Cover of Venetia

Venetia

by Georgette Heyer

4.3
(22 ratings)
372 pages2011Harpercollins (Mm)ISBN 9780061002595

About this book

Twenty-five-year-Venetia Lanyon's beauty is rivaled only by her sensibility. Intelligent and independent, her future seems safe and predictable. Lovely Venetia despairs of ever meeting the handsome hero of her romantic dreams, and is nearly resigned to spinsterhood, thanks to the enormous amount of responsibility she inherited, with a Yorkshire estate and an invalid but precocious brother, Aubrey. She has never been farther from home than Harrogate, nor enjoyed the attentions of any but two wearisomely persistent suitors. She does not want to marry the respectable but dull Edward Yardley - she will only marry for love. Then her long-absent neighbor, thirty-eight-year-old Lord Jasper Damerel, returns home to Yorkshire. In an extraordinary encounter, she meets the infamous neighbor, known by reputation to be a gamester, a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character. Before she knows better, is she involved with a libertine whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years. Lord Damerel finds Venetia to be the most truly engaging and wittily perverse female he had encountered in all his life, and he is determined to woo and win her. He pursues her with a passionate abandon that is soon the talk of the ton. Venetia's well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon a courtship with him that scandalises and horrifies the whole community. But Venetia has no intention of losing her heart to the rakish lord until she is sure that beneath his swashbuckling ways and shocking manners his heart belongs to her. And Lord Damerel would marry her in a heartbeat if he did not think it would ruin her. Then she discovers a shocking family secret that changes everything. It is therefore particularly provoking that on this occasion, Lord Damerel decides to be idiotically noble.

Publication Details

Publisher
Harpercollins (Mm)
Published
2011
Pages
372
ISBN
9780061002595
Language
en

About Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer was born on 16 August 1902 in Wimbledon, London, England, UK. She was the eldest child of Sylvia Watkins and George Heyer; her brother George Boris was born four years later, and her brother Frank nine years later. During her childhood, the family lived also in Paris, France, but they returned to England before World War I. During the war, her father served as a requisitions officer for the British Army in France. Her father encouraged her to read, he never forbade her any book. At 17, she began a serial story to amuse her brother Boris, who suffered from a form of haemophilia and was often weak. Her father enjoyed listening to her story and asked her to prepare it for publication. His agent found a publisher for her book, and "The Black Moth" was released in 1921. In December 1920, she met George Ronald Rougier, a young man two years older than she, who studied at the Royal School of Mines to become a mining engineer. They became engaged the spring of 1925. By then she had published five novels. Only one month later, her father died of a heart attack, and, as he left no pension for his family, she assumed financial responsibility for her brothers, aged 19 and 14. On 18 August 1925, Georgette married George Ronald, but two months later, he was sent to Caucasus Mountains, and she remained at home and continued to write. She released "These Old Shades", during the midst of the UK General Strike of 1926; as a result, the novel received no newspaper coverage, reviews, or advertising. The novel sold 190,000 copies, and she refused for the rest of her life to promote her novels. Her husband was sent to the East African territory of Tanganyika, and she joined him in 1927. They moved to Macedonia in 1928, where she almost died after a dentist improperly administered an anaesthetic. She insisted they return to England before starting a family, and the following year they returned to England. In England, her husband started different businesses, but she

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