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

Download or read book Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England written by M. Kinservik and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-05-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.