Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

Rating:
Summary: AMAZING
Review: Amanda Foreman is a star. She has written a perfect biography of a woman whose story captures the spirit of an age.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in ages. I totally loved the way Ms Foreman manages to make the period come alive and it reads like a modern story with a completely authentic old feel. I'd much rather read this lively, energetic and amusing writing than the strangely successful Angelas Ashes

Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: Georgiana's complicated relationship with the media lives on
Review: After 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire' won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography, the English media endlessly speculated about the tragic Spencer gene. Everyone compared Georgiana's glamorous public persona and tortured private life with that of her descendant's, Princess Diana. The other frequently asked question was: Did Georgiana have an ongoing love-affair with her husband's mistress, Lady Elizabeth Foster? I would like to put the record straight for the US publication. First, I believe that history throws up uncanny parallels all the time, and the comparisons between Georgiana and Diana are mere coincidence and nothing more. While it's true that both women married men much older than themselves, that both suffered from bullimia, and both endured loveless marriages while enjoying public adoration, the parallels end there. Georgiana was a highly educated and cultured woman and an outstanding political operator in the ruthless world of eighteenth-century politics. Her public achievements, and personal disasters, were very much of her own making. What makes her a compelling figure today is the problems she faced and how she fought them. As for the lesbianism, I believe that the real point about Georgiana's and Elizabeth's relationship is not if and when they slept together, but whether or not their mutual obsession threatened to destroy each other. I have made a few changes to the US edition, but only to streamline some of the descriptions of eighteenth-century politics. The actress Fiona Shaw has recorded an audio version of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult Read
Review: With all the "sexy" things that happened to the subject, this could have been much more interesting. Perhaps the author was showing restraint in not ascribing perceived emotions, reactions, etc. Foreman's research is amazing and she deserves credit for her hard work. However, the book is somewhat dry and hard to follow; I was skimming it toward the end.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating portrayal of a spirited woman
Review: Foreman really draws the reader into the interesting life of Georgiana, one of the most influential women in 18thC society. This is a very well-written portrait and makes for great reading. It contained a bit more about the politics of the time than is of interest to me, but for those interested in such things I imagine all of that was entirely riveting. I was most interested in Georgiana the woman and what motivated her, and here Foreman did not disappoint. An excellent biography and an eye-opening look in to the 18th Century.

Rating:
Summary: Another Brilliant, if Histrionic, Spencer Girl
Review: The selling point of Amanda Foreman's hugely successful "Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire" was that she hailed from the same family as Princess Diana, and that she too was beautiful, blonde and bulimic. This connection probably gave Foreman an early boost in the book sales department, but what clinched this book's bestseller status was the compelling narrative of Georgiana's life: born into one of England's most ancient and preeminent landed families, she was then married off into one of its richest: to this day, the Cavendishes (i.e, the Dukes of Devonshire) overshadow virtually all but the Royal Family in terms of inherited wealth. Georgiana, however, is a perfect specimen of the educated woman in the Age of Reason: she dabbled in politics, geology, literature gambling, adultery and Continental travel - visiting Gibbon in Geneva and then becoming fast friends with Marie Antoinette. High points of her political achievements include a political alliance with Charles James Fox, and a masterful electoral campaign, on his behalf, for the seat of Westminster. The sadder aspects of her life can be found in her unstable relationship with her own husband, her doomed relationships with other men, a strange love triangle with her live-in friend Elizabeth and a series of health crises that robbed her of her looks. One of the best biographies of the late 18th century.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was really looking forward to this book. The reviews I had read of this book made Georgiana out to to be sexually risque and controversial. Either the author didn't go into enough detail, or the reviewers were reading between the lines. Actually, the real controversy comes in some of the well-blacked-out sections of Georgiana's correspondance. The letters written from and to Georgiana made me long for a return to letter writing in this computer age we live in. Georgiana definitely was an interesting individual. She had a friendship with Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution (rumored to be lesbian in nature). A color, Devonshire brown, was created by Georgiana. I also fell in love with Georgiana's wardrobe. Georgiana seems to be a Scarlett O'Hara of world history. However, I was very disappointed at the lack of editorial work on the novel. I've never read a book before that I wanted to send back to the author with corrections (especially for comma problems). I skimmed the last part of the book because it became rather dry and boring.