Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire - Softcover

9780006550167: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
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Sex, intrigue and adultery in the world of high politics and huge wealth in late eighteenth-century England.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was one of the most flamboyant and influential women of the eighteenth century. The great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, she was variously a compulsive gambler, a political savante and operator of the highest order, a drug addict, an adulteress and the darling of the common people.

This authoritative, utterly absorbing book presents a mesmerizing picture of a fascinating world of political and sexual intrigues, grand houses, huge parties, glamour and great wealth – always on the edge of being squandered by the excesses and scandals of individuals.

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Review:
Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century "It Girl". She came from one of England's richest and most landed families, and married into another. She was, beautiful, sensitive and extravagant. Acquainted fairly young with Charles James Fox, her move from parties to Parties led her to become the intimate of ministers and princes, and she canvassed assiduously for the Whig cause, most famously in the Westminster election of 1784. By turns she was caricatured and fawned on by the press, and she provided the inspiration for Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School For Scandal. But, luckily for her biographer, she also had weaknesses that were to taint her life. As gin gripped the masses, so gambling enthralled the aristocracy. By 1784 Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands", and the creditors she acquired dogged her until her death, but the sterility of her marriage meant that she never came close to disclosing the magnitude of her debts. Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that was personal relationships for the aristocratic subculture (Georgiana and the Duke engaged for many years in a ménage à trois with Lady Elizabeth Fraser, who inveigled her way into his bed and her heart). She is, by her own admission, a little in love with her subject, which can lead to occasional lapses of perspective, but generally it adds zest to a narrative built on, rather than burdened by, scholarship, that is at once accessible and learned. An impressive debut, in every sense. --David Vincent
Review:

‘Mesmerizing’
Antonia Fraser, Literary Review

‘Well-written, extensively researched and highly readable... Gripping’
Stella Tillyard, Mail on Sunday

‘An outstanding debut by a young biographer fully in control of her sources, and with an easy and elegant writing style’
Roy Strong, Sunday Times

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  • PublisherHarper Perennial
  • Publication date2004
  • ISBN 10 0006550169
  • ISBN 13 9780006550167
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages496
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780375753831: Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (Living Language Series)

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780375753831
Publisher: Random House Inc, 2001
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  • 9780007285754: The Duchess: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Amanda Foreman

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