Georgette Heyer initially found it difficult to sit down and write Faro’s Daughter, distracted as she was with World War II and with a new idea for a contemporary novel that would eventually become Penhallow. Once she had worked out the details of the plot, however, she wrote the book in about a month, typing it in single space, her biographers note, thanks to the paper shortage. She called it all fluff, and indeed, most of the book is pure farce. Yet portions of the book reveal some of her deep-seated anxieties about the war—and concern about traditional gender roles in a wartime environment.
Telling her agent that she was sick of Dukes and other noblemen, this time, Heyer chose for her hero a rough commoner, who, to a degree almost unspeakable in a Heyer novel, does not make his clothing a chief focus of his life. (I shall pause to let you all get over this. Are we ok now? Good.) His boots, however, are excellent, and he is exceedingly wealthy and rude, so he isn’t completely without hope for romance.
[Not that this is exactly the most conventional of romances; spoilers.]