Elizabeth Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire

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Standard Name: Devonshire, Elizabeth Cavendish,,, Duchess of
Birth Name: Elizabeth Hervey
Styled: Lady Elizabeth Hervey
Married Name: Lady Elizabeth Foster
Married Name: Lady Elizabeth Cavendish
Titled: Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Nickname: Bess
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire , best-known as an aristocrat of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who made herself a centre of sexual scandal, also published her own travel-book, and left rich unpublished diaries and letters, some of which have appeared in print since her death.
Photo of a portrait at Chatsworth of Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1787 (while she was Lady Elizabeth Foster, during her first marriage). She is shown from the waist up, at a slight three quarter turn. She is wearing a high-waisted lacy white dress with large, billowing collar and a dark green sash. Her is fashionably frizzed and lightly powdered to produce a dark grey colour.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire 's life was complicated by her relationship with Lady Elizabeth Foster : a relationship which involved her husband as well, since Bess shared him during Georgiana's life and married him after...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Caroline Lamb
When LCL 's almost-cousin Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St Jules (illegitimate daughter of Lady Elizabeth Foster, later Duchess of Devonshire ) married William Lamb's brother George , the two sisters-in-law began to be regarded by everybody...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
While in Italy, she met with Volta (who invented the voltaic battery) in Milan, and had dinner with the Countess of Albany , widow of Bonnie Prince Charlie (who had left him after eight years...
Friends, Associates Mary Berry
As was standard for such tours they established contact to varying degrees with eminent people: they were presented to the Pope at Rome and to Queen Maria Carolina at Naples. (In the same manner, on...
Friends, Associates Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Frances Burney met and recorded her conflicted impressions of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , and her family, and of Lady Elizabeth Foster .
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins, 1998.
256-60
Material Conditions of Writing Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
The first idea for this book had come to her in Italy, when she looked at Rosa's pictures in galleries, and learned that he had also been a satirist of the established political order. She...
names Elizabeth Hervey
  • BirthName: Elizabeth Marsh
  • Married: Harvie; Hervey
  • Pseudonym: The Author of Melissa and Marcia
    Two contemporaries of this Elizabeth Hervey (relations of her second husband) bore the same name. Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire , was...
Occupation Anne Damer
AD was not only a diarist, novelist, and amateur actress: she became, from the 1780s, a successful and even famous sculptor. Andrew Elfenbein notes the application to her of such terms as female genius and...
Publishing Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
In 1816 there appeared at Paris a sumptuous fifty-copy edition of this poem, issued by Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire together with her own Sketch of a Descriptive Journey through Switzerland. This joint volume included...
Publishing Ann Yearsley
As early as March-April 1788 AY 's backers Eliza Dawson and Wilmer Gossip were suggesting that a play would offer a better chance of financial return than poetry. Yearsley drafted her lost play Bawdin at...
Textual Production Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Among Georgiana's letters, those to Lady Elizabeth Foster (later Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire ) have received most attention; those to her mother are equally deserving of it. She addresses Lady Elizabeth in the language of...
Textual Production Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , wrote all kinds of occasional poetry: for instance, a hymn allegedly composed while in labour with her second child to be born alive;
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins, 1998.
169
some doggerel and disenchanted lines on...
Textual Production Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
At her death Georgiana left all her voluminous letters and papers to the care of Lady Elizabeth Foster . Lady Elizabeth no doubt took decisions as to what to save and what to destroy that...
Textual Production Ann Yearsley
During the time she was preparing these poems for publication, Yearsley equipped herself with a new team of patrons: Wilmer Gossip , a Yorkshire landowner with poor health, who was given to spending time at...

Timeline

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Texts

Devonshire, Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of. Anecdotes and Biographical Sketches. 1863.
Devonshire, Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of, and Germaine de Staël. Le plus beau de toutes les fêtes. Editor Pange, Victor de, Klincksieck, 1980.
Devonshire, Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of, 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.
Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of, 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.