The Duchess [Paperback]

Amanda Foreman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 19, 2008

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Now a major motion picture starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes

Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth duke of Devonshire, one of England’s richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time. But Georgiana’s public success concealed an unhappy marriage, a gambling addiction, drinking, drug-taking, and rampant love affairs with the leading politicians of the day. With penetrating insight, Amanda Foreman reveals a fascinating woman whose struggle against her own weaknesses, whose great beauty and flamboyance, and whose determination to play a part in the affairs of the world make her a vibrant, astonishingly contemporary figure.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century It Girl. She came from one of England's richest and most landed families (the late Princess Diana was a Spencer too) and married into another. She was beautiful, sensitive, and extravagant--drugs, drink, high-profile love affairs, and even gambling counted among her favorite leisure-time activities. Nonetheless, she quickly moved from a world dominated by social parties to one focused on political parties. The duchess was an 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 the character of Lady Teazle in Richard Sheridan's famous play The School for Scandal. But her weaknesses marked the last part of her life. By 1784, for one, Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands," and her creditors dogged her until her death.

Biographer Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that surrounded the personal relationships of 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 the duke's bed and the duchess's heart). Foreman 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, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

HShe was the most prominent British woman of her day. Whatever she wore became instantly fashionable, and her parties were the ones to attend. Royals, aristocrats and politicians sought her opinion, for she was as influential as she was beautiful. Princess Diana? No, her great-great-great-great-aunt, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806). A bestseller in the U.K. and the winner of the 1999 Whitbread Prize for Best Biography, Foreman's debut is captivating not just because of Georgiana--whose insecurity, demented love life and gambling addiction made her personal life even more dismal than Diana's--but also because Foreman's portrayal of high society in late-18th-century Britain and France is so remarkably vivid. Foreman gives readers the aristocracy fighting for control over Parliament, King George slowly losing his mind, his love-struck son ill-prepared to take the throne, and more bed-hopping than on a TV soap opera. Georgiana, who bore an out-of-wedlock child with politician Charles Grey, knew that her best friend was her husband's mistress, but that was the least of her problems. Prone to drinking, drug-taking and eating disorders, she also racked up gambling debts equal to $6 million in today's dollars. Foreman's combination of exhaustive research and storytelling skill make Georgiana's story at once lurid, sensational and touching. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812979699
• ISBN-13: 978-0812979695
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Amanda Foreman is the author of the award-winning best seller, 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire' (HarperCollins UK; Random House US), and 'A World on Fire: A Epic History of Two Nations Divided' (Allen Lane UK; Random House US). She lives in New York with her husband and five children.

She is the daughter of Carl Foreman, the Oscar-winning screen writer of many film classics including The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone.

Amanda was born in London, brought up in Los Angeles, and educated in England. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. She received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.

'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire' was a number one best seller in England, and best seller for many weeks in the United States. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Turkish, Korean and Mandarin Chinese. The book was nominated for several awards and won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography in 1999. It has inspired a television documentary, a radio play starring Dame Judi Dench; and a movie, titled 'The Duchess', starring Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes.

In addition to regularly writing and reviewing for newspapers and magazines, Amanda Foreman has also served on a number of juries including The Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Prize and the National Book Awards.

'A World on Fire' has been optioned by BBC Worldwide.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

206 of 211 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book You Want to Read Again and Again January 13, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I bought this book because it had such a glowing review in the New Yorker, but frankly I was a little dubious about its obscure subject. However, once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. Think money, sex, adultery, lesbianism, aristocracy, drug addiction, gambling, politics, scandals, betrayals, blackmail, fashion, theater, and the French Revolution, and you have just some of the potent elements in this book. Foreman writes with great clarity and verve. The book reads more like a novel than a work of history. And yet it is full of fascinating insights and historical information. Georgiana seems more like a modern woman with thoroughly modern neuroses than an eighteenth-century character. I couldn't help but root for her all the way along. The evil Bess, on the other hand, is a character straight from the movie Single White Female - a classic evil best friend who cannot completely disguise her intentions. I recommend this book to all readers.

