Lady Charlotte Bury

This is the first biography of Lady Charlotte Bury (1775-1861), a renowned novelist and celebrated beauty who listed Sir Walter Scott and Matthew 'Monk' Lewis among her admirers. Born the youngest daughter of John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll, and his wife Elizabeth, nee Gunning, she married twice for love, gave birth to eleven children, travelled extensively in France, Switzerland and Italy, served as lady-in-waiting to Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales, and published collections of poetry and twenty 'silver-fork' novels. As a former member of the royal court, Bury gained notoriety as the suspected author of the anonymous and highly scandalous Diary Illustrative of the Times of George IV (1838), which has overshadowed her legacy as a female writer. Her fictional characters explore the ways in which perceptions of women in literature and society were undergoing rapid change, a process of which she herself-like her contemporary, Jane Austen-was a catalyst.

By the time of her death, aged 86, Bury was widely considered one of the foremost female novelists of her generation, yet by the turn of the century her work had been largely forgotten. 'Forget Not', a translation of Ne Obliviscaris, was the apt motto of the House of Argyll, of which Lady Charlotte Bury was a daughter.