Author Description

"On 15 April 1776 the House of Lords convened as a jury in Westminster Hall to try the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy. The Hall was transformed into a theater-in-the-round for the four thousand spectators, making the five-day trial a notorious event of that London season. The diarist Anna Larpent, then an unmarried girl of eighteen, was among the crowd. She wrote thirty-eight pages recording her informed observations with immediacy and in vibrant detail. Recently rediscovered at The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, her manuscript is reproduced here in its entirety. The text is introduced and transcribed by Matthew J. Kinservik and illustrated with works from The Lewis Walpole Library."--BOOK JACKET.