her unawares; and I’ve yet to learn that the Buxteds are members of my family.’

‘Am I not a member of your family?’ she demanded. ‘Do you forget that I am your sister?’

‘No: I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it. (and then the quote above)

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also some words used today didn't mean the same to Austin or her contemporaries. Sometimes it's obvious from context. So it's harder than a vocabulary.

"Gay" and "queer" are words which have shifted meaning. Some old passages become unintentionally suggestive And "boner" meant embarrassing mistake in the 1950s, resulting in this :

Originally Posted by A Batman comic from 1951

So, they laugh at my boner, will they?! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ultimately, the slang is one of the least important elements of a Heyer Regency. For me, the humour is the part I like the best.

I agree. She has a bit of Austen's acerbic view of people's weaknesses (Austen did it better, but Heyer does it quite well).

I usually don't mind idiosyncratic language. I wonder if that's because most of my reading is in a foreign language. English is already weird and extremely far from my native language, so weird variants of English don't make that much difference

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by hildea

Well, not necessarily. I wouldn't have guessed that manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless are anachronistic in a Regency setting, for instance.

I wouldn't have either, but were I trying to write for the period it would still have been easy to check before using them. The OED online has detailed etymologies including earliest recorded (or least extant) use, so a careful author doing proper research could test whether they fit. Whereas slang of the period may well have vanished without a written trace, allowing modern authors to make it up with less fear of being caught out.


(fwiw, the OED has the following)
selfless
1651 J. Godolphin Holy Arbor To Rdr. sig. a4v I leave this Memento with all selfless Christians.
1783 J. Knyveton Diary 2 Apr. in E. Gray Man Midwife (1946) 95 A selfless calling.
1825 S. T. Coleridge Aids Refl. 112 Holy Instincts of Maternal Love, detached and in selfless purity.


manipulate
†a. intransitive. Chemistry. To handle apparatus, etc., in experiments; cf. manipulation n. 2. Obsolete. rare.
1827 M. Faraday Chem. Manip. Introd. p. iv Of two persons having otherwise equal talents..the one who manipulates best will very soon be in advance of the other.



b. transitive. gen. To handle, esp. with skill or dexterity; to turn, reposition, reshape, etc., manually or by means of a tool or machine.
1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus iii. x, in Fraser's Mag. Aug. 187/2 Or else, shut up in private Oratories, [they] meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her [sc. the earth].

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I wouldn't have either, but were I trying to write for the period it would still have been easy to check before using them. The OED online has detailed etymologies including earliest recorded (or least extant) use, so a careful author doing proper research could test whether they fit. Whereas slang of the period may well have vanished without a written trace, allowing modern authors to make it up with less fear of being caught out.

But why in the world would an author/editor/proofreader even THINK of checking everyday words like manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless? It's not like a writer is attempting to forge an Austen manuscript that must pass muster, and is worried about being tripped up by a wily detective who just happens to be an etymologist.

What else would possibly trigger anyone else to look up every darn word? Certainly the concepts existed. It's not the same as checking to see if something or other had been invented or in use by a certain date.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But why in the world would an author/editor/proofreader even THINK of checking everyday words like manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless? It's not like a writer is attempting to forge an Austen manuscript that must pass muster, and is worried about being tripped up by a wily detective who just happens to be an etymologist.

What else would possibly trigger anyone else to look up every darn word? Certainly the concepts existed. It's not the same as checking to see if something or other had been invented or in use by a certain date.

Yeah, I wouldn't have been aware of those either, and agree that the concept existed even if they used different terminology. As long as the author avoids obviously modern slang or references to technology that wouldn't have existed yet I probably wouldn't notice.

Though I suppose you could stretch the theory that the concept existed to slang also, so if a character says things like "cool" or "OMG" it represents an 1800s equivalent

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Though I suppose you could stretch the theory that the concept existed to slang also, so if a character says things like "cool" or "OMG" it represents an 1800s equivalent

Except those examples, esp. OMG, might be dated very quickly. Slang needs to be for a book set at a particular time. Modern slang would perhaps be OK for a book specifically set in 2018, but not for either one set in the 20th C or earlier, or even set today that isn't specifically referencing current culture. Though books referencing current culture can be more incomprehensible to a teenager in 10 years time than maybe The Famous Five, because it has almost no ephemeral cultural references, which mostly would have been cinema and radio stars. TV did exist but without much cultural impact till about 1955 in the UK, though probably 1950 in USA.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But why in the world would an author/editor/proofreader even THINK of checking everyday words like manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless? It's not like a writer is attempting to forge an Austen manuscript that must pass muster, and is worried about being tripped up by a wily detective who just happens to be an etymologist.

