Georgette Heyer’s first contemporary novel, Instead of the Thorn was published in 1923, when she was just twenty-one years of age. This book deals with Elizabeth Arden, a naïve teenager who is married to the wealthy and erudite Stephen Ramsay, a writer of some renown, and who discovers that her strict upbringing, her youth, her rampant insecurities and dislike of sex make her unsuited to her new role as a wife.