|
|
Your Learning Zone - Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
![Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire]()
|
List Price:
Our Price:
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability:
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Unknown Binding
EAN: 9780005550168
Format: Import
ISBN: 0005550165
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Publisher: HarperCollins
Studio: HarperCollins
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: PARTY LIKE STUDIO 54
Comment: This is the damndest book I've ever read! A truly remarkable biography about a truly remarkable person. Georgianna and her posse make Steve Rubell's posse look like pikers. I mean. Running up $6 million in gambling debts! If she were alive today she would be trailed by the paparazzi. Her life reads like a recent Vanity Fair profile.
And how in the world were all the correspondences saved?
So good, I bought Tom Jones for another perspective on 18th century English dissipation.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Mixed reaction
Comment: I have mixed feelings about this book. The author did an expert job researching Georgiana and the times in which she lived. (I believe this book came about as a result of her PhD work on the same subject.) It is chock full of historic and political details - which will delight some but, unfortunately, bore others to tears.
Much of the book is about Georgiana's gambling problem, her subsequent debts (in the millions), the lengths she took to hide them from her family and how she continually borrowed money from her friends. I found the topic of her continuing debt somewhat tedious and would have put the book down early on but because I plan to see the movie, "The Duchess," I wanted to read the book first.
Although compulsive gambling was one of Georgian's characters flaws, you have to give the woman credit because she perservered and many times transcended her flaws in pursuit of her passions - primarily politics.
In the first part of the book, I found all the quoted passages from letters and journals distracting. Sometimes the telling of the story through the letters made the story hard to follow. Georgianna and her best friend, Bess, flitted from man to man and references to "the duke" or to "him" in their letters sometimes left you wondering which duke or which "him" they meant.
The writing style gets better when the author gets to the Regency period because it's a more straightforward narrative and the author doesn't rely so much on letters to tell the story.
I would have loved to have more realistic details about the emotions of the wife and mistress while coexisting in the same house and continuing to have other lovers, but maybe there just wasn't that much information to keep it historically accurate. I resented spending so much time having to read about the two women's other interests in incredible superficial subjects.
All in all - the book has its strengths and its weakness, but I came away thinking the story could have been told better in much less time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book
Comment: I really enjoyed reading this book. It was very well written. I look forward to more books by this author.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire
Comment: I found this book to be beautifully written and extremely well researched. I have read it twice cover to cover.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Georgiana boring or bad writing?
Comment: I am an enthusiastic Anglophile and have read countless biographies about British nobles and royalty by a variety of authors. I hadn't heard about Amanda Foreman or Georgiana until the movie came out in the fall. I saw the movie and obtained the book shortly after.
I tried in vain to struggle through the first 100 pages until finally giving up before reaching page 200. I kept thinking/saying to myself, "it has got to get better, there were so many good reviews! Come on, you love this kind of stuff!"
But sadly, it didn't get better. Whether this is because Georgiana on the page was much less interesting than Georgiana on the screen or because Amanda Foreman writes well but not in an engaging way is hard to say. I lean toward the latter, as I found myself skipping pages at a time filled with anecdotes about Georgiana's peers and in particular, the political situation. I have read books on Kings (Charles II by Antonia Fraser) and even the politically turbulent reigns of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that contained far fewer boring, verbose passages about politics.
Ms. Foreman certainly did her research and I do not argue that the book is very detailed and no doubt thorough. Engaging? Not so much. If you are interested in Georgiana on a cursory level, see the movie and leave the book (which is something hard for me to say as I almost always enjoy the books more than movies!)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