What else would possibly trigger anyone else to look up every darn word? Certainly the concepts existed. It's not the same as checking to see if something or other had been invented or in use by a certain date.

The point of that post of mine was not to say that writers SHOULD check, but to defend an earlier statement of mine that they COULD.
I had said

It might be very difficult to know which words writers of the time DID use, but it's very easy to know which ones they did NOT.

to which the reply was

Well, not necessarily. I wouldn't have guessed that manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless are anachronistic in a Regency setting, for instance.

So I replied by showing that a means of checking existed. I was not saying that such checks should be done.

It was an unexpected bonus that doing a "demonstration" test of that checking mechanism on the three words cited as anachronisms proved that one (selfless) was emphatically not an an anachronism in the Regency period, and one (manipulate) was defensible, with a written citation from 1827, considered part of the Regency period generally. For the third, given that the adjective "flawless" was well established in English centuries before the Regency, asserting that its adverbial derivative "flawlessly" was anachronistic would also seem debatable, despite there being no extant citation of its use in writing before the last quarter of C19.

Again, though, my point was simply to defend my earlier post. Although I had said I don't like anachronisms in period writing. I had in mind uncontestable anachronisms, like "proactive" (1930s) or "prioritize" (1950s) for example, rather than words whose use does not give a glaringly "modern" feel to the writing.
As I said in my post above

a careful author doing proper research could test whether they fit. Whereas slang of the period may well have vanished without a written trace, allowing modern authors to make it up with less fear of being caught out.(e.a.)

It was the contrast between the verifiability of standard and slang that I was defending, I was not suggesting authors check every word in the OED before using it

[slm]

It may be worth remembering that the OED only shows the earliest written occurrence in standard texts it can find. Since slang almost always starts are purely spoken idiom and reaches "respectable" texts much later, the OED date is not a reliable indicator of when the words entered spoken parlance. The 1827 date, for example, for manipulate and the existence of earlier usages of the term would indicate a reasonable possibility of spoken use during the Regency era.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by slm

It may be worth remembering that the OED only shows the earliest written occurrence in standard texts it can find.

A point I took pains to make in each of my posts.

[Quoth]

"We reached out to contact the seller, but they didn't respond"
All words used maybe even in 16th C, but a modern (and IMO stupid) phrase. However though I would never put that in an article or say it, I would have no issue with a suitable character saying it.

Writing stuff for an earlier age requires a lot of familiarity with that.

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

A point I took pains to make in each of my posts.

Excellent posts.

Also OED tries to reflect existing usage, on updates, whereas historically Webster (USA) and French dictionaries were more prescriptive, often only listing what they thought was acceptable usage. Hence IMO crazy that people want OED entries removed. It's sufficient to note that the use of a word or phrase is negative to abusive.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Quoth

[...] Also OED tries to reflect existing usage, on updates, whereas historically Webster (USA) and French dictionaries were more prescriptive, often only listing what they thought was acceptable usage. Hence IMO crazy that people want OED entries removed. It's sufficient to note that the use of a word or phrase is negative to abusive.

Not meaning to go all quantum on you or anything, but there is an element of uncertainty principle surrounding dictionaries. They both reflect and influence usage. Of course, when when talking of historical texts, as we are here, actually influencing the result would probably require a wormhole ... probably better I shut up now .

[hildea]

Uncle Robin: Thanks for the history of "selfless" etc -- I guess I misunderstood Kowal's article, and she avoided those words not because they were anachronistic, but because she made a choice to write in a language similar to Austen's.

Inspired by this thread, I have just finished re-reading KJ Charles' "Band Sinister", a homage to Heyer's "Venetia". She has an author's note about a historical error she has made consciously: There's a minor plot point about a main character trying to establish domestic sugar production in Britain, using homegrown sugar beet. While this was done in continental Europe at the time the book was set, in reality this didn't happen in Britain until the 1920s.
This is a kind of anachronism I don't mind