Editing Georgette Heyer (section)

==Early years==
Georgette Heyer was born in [[Wimbledon, London]], in 1902. She was named after her father, George Heyer.<ref name=hodge13/> Her mother, Sylvia Watkins, studied both cello and piano and was one of the top three students in her class at the [[Royal College of Music]]. Heyer's paternal grandfather had emigrated from Russia, whilst her maternal grandparents owned tugboats on the [[River Thames]].<ref name=byatt291>Byatt (1975), p. 291.</ref>

Heyer was the eldest of three children; her brothers, George Boris (known as Boris) and Frank, were four and nine years younger than she.<ref name=hodge13>Hodge (1984), p. 13.</ref> For part of her childhood the family lived in Paris but they returned to England shortly after World War I broke out in 1914.<ref name="hodge15">Hodge (1984), p. 15.</ref> Although the family's surname had been pronounced "higher", the advent of war led her father to switch to the pronunciation "hair" so they would not be mistaken for Germans.<ref>Hodge (1984), p .14.</ref> During the war her father served as a requisitions officer for the [[British Army]] in France. After the war he was appointed a [[Member of the Order of the British Empire]] (MBE).<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=31684 |supp=y|page=15455|date=9 December 1919|mode=cs2}}</ref> He left the army in 1920 with the rank of [[captain (OF-2)|captain]],<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=31897 |supp=y|page=5452|date=11 May 1920|mode=cs2}}</ref> taught at [[King's College London]] and sometimes wrote for ''[[Granta|The Granta]]''.<ref name=hodge13/><ref name=byatt291/>

George Heyer strongly encouraged his children to read and never forbade any book. Georgette read widely and often met her friends [[Joanna Cannan]] and [[Carola Oman]] to discuss books.<ref name="hodge16">Hodge (1984), p. 16.</ref> Heyer and Oman later shared their works-in-progress with each other and offered criticism.<ref name=byatt293>Byatt (1975), p. 293.</ref>

When she was 17 Heyer 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]]'', about the adventures of a young man who took responsibility for his brother's card-cheating, was issued in 1921.<ref name="hodge16"/><ref name=hughes38/> According to her biographer, [[Jane Aiken Hodge]], the novel contained many of the elements that would become standard for Heyer's novels, the "saturnine male lead, the marriage in danger, the extravagant wife, and the group of idle, entertaining young men".<ref>Hodge (1984), p. 17.</ref> The following year one of her contemporary [[short story|short stories]], "A Proposal to Cicely", was published in ''Happy Magazine''.<ref>Fahnestock-Thomas (2001), p. 3.</ref>