156 of 159 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read January 10, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Georgianna deserves to find an American audience as proportionately big as its British audience. Georgiana was a smash over there in England, a country fond of behind-the-scenes stories of aristocratic ladies in the past. (And in the present, too: much has been made of the connections between the Duchess of Devonshire and her descendent, Diana, Princess of Wales.) Yet Amanda Foreman's Georgiana is much more than one of those ersatz popular biographies full of pillow talk and emotions that result more from the biographer's imagination than real research. The book is written in an unpretentious, straightforward style that values clarity above everything. You don't have to be a Masterpiece-Theater-watching anglophile to appreciate its glamour, wit, and intrigue, and you don't have to be a professional historian to grasp its many provocative implications about history and the birth of mass political campaigning. Amanda Foreman must thank heaven every day that such a brilliant subject came her way, and she serves it well. Still, it would be hard to write an uninteresting book about the Duchess of Devonshire. She is a wonderfully paradoxical figure whose meaning seductively eludes the reader's grasp: was she a dilettante or a genuine, energetic talent frustrated by the sexism of her time? Was she merely acting out of the privilege of her class (really, she was above class) or was she genuinely driven ? The ladies of Stella Tillyard's Aristocrats come across as pampered pawns who infrequently lucked into a little free will. Foreman's Georgiana, in contrast, proves that at least one late-18th-century Englishwoman was capable of acting upon her will-even if she made more than one life-altering whopper of a bad decision.... Foreman clearly loves her subject, but she does not leave out the flaws and weaknesses in Georgianna's character--all her indulgence, dishonesy, and self-interestedness are on display here. Still, one of Georgianna's greatest charms was learning from her mistakes, and thus her life-narrative has the arc of a good novel. One problem: it's hard for the non-historian to judge Foreman's claim that the duchess's political success represented a general involvement of women in politics of the time greater than is usually acknowledged. What woman other than Georgiana, so unlike anyone else, enjoyed her kind of power and how many were so advantageously poised, by birth and marriage, to find or create that power? Still, Georgianna's story, in Foreman's skillful telling of it, points to the truth of her claim that "the propensity of women's historians to ignore high politics, and of political historians to ignore women, has resulted in a profound misunderstanding of one of the most sexually integrated periods of British history." Read more ›

126 of 129 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More History This Good And Reading Of Fiction Will Decline March 9, 2000

By taking a rest HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

That this book was The Whitbread Award Winner, and a tremendous success in The Duchess Of Devonshire's own country, is no surprise. However as an avid reader of History I was pleasantly surprised at the book's popularity here.

This book was published when the Authoress Foreman was 30 years old, and was produced while she was even younger. To me this makes this Biography of Georgiana all the more impressive, as it can, and will stand with historical works by other writers twice her age and more.

I also believe Ms. Foreman's youth allowed her to bring The Duchess to us as her peer in age, which allowed more objectivity, and a candid portrayal that was brutally honest but never derogatory for it's own sake. That this is the first work of Ms. Foreman's is simply amazing.

History has great moments, but even the most interesting periods of time, or the life of one extraordinary life can be numbing to read. The Biographies go on forever in tedious detail that leaves the reader exhausted. Ms. Foreman writes what is necessary, she uses the space she needs, and the result is a remarkable amount of information related, in an efficient manner. Not only do we learn about The Duchess, for additionally Ms. Foreman fills her story with all manner of events surrounding the Duchess and Europe at large, to convey even more information.

The life of The Duchess must be read to be appreciated. This woman filled her relatively short life with more accomplishments, and amassed more influence, that today her life is as enjoyable and impressive to experience as a reader, as it must have been exciting to witness 200 years ago.

The word Renaissance is used to describe an individual of multiple talents at which they excel. The word has no more appropriate person to attach itself to.... The Duchess, was there, did everything, created and set the tenor of society, and did it all to the absolute extreme. She was not perfect, but she was remarkable. Her exploits of 2 centuries ago make those of today's public figures rather pale.

An excellent read, a remarkable debut, and hopefully the first in a string of work that Ms. Foreman will relate. Read more ›

97 of 100 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Woman In The Eighteenth Century August 25, 2008

By John D. Cofield TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"The Duchess" is the movie tie in version of Amanda Foreman's excellent 1998 biography "Georgiana". Except for the cover depicting Keira Knightley as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, it is essentially the same book.

Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was born in the eighteenth century and died in the early nineteenth century, but her life was very modern in many ways. She was an open activist at a time when women were supposed to stay behind the scenes, a bold and flamboyant hostess who used her social prestige to advance her political agenda, and a beautiful but ultimately self-destructive woman whose emotions helped shape British history.

Georgiana was born into one wealthy and powerful aristocratic family and married into an even wealthier and more powerful one. The Cavendishes were bastions of the Whig oligarchy, which governed Britain almost continuously through the eighteenth century until the 1760s, when King George III forced them out of power. In opposition the Whigs became the progressives or liberals of the day, calling for curbs on the King's powers, protection for the liberties of the people, and for progress and social reform (with the ultimate aim of regaining power for themselves, of course). Georgiana was married to the Duke of Devonshire, who was retiring where she was outgoing, far more interested in living a quiet life with various mistresses than in helping to advance the Whig cause. Georgiana, frustrated with a husband who did not appreciate her, threw herself into politics, becoming a friend of Whig leaders like Charles James Fox and campaigning openly for him and others.

Georgiana's private life was complicated.... She and her husband were involved in a years long menage a trois with Lady Elizabeth Foster, who was simultaneously Georgiana's best friend and the Duke's mistress and mother of his illegitimate children. Georgiana was addicted to gambling and lost enormous sums which she feared to reveal to the Duke. Eventually Georgiana herself had a love affair which nearly caused her marriage to end and forced her temporarily out of sight. Although she returned to political life after some years, her health broke down and her influence remained diminished.

Amanda Foreman has produced a work of great scholarship which reads like a novel. Georgiana's life is so fascinating that I've read this biography several times just to see what she would get up to next and how she would get out of one scrape after another. Foreman makes the good point that Georgiana epitomized many women of the eighteenth century, who were far more active and involved in politics than is generally supposed, as well as being a harbinger of the kind of power base to which women in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries still aspire. Read more ›