Author Description

This work talks about the the life and times of Henrietta Luxborough, eighteenth-century aristocrat, gardener and society exile. Henrietta St John was born on St Swithun's Day in 1699 into a world of wealth, privilege and seeming security. Beloved sister of rake and statesman, Viscount Bolingbroke, she grew up in Hogarthian London and Wiltshire, her ancestral home, into a headstrong woman of poetry and letters- Pope, Swift and Gay were amongst her acquaintance. Yet with more wit and intelligence than was good for a high-ranking woman of her time and a wild mane of dark curly hair, Henrietta was not the easiest of marriage propositions. She succumbed at twenty-seven, with her infatuation for the son of the infamous and exiled South Sea Company chief cashier. Soon afterwards, she was accused by her pompous husband of infidelity with a young poet, and sent into the country to moulder and die.