Product Description

When Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, was abducted in Oxford Street in broad daylight in 1786, the whole country was riveted to news of the pursuit. The only daughter of a wealthy coal magnate, Mary Eleanor had led a charmed youth. Precocious and intelligent, she enjoyed a level of education usually reserved for the sons of the aristocracy. Mary was only eleven when her beloved father died, making her the richest heiress in Britain, and she was soon beset by eager suitors. Her marriage, at eighteen, to the beautiful but aloof Earl of Strathmore, was one of the society weddings of the year. With the death of the earl some eight years later, Mary re-entered society with relish and her salons became magnets for leading Enlightenment thinkers - as well as a host of new suitors. Mary soon fell under the spell of a handsome Irish soldier, Andrew Robinson Stoney, but scandalous rumours were quick to spread. Swearing to defend her honour, Mary's gallant hero was mortally wounded in a duel - his dying wish that he might marry Mary. Within hours of the ceremony, he seemed to be in the grip of a miraculous recovery. Wedlock tells the story of one eighteenth-century woman's experience of a brutal marriage, and her fight to regain her liberty and justice. Subjected to appalling violence, deception, kidnap and betrayal, the life of Mary Eleanor Bowes is a remarkable tale of triumph in the face of overwhelming odds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53435 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 392 pages

Review
"The remarkable story of one woman's triumph over years of appalling violence and abuse" (Caroline Jowett DAILY EXPRESS )

"How Mary, with the help of.. a loyal servant, struggled to escape Stoney's clutches is the breathless and inspirational climax of this fine book" (Sarah Vine THE TIMES )

"This splendid book, well researched and richly detailed, is as gripping as any novel" (Michael Arditti DAILY TELEGRAPH )

"mesmerising... entertainingly digressive and rigorously researched" (George Pendle FINANCIAL TIMES )

"Mary's escape, her abduction by Stoney and dramatic rescue are grippingly told" (Marianne Brace THE INDEPENDENT )

"Moore has meticulously constructed an ever more compelling tale" (Lydia Syson THE GUARDIAN )

"Wedlock is the best biography that I have read in a long time. It's gripping, addictive and painstakingly researched" (Andrea Wulf MAIL ON SUNDAY )

"gallops headlong towards an unbelievably tense denouement which any work of Hollywood fiction would struggle to match" (Marc Horne SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )

"brilliantly researched" (Claire Harman SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

"Moore makes a gripping narrative" (Sarah Bakewell SUNDAY TIMES )

"heart-poundingly powerful, evoking a decadent period and the cruelties that underpinned the elegant facade of Georgian society" (SAGA )

"Wendy Moore delivers the full ghastliness with brilliant panache" (Duncan Fallowell DAILY EXPRESS )

"Drawing on such thrilling material and based on close archival research, Moore's elegantly-written book recounts the twists of fate that left a loaded countess hitched to a violent fraudster" (Hannah Greig HISTORY TODAY )

About the Author
Wendy Moore is a writer and journalist. Her work has been published in a range of newspapers and magazines, including the Times and the Sunday Telegraph and has won several awards. Her first book, The Knife Man, was published to great critical acclaim.She lives in South London with her husband Peter, also a journalist, and two children, Sam and Susannah.

Customer Reviews

Fiction has nothing on the true life of Mary Eleanor Bowes
I finished this book as the government's latest initiative to institute a register for people convicted of domestic violence was announced. Rather apposite in view of the subject matter of "Wedlock".

In "Wedlock", Wendy Moore has written a book that, from the first page, engages the reader's attention. Whilst the story of Mary Eleanor Bowes and her infamous second husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, is not new to 21st century readers (a biography appeared in 2006), in Ms Moore's book, the ordeal suffered by Mary Eleanor is brought vividly to life in often agonising detail. Ms Moore's research is impeccable, as the comprehensive notes and bibliography attest to, but instead of a dry recitation of events, she has woven a skilful and balanced narrative. Her sympathies lie firmly with Mary Eleanor but she does not deny that Mary Eleanor had flaws not least that she was not the best judge of male character.

