Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, at the age of 17, largely to entertain a sickly young brother. It has derring do, a Robin Hood type figure who even names himself as such, an Evil Duke, kidnappings, an aristocratic marriage in severe trouble thanks to the wife’s inability to stop spending money and be annoying, and a rather dull romance. If this does not seem to be the typical adolescent male entertainment, and if it reads rather polished for a first time, teenage author, this may be partly explained by a suggestion in her semiautobiographical novel, Helen, that her father helped write it.
[The development of the Heyer hero, and the hatred of puce.]