A life in full, c. 1785

I recall seeing someone with this book when it first came out waaaay back in 1998, but as all the readers I know who typically read this sort of bio deny ever having laid eyes on the book, it is possible that I've been hallucinating about this book for the past eight years. Maybe.

But now I'm quite glad that I happened upon Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. A 200-year dead member of the British aristocracy may seem an odd choice for a modern biography, but Georgiana was a surprisingly modern figure, even for our time. Foreman follows her subject from her marriage at the age of 17 to her death in 1806, at a time when the world of British politics was as much about backroom deals, social backstabbing and sexual intrigue as it was about the proceedings in the House of Commons. At the very center of all this upheaval (and some contemporaries would say the cause of part of it) was Georgiana. She was constantly in the eye of the public, not the least for her controversial manipulations of the Whig party and her savvy use of fashion and celebrity to influence popular opinion. Yet behind her public persona was a woman who suffered from an unending feeling of inadequacy, resulting in a gambling addiction (she racked up debts of $6,000,000), the loss of an illegitimate daughter, and the reliance on a bizarre menage a trois to sustain the appearance of her marriage.

Portions of the book dedicated to the finer points of Whig and British politics are a bit of a slog for the uninitiated, but Foreman recreates the personalities and atmosphere of this world so well that Georgiana sometimes reads like a novel. With revolution, sex and politics the norm in her life, it isn't surprising that many of Georgiana's letters were censored by her prudish Victorian descendents. Yet enough of this remarkable woman's personality comes through to reveal her zeal for life, centuries after it ended.