Customer Reviews

The Spencers of Althorp

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Even though this book is long out-of-print and does not cover the more recent history (as in after the book was written), this is still the best history of the family that is currently out there. Check university libraries and large public libraries for a copy. The 3rd Earl (a Whig reformer) was a fascinating man, and his father the 2nd Earl (also politically prominent) was a fascinating man with a difficult wife and controversial sisters (Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Henrietta or Harriet, Countess of Bessborough).

The book touches lightly but deftly on the marriages of earlier and later Spencer daughters who were married off to the family's advantage but not necessarily their personal happiness. Here, you will find not only the sisters of the 2nd Earl, but two earlier Diana Spencers - one the granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Marlborough who was wooed by Frederick Prince of Wales (father of George III) and the other who fled an unhappy marriage with her lover and was consequently ostracized by her brother the Duke. There is also Sarah, Lady Lyttleton (governess to Queen Victoria's children); a Spencer male who became a Roman Catholic priest, and other interesting scions of the family. The book cannot do justice to everything, but it does convey a vivid picture of the earlier Spencers from 1600 to 1900.