[Rarebooks] fa: MEMOIRS OF THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH (Elizabeth Craven) WRITTEN BY HERSELF - 1826

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 7. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/3t6zaky8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Elizabeth Craven:] Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach. Written by Herself. London: Henry Colburn, 1826. First edition. Two volumes, 8vo (22 cm), in early/period half calf and marbled boards; viii, 430 pp.; vii, [1], 406 pp.; frontispiece portraits.
Bindings with modest edge-wear, some rubbing and darkening to the spines; offsetting to and from the frontispieces (one with damp-stain at the bottom edge), some very occasional faint spotting to the leaves, else very clean and bright, firmly bound. 

Lady Elizabeth Craven, nee Berkeley (1750-1828), was a playwright, composer, travel writer, friend of Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole, and a notorious subject of late-Georgian scandal. She and her husband, the Earl of Craven, were separated in 1780 and, after several romantic adventures and travels in France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Greece, she became the lover of Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach. On the deaths of their respective spouses in 1791, Elizabeth and Charles Alexander married and eventually settled in England. Though shunned by most of "polite society," including the Margrave's cousin George III, the couple enjoyed a happy and lively existence in Hammersmith, London, until Charles Alexander's death in 1806. Elizabeth died in Naples in 1828.