The Duchess Countess: The Woman Who Scandalized A Nation, by Catherine Ostler
Catherine Ostler's biography of Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, offers a sympathetic view of a woman at the centre of a Georgian scandal. Prosecuted for bigamy, she had to stand trial in the House of Lords in 1776, have her name bandied about in newspapers and made the subject of malicious gossip - all because she had secretly married one man, and not confessed it before, 25 years later, marrying another. Many other high-ranking women were subjected to such orgies of public scandal in this period, including the Countess of Grosvenor, Lady Worsley and of course Elizabeth Craven. Divorces were always brought by husbands on grounds of the woman's adultery and provided an opportunity for the public to revel in voyeuristic, self-righteous gossip and prurient tittle-tattle, with a strong misogynistic drift. Bigamy cases were rarer, but of a similar nature. The last and greatest of these scandals was the divorce trial of Queen Caroline in 1820. The Kingston case wa