- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd; New edition edition (1 April 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099429357
- ISBN-13: 978-0099429357
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 859,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Elizabeth
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Product Description
Sunday Times Culture
'Gervat’s lively account provides a sympathetic portrait of the duchess and is illuminating about the period.'
Product Description
Elizabeth Chudleigh was one of the eighteenth century's most colourful characters. Born into impoverished gentility, her beauty, wit and vitality soon earned her a place at the centre of court life. When she married the Duke of Kingston in 1769, she had reached the highest rung of the ladder. But, Elizabeth was carrying a dark secret. In 1744, she had secretly married a naval lieutenant called Augustus Hervey, and after the Duke's death her first marriage was discovered. Bigamy fever swept London society and, in a very public trial, Elizabeth was found guilty. But her strength of character ensured that, even when her friends deserted her, her courage and zest for life did not. In an engaging history of this strong and wilful woman, Gervat shows there was far more to Elizabeth than the caricature villian her contemporaries made her out to be.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The bigamous Duchess,
By
This review is from: Elizabeth: The Scandalous Life of an Eighteenth-Century Duchess (Paperback)
This is a thorough biography of Elizabeth Chutleigh, detailing her long life with a lot of quotes from her own letters. The book's cover names her "beauty, wit, vitality" and "zest for life", but, throughout the book, Elizabeth doesn't really come to life. As Miss Chutleigh, she received marriage proposals from several Dukes, so she must have been a vivacious lady, but somehow Gervat has managed to make her somewhat boring.
Still, Elizabeth's life was an interesting one. For years, she was a maid of honour to George III's mother. She secretly married lustful Augustus Hervey, younger son of the Earl of Bristol, but they didn't see much of each other and grew apart. In later life, she married her great love the Duke of Kingston. After his death, she was charged with bigamy and became a social pariah among the British. Stubbornly sticking to her title of Duchess, she traveled all around Europe and became acquainted with the Dowager Electress of Saxony and Catherine the Great of Russia.
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