Product Description

Sisters Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox were great-grandchildren of Charles II, and their extraordinary lives spanned the period from 1740 to 1832. Caroline eloped with an ambitious politician, Henry Fox; her son, Charles James Fox, was the most celebrated opposition politician of his century. Emily first married the senior peer of Ireland, but after having 19 children she scandalized society by marrying their humble Scottish tutor. Louisa and Sarah led equally tumultuous lives. Underlying the drama of the Lennox sisters, which is related in this biography, is a story of everyday life. Thousands of letters, scores of pictures (many of them reproduced in the book), diaries and household accounts, show how they lived their lives both practically and emotionally. They wrote about love, marriage, politics, books, scandals, food, clothes, pregnancy and childbirth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62788 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Alive with the details of upper-class life in the 1700s, and sparkling with extracts from the letters of Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox and their offspring, Aristocrats: The Illustrated Companion to the Television Series takes the reader on a Grand Tour of their 18th-century experience. Stella Tillyard's completely new text (the series Aristocrats is based on her highly acclaimed book of the same name), breathes intelligence and accessibility. Divided into themed chapters: Beginnings and Marriages; Town Life; Country Life; Travel and Endings, Aristocrats is gorgeously illustrated with informatively captioned paintings, photos of artefacts and stills from the television series. Helpfully, the book kicks off with a Dramatis Personae section, which explains who everyone is, tells us how they relate to each other, what they were like and fits them snugly into their context like the elegant, idiosyncratic pieces of a lavish three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, Tillyard's affectionately vivid prose combines with the stunning illustrations to recreate the opulence in which the Lennox sisters lived, loved, married, took lovers, raised children, survived scandals, played at architecture and design, and lived high politics.

A book which combines gossip, art and history to terrific effect. Buy it even if you've read Tillyard's original book. Actually--buy two copies. Keep one and give one to someone you love as a present. --Lisa Gee

Customer Reviews

Utterly fascinating
This is one of my favourite historical books. The author succeeds in bringing each of the sisters to life, you really feel you know and can relate to them personally although they lived so long ago and had a way of life which many could not relate now. She has a talent for showing how figures from the past had the same concerns and fears as we have today, they may have had money and privilege, but still were helpless in the face of infant mortality and illness. Since reading this book, I have become interested in learning about other women in history but none compare to Tillyard's perfect blend of human interest, historical fact and writing style. I highly recommend it.

engaging, informative, evocative and entertaining
This is a very well-researched account of the lives of the four eldest Lennox sisters, who between them survived for almost a century at a time of great change in both Britain and Europe generally. Stella Tillyard draws together the correspondence of the sisters, their friends and relations, to build up a picture of their lives within the context of the major events of the time. The narrative races along, with frequent reference to the many photographs and paintings which appear in the book. This assists the visualisation of the characters who appear and of the locations in which they lived. I read the book while the recent BBC adaptation was being shown and was charmed to find that the script had relied heavily not so much on the book but on the text of the letters. The characters are not perfect, or dry and dusty. They are emotional, wilful, argumentative and frequently very badly-behaved, but they are the more engaging for having their flaws examined as closely as their merits. I look forward to reading more by the same author, and more about the 18th century. Even if you've never read anything about Georgian London or Ireland, you will find much to enjoy in this book, and it may lead you to discover more about the period generally.

History at its best
An amazingly insightful book into the lives of women in the eighteenth century. Difficult to put down and always fun to read again. For about a year I have considered it my bedtime book, to read when I want something interesting and descriptive. The careful detailing that Stella Tillyard pays to every bit of evidence at her disposal leaves no questions unanswered and the amount of research at the back of the book just amazes me as to how committed she was to her research and how committed the Lennox sisters were to each other. :)