ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

In Hardy's novel Return of the Native, we find an extended description of the anti-heroine Eustacia Vye that veers between rhapsody and ominous warning.                       CHAPTER VII.                       QUEEN OF NIGHT. EUSTACIA VYE was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passion there is and instincts which make a faultless goddess, that is, those which make not quite a faultless woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captiou...

   This beautifully written and superbly atmospheric novel, by Lydie Perreau, tells the curious story behind the Wallace Collection, the art museum in central London. It depicts life in Regency England and 19th-century France with an exquisite eye for detail. The complicated family history begins in 1770 with the birth in London of Maria Emilia Fagnani. The daughter of a former dancer, the Italian Marchesa Fagnani (but not of the Marchese) she was recognised by her natural father, the Duke of Queensbury, who allowed his friend, the MP George Selwyn, to adopt her in all but name. He adored her, cossetted her, educated her and eventually left her his considerable fortune. Brought out in society, she met Francis Seymour-Conway, the brilliant and wayward heir of the rich Marquess of Hertford. Francis married her despite his father's opposition. Her illegitimate birth was a social handicap but over men she always exerted an irresistible charm and fascination. She became in due cour...

    In the ODNB entry for Elizabeth Craven, written by Katherine Turner, we find the assertion that the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu written in the early 18th century,  Letters of Lady M--y W-----y M--------e Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, offer a "favourable" account of Turkey, unlike Craven's later travelogue A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople, published in 1789.    Turner's essay "From Classical to Imperial: Changing Visions of Turkey in the Eighteenth Century" in Stephen H. Clarke, ed,  Travel Writing and Empire  (Zed books, 1999), also states that she offers an "attractive vision of Turkey" and that her letters are "highly favourable". The essay presents Craven's travelogue as the antithesis of Montagu's, and insists that Craven is far more critical.     The opinion that Montagu is favourable towards the Turkish empire is undoubtedly meant to be a favourable judgement in itself, i...

The Lost Books of Jane Austen is the title of a book by an American, Janine Barchas. How exciting it sounds! What are these lost books of Jane Austen, and is she about to unveil some undiscovered, unpublished manuscripts to the world? A couple of years ago a book that is possibly an unknown early work by Austen was reprinted: Two Girls of Eighteen, edited by P.J. Allen.    Sadly, there are no such revelations in Barchas's book. The title merely refers to the many different editions of Austen's novels which have appeared over the two centuries since she wrote them, and which Barchas apparently collects.    This is an amusing hobby if you have got the space, and Barchas reproduces countless cover designs and title pages in different styles, typefaces and formats, with or without illustrations, according to shifting tastes, and the sort of readership the edition was aimed at. Some are meant to impress, others to lure the reader with promises of excitement or gooey rom...