Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

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Standard Name: Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish,,, Duchess of
Birth Name: Georgiana Spencer
Styled: Lady Georgiana Spencer
Married Name: Lady Georgiana Cavendish
Titled: Lady Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Nickname: The Rat
An occasional or amateur author during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , wrote in a number of genres: poetry, diaries, travel writings, letters, and possibly two novels. Much of her work remains unpublished and her canon, both in prose and poetry, is far from certain.
Portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, by Thomas Gainsborough, between 1785 and 1787. She stands with her body facing to her left, her face tilted towards the viewer, and her arms crossed, with one hand holding a pink rose. She wears a white gown with a high, ruffled neckline and lace detail around the cuffs, and a large, black, broad-brimmed hat. Her hair is pulled away from her face to flow down her back. Chatsworth.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Performance of text Joanna Baillie
Produced by J. P. Kemble in a version adapted by himself, this performance included an epilogue by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire .
Howells, Coral Ann. Joanna Baillie and Her Circle, 1790-1850. Camden History Society.
Dowd, Maureen A. “’By the Delicate Hand of a Female’: Melodramatic Mania and Joanna Baillie’s Spectacular Tragedies”. European Romantic Review, Vol.
9
, No. 4, pp. 469-00.
490n22
The play was revived by Edmund Kean in 1821, for five nights...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Henrietta Battier
The Protected Fugitives includes poems written from HB 's early teens up to dates close to publication, ranging from the moving (elegies on her dead daughter and son) to the humorous. She writes (at the...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Bonhote
She now intends, for the benefit of her readers, to do something new and to write of life after marriage, since that too has its problems. She aims to be natural, not marvellous. Olivia (after...
Friends, Associates Maria Callcott
In Richmond and elsewhere MC met emigrés fleeing the French Revolution. She also met a number of women who wrote: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , Mary and Agnes Berry , and Anne Damer . In...
Friends, Associates Anne Damer
AD 's wide circle of friends included Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , Lady Melbourne , Joanna Baillie , Sarah Siddons , the Berrysisters , the dramatist Lady Elizabeth Craven (formerly Berkeley, later Margravine of Anspach)
Leisure and Society Anne Damer
AD was often a subject for other artists. Sometime before 1775 Daniel Gardner painted an unusual fancy picture of her, with her friends Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (a particularly frequent sitter on account of her...
politics Anne Damer
AD was a Fox ite Whig, who helped her friend the Duchess of Devonshire in her campaign for Fox in the famous election of May 1784. She later championed Queen Caroline at the time of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Deverell
In a poem about dancing, MD praises the Duchesses of Devonshire and Rutland .
Deverell, Mary. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Printed for the author by J. Rivington, Jun.
1: 79-80
She gives one epistle a kind of doggerel title: Advice to a Rev'rend Cleric, Near his grand climacteric, That...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Lady Elizabeth Foster became the friend of the current Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana , and of the Duke ; very soon the three were inseparable.
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins.
97, 103
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Lady Elizabeth Foster married her long-time lover, the Duke of Devonshire , three years after the death of his first wife, Georgiana , her intimate friend.
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins.
395
Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Editor Gibbs, Vicary, St Catherine Press.
death Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire , died in Rome, eighteen years precisely after the death of her predecessor Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire .
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins.
399
Publishing Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire re-issued her predecessor Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire 's The Passage of the Mountain of Saint Gothard at Paris with her own Sketch of a Descriptive Journey through Switzerland.
Bess's work...
Cultural formation Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Her sexuality was and remains a large part of her reputation. She seems to have begun on her pattern of extramarital affairs while still with her first husband. While on her travels she was constantly...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Bess attached herself sentimentally to both the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire . Georgiana loved her from the first; it is not clear exactly how soon the duke (known in this intimate circle as Canis...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Fielding
Critic Carolyn Woodward has noted (besides this novel's picture of a community of women in Protestant-nunnery style) a general resemblance between its plot and that of The Sylph (probably by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire ), 1778.
Woodward, Carolyn. Email about Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and Sarah Fielding to Isobel Grundy.

Timeline

22 March 1754: A group of Nobles, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants...

Building item

22 March 1754

A group of Nobles, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants met to establish what became the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

1771: In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted,...

Women writers item

1771

In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted, as Girl Reading, his niece Theophila Palmer perusing Richardson 's Clarissa, five novels by women advertised their Clarissa kinship.

1777: Henry Mackenzie published his sentimental...

Writing climate item

1777

Henry Mackenzie published his sentimental novelJulia de Roubigné, whose heroine is poisoned by the jealous husband she has married to please her father.

17 June 1783: Sir Cecil Wray, a maverick independent politician...

National or international item

17 June 1783

Sir Cecil Wray , a maverick independent politician and reformer, presented in the House of Commons a Quaker petition for the abolition of slavery.

5 November 1788-10 March 1789: George III's illness and palpable incapacity...

National or international item

5 November 1788-10 March 1789

George III 's illness and palpable incapacity produced the Regency Crisis: the issue was whether or not power would devolve to the Prince of Wales .

July 1796: The explorer Mungo Park, abandoned and anxious...

Building item

July 1796

The explorer Mungo Park , abandoned and anxious on the banks of the Niger River in what is now Mali, was taken in, housed and fed by African village women, who composed and sang...

24 December 1799: Samuel Taylor Coleridge published in the...

Writing climate item

24 December 1799

Samuel Taylor Coleridge published in the Morning Post his ode in praise of the poetry of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire .

9 June 1819: The library of the late Queen Charlotte was...

Building item

9 June 1819

The library of the late Queen Charlotte was auctioned by Christie's ; it included Jane Austen 's works, plus titles by Catherine Cuthbertson , Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , Christian Isobel Johnstone , Alethea Lewis

Texts

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,. Emma. T. Hookham, 1773.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,. Memorandums of the Face of the Country in Switzerland. Cooper and Graham, 1799.
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. Sketch of a Descriptive Journey through Switzerland; The Passage of the Mountain of Saint Gothard. J. J. Burgdorfer, 1816.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,. The Passage of the Mountain of Saint Gothard. Prosper and Company, 1802.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,. The Sylph. T. Lowndes, 1779.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. The Two Duchesses, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire. Editor Foster, Vere, Blackie and Son; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898.