Friday, July 29, 2011

Heyer Bio Teaser and ARPF CFP



A literary plagiarism allegation from the 1950s is set to be given its first detailed airing in a new biography of much-loved novelist Georgette Heyer.

Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester (Wm Heinemann, hb, £20, October) reveals the outrage felt by the queen of witty regency romances at the obvious similarities between Barbara Cartland's historical novel Knave of Hearts and her own youthful story These Old Shades (published in 1926), when they were brought to her attention in 1950. (Page)
More details here.

Association for Research in Popular Fictions

Researching Popular Fiction: Method, Practice and Resonant Themes
Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November 2011
Liverpool John Moores University

Call for papers: We welcome papers considering popular narratives or cultural practices across any media (film, television, graphic novel, radio, print, cartoons and other narrative art, online), historical period and genre.

Topics for this conference might include, but are not limited to:

Empirical, on-line, ethnographic and observational data gathering, archives, quantitative/quantitative data analysis, genre & formula, historical reading experience, reading and storytelling, fandom and cult media, constructing and locating the audience, thematic clusters, book clubs and reading groups, retailing and publishing, transmedia narrative, online discussions and communities, interactive fictions, nineteenth-century serialisation, the bestseller, children’s fictions, online and multiplayer gaming, advertising and narrative, radio drama, the stage and performative narrative, long-format television.

Calls for specific panels will be announced via the ARPF website.

Please contact: Nickianne Moody, convenor for ARPF, Liverpool John Moores University, Dean Walters Building, St James Road,
Liverpool L1 7BR, U.K. by 1st September 2011
Email arpfmail@yahoo.co.uk
And there's some background information here.

3 comments:

  1. I always wondered who the plagiarist was, but I never thought it was Cartland! Fascinating. That letter was quoted in the Hodge bio (pp. 84-5), but Cartland's name was redacted, presumably because she was still alive.

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  2. After reading some of her books I assumed that the plagiarist was Hebe Elsna. I read Knave of Hearts sometime in the seventies and quickly forgot it and so when I read Hodge's bio (parts of which I thought were catty)I didn't consider Cartland.

    I suspect that Heyer could point to many current authors and say the same as she did about Cartland.

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  3. Heyer was one of the best and Cartland, in my opinion, was one of the worst. I think Heyer's writing will stand the test of time and I can't wait to read her bio!

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