This is what good writing looks like

I happen to be extremely fond of Georgette Heyer who, in the mid-20th Century, picked up Jane Austen’s mantle.  Here is a lovely character description she wrote about the romantic lead in her book Black Sheep:

He was not a rebel.  Rebels fought against the trammels of convention, and burned to rectify what they saw to be evil in the shibboleths of an elder generation, but Miles Calverleigh was not of their number.  No wish to reform the world inspired him, nor the smallest desire to convert others to his own way of thinking.  He accepted, out of a vast and perhaps idle tolerance, the rules laid down by a civilised society, and, when he transgressed these, accepted also, and with unshaken good-humour, society’s revenge on him.  Neither the zeal of a reformer, nor the rancour of one bitterly punished for the sins of his youth, awoke a spark of resentment in his breast.  He did not defy convention:  when it did not interfere with whatever line of conduct he meant to pursue he conformed to it; and when it did he ignored it, affably conceding to his critics their right to censure him, if they felt so inclined, and caring neither for their praise nor their blame.

Miles is a hero Heyer likes.  Here is what she has to say about an amiable but shallow society woman who hosts the eponymous heroine in Arabella:

She expected nothing but pleasure from Arabella’s visit, and although she knew that in launching the girl into society she was behaving in a very handsome way, she never dwelled on the reflection, except once or twice a day in the privacy of her dressing-room, and then not in any grudging spirit, but merely for the gratifying sensation it gave her of being a benevolent person.

If you like graceful writing, social satire and humor, and you’re willing to have a bit of romance on the side, I can’t recommend Georgette Heyer highly enough.