Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life of Lady Di Beauclerk

by Carola Hicks (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $11.28

  In the style of Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, here is a passionate tale of an 18th-century artist's scandalous life. Lady Diana Spencer was born in 1735, the eldest child of the third Duke of Marlborough. She was expected to follow a traditional path through life: educated in the fashion considered suitable for a girl, and married to a man of the appropriate rank for a duke's daughter. However, Lady Di overturned convention. She left her husband, pursued a secret relationship with Topham Beauclerk, hid the birth of an illegitimate child, was divorced, remarried and eventually had to earn her living by painting. Lady Di became a highly gifted artist who painted portraits, illustrated books and plays, provided designs for Wedgewood's innovative pottery and decorated rooms with murals. Carola Hicks provides a account of her life and the world she inhabited. She sheds light on the whole artistic life of the 18th century and the dramatic consequences of the transgressing of boundaries.