Mary Eleanor was heiress to a huge fortune and, having suffered the loss of her father at an early age, was relatively unguided by any sensible relative as she made her debut in 18th Century society. She was a target for fortune hunters of any class and whilst her first marriage to a pillar of society left her the Countess of Strathmore (and incidentally, the forebear of our present Queen), as a rich young widow, she once again became fair game. Whilst she enjoyed her new found freedom, there was still no-one close to her who could bring sufficient authority to bear to stop her making a disastrous choice of Stoney as her second husband - a man without any redeeming features who was manipulative, plausible and devious and undoubtedly a misogynist. Gulled into thinking that he had sustained mortal injuries whilst fighting a duel to save her honour, she agreed to marry him on his "death bed" - only to rue the day she ever set eyes on him.

For 8 years, she effectually became his prisoner suffering insults and assaults almost daily. When finally, with the assistance of her maid and three other women servants, she escaped his control, she was left without income or home and was still estranged from the children of her first marriage and now from her second as well. Ignored by members of her own family on her escape, she was reduced to accepting charity from her servants and, in fear of her life, lived under an assumed name whilst her lawyer launched the first of the actions to separate her from her husband and regain her income from him.

Her fear of Stoney was well founded as 2 years after she escaped him, in an audacious attempt to bring her back under his control and effectively negate the legal actions she had brought against him, he abducted her. The story of her abduction and the chase across England to liberate her over eight fraught days is told in chapter 11 in a way that evokes the horror of the event to the reader.

Stoney used every available resource to blacken her name and intimidate her and her supporters. He used her own words (obtained under duress) to destroy her reputation. Even when finally committed to prison, he refused to give up and continued to pursue her through the courts, albeit without success. Today, he would probably be judged a vexatious litigant.

Ms Moore guides the modern reader through the effect of the laws and customs of eighteenth century England on women, which dictated that a woman, once married, was subsumed into the person of her husband, unable to own property and, in the few instances where a divorce was obtained, usually separated from any children of the marriage until such time as the children were independent enough to want to know their mother. For women who were in an abusive marriage often the only escape was death. Wendy Moore shows that Mary Eleanor was one of a courageous few women who fought back at the laws and social mores of Georgian England (albeit for personal reasons only) and set precedents that would eventually lead to the wide availability of divorce and finally, to the government's recent announcement.

For Mary Eleanor, whilst she eventually gained some much deserved peace and was happily reconciled with most of her children, she never really fulfilled her early promise and sadly was never to regain her privileged place in Georgian high society. She died at just 51, her health shattered by the abuse she had suffered. In her will, she requested that a statue be erected over her grave - the blindfolded figure of Justice. Sadly this was never done.

This book is enjoyable for so many reasons - the story, the research that Ms Moore has undertaken, the cracking pace of the narrative more usual in a novel and, refreshingly these days, a book that has been carefully proof read to ensure that no "typo's" appear.

The story of Mary Eleanor Bowes would make a splendid TV series or film with its cast of often awful characters (with that of the loathsome Andrew Robinson Stoney akin to a pantomime villain), its duels, abductions, and hair raising chases across England. Were it fiction, one would say that it was unbelievable - sadly it is a true story and probably not an isolated one. Who can tell how many others women were trapped in a marriage without the resources to escape the clutches of their "better" half?

Superb storytelling
Why should we be interested in the marital trails and tribulations of an 18th century society lady? Because Wendy Moore's meticulously researched biography of Mary Eleanor Bowes tells us an enormous amount about the development of attitudes to marriage, to property and the position of women. But much more than that, Wedlock is a superb piece of storytelling which rescues Bowes and her ghastly husband from long forgotten archives and transforms them into living, breathing characters. The climax of this beautifully crafted book is the pursuit of the kidnapped Bowes by her friends and servants through the length and breadth of England.Told at a breakneck pace, you feel yourself to be galloping along behind Bowes' husband and his disreputable cronies, willing the flawed heroine to survive.
Thackeray turned this true story into a novel, Kubrick made it a film - but this is the genuine article and surpasses them all.

What not to marry!
I found the life of Mary, Countess of Strathmore completely fascinating - from such promising beginnings and a privileged background to becoming a prisoner in her own family home, subject a husband who was a violent bully, a cheat and a philanderer (and who then stood for Parliament...!)I almost cheered aloud when she began to escape his clutches! A superb read, full of absorbing historical details.