Bath Tangle

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer, published by Pan Books in 1974, is a splendidly intricate Regency romance in which nobody says exactly what they mean, everybody has impeccable manners, and an alarming amount of emotional chaos is conducted in drawing rooms.

Heyer more or less invented the modern Regency romance as a recognisable genre, and Bath Tangle contains the usual delights: rank, money, pride, social expectation, misunderstandings, strong opinions and enough romantic manoeuvring to make a military campaign look straightforward.

The setting, naturally, is Bath — a city ideally suited to this sort of thing.

Bath in the Regency imagination is all assemblies, card rooms, promenades, gossip, introductions and the constant possibility of encountering somebody you would rather avoid while dressed too formally to escape at speed.

Into this world comes Serena Carlow, a heroine with opinions, independence and the inconvenient tendency not to behave quite as quietly as society might prefer.

Naturally, this causes complications.

Heyer’s great skill was to make social rules into plot machinery.

Who may call on whom?

Who may dance with whom?

Who may marry whom?

Who possesses enough money?

Who possesses enough rank?

Who possesses neither but has somehow acquired confidence anyway?

These questions can occupy entire chapters.

And somehow they remain entertaining.

The pleasure lies partly in the dialogue. Heyer’s characters spar, misunderstand, tease, provoke and generally conduct emotional warfare using complete sentences.

Nobody sends a text saying “u up?”

Instead, entire romantic catastrophes are arranged through glances, formal calls, letters and carefully deployed sarcasm.

It is all vastly inefficient and therefore much more enjoyable.

Published in this 1974 Pan Books edition, the novel has the proper feel of a vintage Heyer paperback: compact, readable and designed for actual use rather than display in a glass cabinet while somebody explains first editions.

This copy has indeed been used.

And, more importantly, rescued.

The cover hinges had weakened and have been repaired with new brown paper hinges, giving the book a fresh bit of structural support and a second chance at life.

This is not an invisible restoration.

It is an honest, practical repair.

In other words, the book has had minor surgery and is now back on its feet.

The brown paper hinge repair may not satisfy a collector seeking untouched perfection, but it does mean the cover is once again attached in a sensible and usable manner.

There is something rather appropriate about this for a Georgette Heyer novel.

The relationships inside the book are tangled.

The hinges outside it were also tangled.

At least one of these problems has now been resolved.

Condition: Fair. The book shows clear signs of age and use, and the cover hinges have been repaired using new brown paper hinges. The repair is visible but practical and has stabilised the cover. This is therefore a reading copy rather than a pristine collector’s example.

ISBN: 0330202375.

A thoroughly enjoyable vintage Heyer for readers of Regency fiction, romantic comedy, historical novels and stories in which people spend hundreds of pages discovering that the person irritating them most is probably the person they are going to marry.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — professionally committed to keeping romances together, even if it requires brown paper.

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