|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
`we ride or walk every day, visit a good deal, & spend our time
very agreeably' As the daughter of one clergyman and wife of
another, Betsy Reading (later Leathes, then Peach) (1748-1815) knew
everyone from dukes to the destitute, but she was happiest among
the gentry and lower aristocracy, and it was to them that she wrote
her lively letters. Her provincial life of card parties, tea
parties and balls was that of a Jane Austen heroine, and she too
was preoccupied with marriage and money. She also showed pride and
prejudice, sense and sensibility. Betsy and her children were to
experience three elopements, some scandalous court cases and
endless money worries. Sometimes frivolous on the surface, in
private she had to contend with the difficult behaviour of her
parents, husbands and children, with their deaths, and with her own
uncertain mental and physical health. Her family struggled to keep
up their social position in a brutally unequal society, and the
backdrop to much of her adult life was the Napoleonic wars, when
England remained in a state of high tension. Betsy's surviving
diaries and correspondence provide the core of Celia Miller's
spirited account of a life lived to the full, but the author also
sets the events in a broader social and political context. From
Woodstock in Oxfordshire, to Norfolk and Kent (and back to
Norfolk), Betsy travelled, chatted, and always, always wrote. From
those letters and diaries an enthralling picture emerges of a
sometimes exasperating but always likeable woman, and of the
relatives and friends who made up the patchwork of her life. The
illustrations include prints and photos of places Betsy knew, and
approx. 20 line drawings by Jean M. Smith, prepared especially for
the book.
|
You may like...
Morbius
Jared Leto, Matt Smith, …
DVD
R179
Discovery Miles 1 790
|