Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry

Standard Name: Coventry, Maria Gunning,,, Countess of
Used Form: Lady Coventry

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Gunning
The beautiful Gunning sisters (later Countess of Coventry , and successively Duchess of Hamilton and of Argyll ) were EG 's aunts. Lady Coventry, however, had died before Elizabeth was born.
Literary Setting Georgette Heyer
With this first novel Heyer established the elements that were to be the staple of her oeuvre: a swashbuckling hero, here an earl playing at being a highwayman (Jack Carstares, otherwise Earl of Wyncham); a...

Timeline

Summer1751
The Gunning sisters arrived in London from Ireland, and created a sensation with their beauty: Maria was aged around seventeen and Elizabeth was a year younger.
30 September 1760
Lady Coventry (formerly the beautiful Maria Gunning) died, allegedly of the effects of white lead cosmetics.
10 March 1768
Lord Bolingbroke divorced his wife, the former Lady Diana Spencer , for her adultery with Topham Beauclerk , though his own infidelities were well known in society.