When you know an author by their novels, it’s easy to ignore any short stories they may have written and published. Especially if they’re from a time when there was plenty of opportunity to publish said shorts, unlike today, or if they weren’t collected together into one volume.

Back in the day, lots of authors got their start writing short stories for any number of magazines. They practised their writing and built their reputations. Heyer was not really one such author, having had a success with her first novel aged nineteen. Her shorts were generally written for the ready cash they provided between royalty and advance payments.

Acting on Impulse is a collection of her contemporary short stories, with one historical story, complete with introductions (by Jennifer Kloester) and commentaries (by Rachel Hyland). If you read the collection, I’d suggest ignoring the commentaries, which I didn’t feel really added anything beyond making me cross. A lot of vulgar speculation on personal life, which is and was nobody’s business but Heyer’s. As Heyer always maintained, giving no interviews (and no, it’s not fun, or polite, to speculate).

The stories themselves show a lot of the comedy and character-types you’d expect from a Heyer story. They’re just not set in an historical period (except for the aforementioned). Mostly moneyed (or recently impoverished) ‘genteel’ characters, although the suitor for whom the collection is named stretches that description somewhat. I’m not sure a gentleman really ought to kidnap his father to obtain his blessing for an engagement. Just because he’s from the leisure class doesn’t mean he really is a gentleman (same goes for the irascible father, if it comes to that).

To be fair, Heyer specialised in comedies and absurd situations, so really, the kidnapping of that irascible gentleman isn’t really all that out of place.

The problem I always have with short stories is that I don’t get to spend much time with them. I read them and that’s that. There’s not, usually, enough of them for me to really remember them, or the characters. Not so with Heyer’s.

In Acting on Impulse, there’s the kidnapping suitor; there’s a dog bringing a couple together; one couple fighting over china and dancing; one sort of ghost story; one long-winded mystery (that’s the only one really lacking the lightness and fun I expect in a Heyer); a Chinese shawl saving a girl from the typists’ pool; and an aristocrat giving up his mistress at her behest to save her brother from his wife (a bit convoluted, that one, and not so much of the happy ending). That might be all of them. Might have missed one or two.

The only collection of short stories which Heyer herself curated was of her Regency shorts, in Pistols for Two. She didn’t like her contemporary novels; perhaps that extended to her contemporary shorts, and why she never republished them as a collection. Or perhaps they were simply less popular than the historical ones.

But these are definitely worth a read, especially if you’ve come to the end of her novels.

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