When will Hollywood discover Georgette Heyer? - Vox

In terms of form and impact, we might think of Georgette Heyer (pronounced "Zheorgette Hay-er") as the Agatha Christie of romance novels. Like Christie, Heyer was British and hailed from an upper-middle-class family. Like Christie, her sprawling career spanned the 20th century, from the 1920s to the '70s; Heyer's first novel, The Black Moth, was published in 1921, just a year after Christie's famous first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Like Christie, Heyer was extremely prolific; by the time she died in 1974, she had published 56 novels, most of them historical romances. Heyer also similarly transformed the genre she wrote in: She essentially invented, all by herself, what we now think of as the "Regency romance" subgenre of romance novels, which also happens to be the backbone upon which all other romances are built.