Elizabeth and Georgiana: The Duke of Devonshire and His Two Duchesses

London: John Murray Publishers Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 2002. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0719560446 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. xiv, 288 pages clean and tight. ANIMATED BY BEAUTY, intelligence and a thirst for knowledge - but for ever at the mercy of her `too feeling heart' - Lady Elizabeth Foster led a life that was dramatic, colourful and riven by crises both personal and political. Born a Hervey, one of the most eccentric families in England, she married young and foolishly. Within five years she was separated from her husband and children, and condemned to poverty and social obscurity. But her meeting with the Duke of Devonshire and his enchanting wife Georgiana changed her life for ever. She became Georgiana's inseparable friend, the Duke's mistress and a member of the Devonshire House Circle, a social and political elite composed of some of the most brilliant figures of their day. She also recorded in her sparkling journals every twist and turn of the Regency crises, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. With unlimited access to the Dormer Archives, the journals and unpublished letters still owned by Lady Elizabeth's descendantJane Dormer, Caroline Chapman tellingly reveals not the false friend and scheming mistress portrayed by previous chronicles of the period but a woman passionately attached to both the Duke and the Duchess, devoted to her children and firm friend of Madame de Stael, Edward Gibbon and many others. Always an ardent European and intrepid traveller, she spent her last years, after her marriage to the Duke and his death, in Rome. There she rapidly achieved eminence in society as a brilliant hostess, patron of the arts and the close friend of one of the century's greatest statesmen, Cardinal Consalvi. .