Today’s birthdays: Georgette Heyer and Diana Wynne Jones

Georgette Heyer was born on August 16th 1902.

Diana Wynne Jones was born on August 16th 1934.

There is nothing in Georgette Heyer’s novels relevant to the themes of this blog, although she has been featured here because of some similarities in her and Stella Gibbons’s lives. 

Diana Wynne Jones is very different: her life and her books have been mentioned in several articles and there is still more material to come. 

While Georgette Heyer never wrote about magic, witches or anything occult, Diana Wynne Jones wrote about little else. I wonder whether Georgette’ Heyer’s happy childhood and Diana Wynne Jones’s awful one had anything to do with this.

These two writers have only a few things in common.

They were both born in London and both moved around a lot - at least for a while. They were both heavy smokers, and both died from lung cancer.

While both were very tall, they were very different in appearance. Georgette Heyer was elegant, stylish and kept up with the fashions; Diana Wynne Jones was wild-haired and rather witch-like.

One of the biggest differences is their attitude to publicity.

Georgette Heyer kept herself from the world for most of her life. She is described as ‘ferociously reticent’.

Diana Wynne Jones gave interviews and talks; she visited schools; she wrote articles and spoke about the creative process and her life.

The two authors were usually treated very differently by people they met, as these two amusing anecdotes show:

Georgette Heyer and Stella Gibbons: some coincidences

For me, even the best of Georgette Heyer’s books are, or rather were, mere escape material and comfort reading. I have not read any of them for a very long time as they have lost much of their earlier appeal. I don’t remember seeing anything in any of them that would be relevant to the themes of this blog.

Stella Gibbons’s novels are primarily a source of material for articles about unseen influences: there are references to Stella Gibbons and her books in a few articles on here.

These two novelists have more elements of their lives in common than I would have expected, considering how very different their novels are. I looked at the major similarities and differences in their lives and personalities to see if I could see any patterns and detect any unseen influences at work. Although I found much fascinating and informative material, most of it is not very relevant to this blog. I did find a few interesting coincidences however. 

It is customary to leave the best till last, but I want to start with the most bizarre and unexpected material that I found while researching the two authors:

Novels and the Nazis
It is quite a coincidence that the names of both writers were known to the Nazi regime - for very different reasons.

Georgette Heyer had some of her books banned in Nazi Germany, whereas one of Stella Gibbons’s was translated into German and presented to Adolf Hitler!