When her uncle announces her betrothal to his crony, the odious Roland Otton, she is very upset. Then she finds a chance for rescue from an unexpected source when she stumbles upon her uncle and Otton torturing a fugitive Jacobite--who Penelope realizes is her childhood friend Quentin Chandler. Desperate to save both Quentin and herself from the evil pair, she plans an escape that leads to a breathtaking journey across England.

    . . . An exhilarating book."—John Barrell, London Review of Books

    Mary Delany, one of the most remarkable personalities of the eighteenth century. Her "paper mosaicks," beautiful flowers made with hundreds of pieces of colored paper, and put together, as Horace Walpole wrote, "with a precision and truth unparalleled," were the crowning achievement of her long and creative life. Indeed, so accurate were they, that the great botanist Sir Joseph Banks said that he could identify the plant species with certainty from her work. Amazingly, she was 72 before she embarked on the 1000 flower collages, but she had already made a name with her exquisite works of embroidery, decorative shellwork, landscape sketches, and portraits. Through a study of Mrs. Delany's correspondence, spanning her eventful life, Ruth Hayden recaptures the atmosphere of privileged society in eighteenth-century England. Mrs. Delany's lively and perceptive letters to her sister Anne and her niece Mary reveal her often strong views on the events of the period and the life of her circle. Mention of luminaries of social, political, and artistic life enliven her correspondence. She was a friend of Handel and a correspondent of Swift. Her friendship with the Duchess of Portland brought her into contact with some of the greatest botanical artists and botanists of the time. She became a much-loved friend of George III and Queen Charlotte, who took great interest in her work. Since the first publication of this book in England in 1980, Ruth Hayden has discovered much further material relating to Mrs. Delany, which is incorporated in this new edition. The author has made a complete list of all the known paper collages with botanical details. New color illustrations of the flowers reveal the astonishing complexity of the artist's work.

    

    

    

    Its thorough scholarship does not in the least impede, but rather facilitates, its readability. It is masterly without being didactic.No historical figure of eighteenth-century England has been more grossly misrepresented than the inventor of our favorite fast food. The stereotype is well known: an unscrupulous man of pleasure whose mistress, a courtesan, was murdered on the steps of the Admiralty, inside which her lover was carelessly mismanaging the War of American Independence.It is refreshing to read a biography that explodes this long-accepted view. Martha Ray was not a courtesan but rather the Joan Sutherland of her day, whose rendering of "I know that my Redeemer liveth" was admired by the most discriminating critics. It was, appropriately, outside Covent Garden after attending a performance (not outside the Admiralty) that she was murdered by an unhinged admirer; she had lived for many years with and had borne children to John, fourth Earl of Sandwich. As to his mismanagement of naval affairs, Nicholas Rodger, the outstanding historian of the eighteenth-century navy, demonstrates in this brilliant and extremely readable book that as First Lord of the Admiralty he was in a class by himself.This was by no means his only distinction. As a diplomat he displayed extraordinary powers and won from foreign statesman the admiration and trust that his own countrymen then and subsequently have largely denied him. As a parliamentary manager of the constituencies that he was in a position to influence, he shared an energy, skill and wonderful tact in handling all sorts and conditions of men - qualities that were acknowledged and praised by his most unrelenting denigrators. As a young man he had been an adventurous traveler with a title to a place in the history of Greek epigraphy. His lifelong passion for music, especially in championing and reviving the then-unfashionable oratorios of Handel, has given him, in the present biographer's opinion, his nearest connection to the life of our own time.For it is the special pleasure of this absorbing book that though it is written by one of England's foremost naval historians, it is not in the least restricted to the dockyards and quarterdecks of the Georgian navy. The political analysis is subtle, original, and well-argued. The intellectual and artistic background is part of a strikingly new view of the tall, lounging figure that surveys us from Gainsborough's great portrait now in the Maritime Museum. Above all, the human quality of a man whose domestic life was blighted by the madness of a dearly loved wife is brought before us.