Skip to main content
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England

  • Book
  • © 2007

Overview

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (14 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book tells the story of the bitter feud between the Duchess of Kingston and the actor, Samuel Foote, which resulted in a pair of scandalous trials in London in the revolutionary year of 1776. Set against the backdrop of the American Revolution, the duchess's state trial for bigamy and Foote's criminal trial for attempted sodomy engrossed the attention of Londoners, including George III, Parliament, and the nobility. Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity offers specialists and general readers a meticulously researched and dramatic narrative that relates the fortunes and misfortunes of its protagonists and exposes the social and legal hypocrisies about love, sex, and marriage in the age of George III.

Reviews

"This book offers an interesting, highly readable, in-depth and complete story of the context and events leading up to the trial of the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy. It benefits from impressive archival scholarship and it brings together many different vaguely familiar events in the late eighteenth century-the Kingston trial, the Foote scandal, the transformation in the meaning of marriage-and shows in considerable and surprising detail their interconnections. This book captures a significant set of cultural events and will certainly have an impact of the study of the cultural politics of the late 18th century." - Laura Rosenthal, Professor of English, University of Maryland

About the author

MATTHEW J. KINSERVIK is Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware, USA.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us