Author | Georgette Heyer |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Georgian, Romance |
Publisher | William Heinemann |
Publication date | 1941 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 272 pages |
OCLC | 56440965 |
Faro's Daughter is a Georgian romance novel by Georgette Heyer that was first published in 1941 by Heinemann in the UK and in the US by Doubleday in 1942. [1] The story's focus is on the misfortunes of an aunt and niece trying to run a gambling house for the upper classes.
Eliza, Lady Bellingham, once organised card parties in Clarges Street and, after becoming a widow, tries to gain a livelihood by opening a gambling den in St. James's Square on the other side of Piccadilly. She is aided by her 25-year-old niece Deborah Grantham (known to everyone there as Deb) and the house is guarded by former associates of Lord Bellingham. These include the Irish adventurer Lucius Kennett, who would not mind marrying Deborah himself, and the former pugilist Silas Wantage. Among several other suitors, Deb attracts the aging roué Lord Ormskirk, who wishes to make her his mistress, and the underage Adrian, Lord Mablethorpe.
Deborah is adept at keeping her suitors at arm's length, but Adrian's mother, Selina, Lady Mablethorpe, is aghast at his wish to marry "a hussy out of a gaming house" and calls in her nephew, wealthy 35-year-old Max Ravenscar, to help free her son from this entanglement. Ravenscar initially takes Deborah at his family's evaluation and mortally offends her by his blunt attempt to buy her off. To punish his effrontery, she encourages Mablethorpe's hopes and gets him to invite her to meet his family at a night outing in Vauxhall Gardens.
In order to shock the Mablethorpes even further, Deborah dresses up as a vulgar, tasteless flirt, but while she and Adrian are strolling in the grounds they come across the teenaged Phoebe Laxton weeping by herself in a summer house. Her penniless family has been trying to force her to marry the lecherous Sir James Filey, another customer at the gaming house whose reputation is well known to Deb. Instead, she and Adrian decide to smuggle Phoebe into the house in St James's Square and keep her there under an assumed name until they can persuade the Laxton family to relent.
Meanwhile Ravenscar, having failed to bribe Deb, tries financial harassment. Ormskirk had formerly bought up some of Lady Bellingham's debts and the St James's Square mortgage in order to put pressure on Deb. Having fallen into debt himself, however, he sells these assets to Ravenscar. To counter the threat of prosecution, Deb arranges for Lucius and Silas to kidnap Ravenscar and hold him prisoner in their cellar until he agrees to relinquish the documents. Though Ravenscar is as stubborn as Deb, her additional hold over him is that he has wagered his famous greys against Filey's blood chestnut horses in a race the next day. He tricks her, however, into leaving a candle in the cellar, with which he burns through the cords round his wrists, and Deb, half in love with him, smuggles Ravenscar up to her room so that she can put ointment on his burns.
Ravenscar allows his cousin Adrian to act as his groom in the race next day and wins. He has begun to respect Deb's resourcefulness by now and sends her the bills and mortgage in recompense; when she scornfully returns them, he tears them up and sends her back the pieces. But by this time Adrian has fallen for Phoebe's hero worship of him as her rescuer, as Deb had planned all along, and Deb accompanies the pair to seek refuge with a Laxton aunt in Wales. On the way they are seen by an acquaintance of Ormskirk, who tries to make Ravenscar believe that Deb has deceived him and eloped with Adrian to Gretna Green.
When Adrian returns in a state of elation, Ravenscar misunderstands the cause of his mood and goes round to denounce Deb to her face, only learning of his mistake later from Lady Mablethorpe. A further misunderstanding leads to the couple's reconciliation, but only in an atmosphere of rough embraces and complacently received insults.
The story is set in 1795 [2] at a time that William Pitt the Younger has just introduced a tax on the hair powder fashionable among men until then. Agitation against the female gamblers and hostesses known as Faro Ladies was also gaining momentum but had yet to reach the point publicly threatened by Lord Chief Justice Kenyon in May, 1796, that those convicted under the recent gaming laws, "though they should be the finest ladies in the land… shall certainly exhibit themselves at the pillory". [3]
The more precise denomination of "Faro's daughters" was also current and is glanced at in the novel when Lady Bellingham's establishment is compared there to 'one of the Archer-Buckingham kidney', referring to newspaper accusations that the notorious Sarah, Lady Archer and Albinia, Lady Buckinghamshire were fleecing young men at the game of Faro. [4] Both these ladies were the subject of satirical prints by James Gilray [5] and Isaac Cruikshank, [6] labelling them so in 1796.
In chapter 4 of the novel, Deborah applies the phrase to herself in arguing that "I may be one of faro's daughters, but I'll not entrap any unfortunate young man into marrying me". Nevertheless, she is fully aware that Lady Bellingham's gambling house is sailing away from the fashionable card-parties she used to host into morally dubious waters, now that games of speculation such as Faro and the E. O. Table (a form of roulette) [7] had been introduced to their new premises. Such a fall in reputation down the social ladder is of a piece with Heyer's experimenting with a new kind of unaristocratic hero in Mr Ravenscar, commenting ruefully that "The schoolgirls won't like his being a Mere Commoner but I'm so fed-up with writing a lot of wash about improbable dukes and earls. He's fabulously rich, however, but he dresses all anyhow, and hasn't got a quizzing glass, or any graceful habits." [8]
Nevertheless, for all its precise social detail, the novel's reputation has not been high [9] and in particular the romantic attachments formed there have been judged unconvincing. [10]
Georgette Heyer was an English novelist and short-story writer, in both the Regency romance and detective fiction genres. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story conceived for her ailing younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer. The couple spent several years living in Tanganyika Territory and Macedonia before returning to England in 1929. After her novel These Old Shades became popular despite its release during the General Strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales. For the rest of her life she refused to grant interviews, telling a friend: "My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."
