Cloak and Dagger
"BREAUVALLET," from a Georgette Heyer novel, is one of 3YA’s current serials. The choice is to be commended, whatever the serialists have made of it; for Miss Heyer’s costume novels, as. distinct from her detective stories and one or two more seriously historical tales, are perfect in their kind. The formula of the costume novel is this: the author selects the fashionable world of .some historical epoch other than this — the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the Old South and the Second Empire, seem to be preferred-and writes a simple melodrama, on a theme selected from Robin Hood, King Cophetua, elopement, disguise, disinheritance, and a few others; the characters must be noble in blood and spirit, preferably wealthy and certainly elaborately dressed, talking a strange dialect supposed to be period, and all must end happily. The odd thing is that novels thus gruesomely concocted can be immensely enjoyable; one is transported into a toy-theatre-and-wax-works-world, brightly coloured and twodimensional, where all is for the best, and the values of fairytale are restored. Miss Heyer possesses the supreme gift of peopling this world with living beings; long may she reign.
Permanent link to this item
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451221.2.18.1
Bibliographic details
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 8
Word count
Tapeke kupu
190Cloak and Dagger New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 8
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Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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