These Old Shades is a 1926 historical romance written by British novelist Georgette Heyer. The novel is set around 1755: Heyer refers to the Duke of Avon's participation in the 1745 uprising as ten years previous; in addition the Prince of Condé is said to be about 20 years old. However, she also refers to Madame de Pompadour as actively involved with Louis XV, whereas her relationship with the King ended at about 1750.
Friday's Child is a novel written by Georgette Heyer in 1944. It is generally considered one of Miss Heyer's best Regency romances, and was reportedly the favourite of the author herself. Heyer retained only a single fan letter, which was from a Romanian political prisoner who kept herself and her fellow prisoners sane for twelve years by telling and retelling the plot of Friday's Child.
The Grand Sophy is a Regency romance novel by Georgette Heyer. It was first published in 1950 by Heinemann in the UK and Putnam in the U.S. Sales were brisk. Heinemann reported that in Australia it sold forty thousand copies in its first five months. There was also a Book Club edition in 1951.
The Foundling is a Regency romance novel written by Georgette Heyer and published by William Heinemann Ltd in 1948. It was also serialised in the Woman's Journal as "His Grace, the Duke of Sale", followed by a Book Club edition in 1949.
Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle is a Regency romance novel by Georgette Heyer. First published by Heinemann, London and Putnam, New York in 1957, it is the story of intelligent and desperate Phoebe who ends up marrying the man she has run away from home to avoid, and whom she has caricatured as the villain in her novel. The book features gentle mockery of the Gothic novel genre and also features Heyer's characteristic strong heroine, with a desire for independence, who marries on her own terms. The story is set in 1817-1818.
Beauvallet is an adventure novel by Georgette Heyer, published in the UK in 1929 by Heinemann and by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1930 in the US.
Cotillion is Georgette Heyer's twelfth regency romance, published in the UK in January 1953 by Heinemann and in the U.S. in February 1953 by G. P. Putnam's Sons. '
April Lady is a Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, published in 1957 by Heinemann in the UK and by Putnam in the US. Previously serialised in the Woman's Journal as “My Lady Cardross”, the new novel was Heyer’s forty-fourth book and her fifteenth Regency novel.
The Unknown Ajax is a Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, published in 1959 by Heinemann in the UK and in 1960 by Putnam in the US. It was her forty-seventh novel and the eighteenth set in Regency times.
The Black Moth (1921) is a Georgian era romance novel by the British author Georgette Heyer, set around 1751. The Black Moth was Heyer's debut novel, published when Heyer was nineteen. It was a commercial success.
The Convenient Marriage is a Georgian romance novel by Georgette Heyer published in 1934. The novel is set in 1776 and concerns the relationship between Horatia Winwood and Lord Marcus Drelincourt. It is the first of several Heyer romances where the hero and heroine are married early in the novel, and the plot follows their path to mutual love and understanding. Later examples include Friday's Child and April Lady.
The Corinthian is a regency novel by Georgette Heyer.
The Reluctant Widow is a 1946 Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, published by Heinemann in the UK, and by Putnam the following year in the US. A humorous parody of a Gothic novel, it is set in early 1813. It was published with the description "By midnight she is a bride, by dawn a widow", and with gouache artwork by Philip Gough.
Lady of Quality is the final Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer. Published in the UK by The Bodley Head in 1972, and by E. P. Dutton in the U. S., it was the last of her novels to be published during her lifetime.
False Colours is a Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, published in 1963 in the UK by The Bodley Head and in 1964 by E. P. Dutton in the US. The novel is set in 1817, and concerns a young man who must temporarily impersonate his missing twin brother and the complications brought in the wake of this deceit. In British English, the term 'under false colours' refers to the use of a flag to which one is not entitled as a tactic for purposes of deception, and so by extension to any dishonest manoeuver.
A Civil Contract is a Regency era novel by Georgette Heyer, first published in October 1961 by Heinemann in the UK and in January 1962 by G. P. Putnam's Sons in the US. Set between 1814–1815, the story centres on a bankrupted viscount who reluctantly enters a marriage of convenience with a wealthy merchant's daughter. In this case the time is supported by a rich assortment of period detail.
Simon the Coldheart is a historical fiction novel by Georgette Heyer published in 1925. Not a typical Georgie Heyer regency story, it is a tale of chivalry, intrigue and conquest. Set in the medieval period during the Hundred Years' War between England and France, it is her fifth novel, and the first of only three set in that period.
Kathleen Mary Lindsay (1903-1973), was an English writer of historical romance novels. For some years she held the record as the most prolific novelist in history. According to Guinness World Records, she wrote 904 books under eleven pen names. This record has since been surpassed.
Jennifer Kloester is an Australian-born writer, particularly known for her work on Georgette Heyer.