Wedlock by Wendy Moore

Wedlock by Wendy Moore

With the death of her fabulously wealthy coal magnate father when she was just eleven, Mary Eleanor Bowes became the richest heiress in Britain. An ancestor of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary grew to be a highly educated young woman, winning acclaim as a playwright and botanist. Courted by a bevy of eager suitors, at eighteen she married the handsome but aloof ninth Earl of Strathmore in a celebrated, if ultimately troubled, match that forged the Bowes Lyon name. Yet she stumbled headlong into scandal when, following her husband's early death, a charming young army hero flattered his way into the merry widow's bed.

Captain Andrew Robinson Stoney insisted on defending her honor in a duel, and Mary was convinced she had found true love. Judged by doctors to have been mortally wounded in the melee, Stoney persuaded Mary to grant his dying wish; four days later they were married.

Sadly, the captain was not what he seemed. Staging a sudden and remarkable recovery, Stoney was revealed as a debt-ridden lieutenant, a fraudster, and a bully. Immediately taking control of Mary's vast fortune, he squandered her wealth and embarked on a campaign of appalling violence and cruelty against his new bride. Finally, fearing for her life, Mary masterminded an audacious escape and challenged social conventions of the day by launching a suit for divorce. The English public was horrified-and enthralled. But Mary's troubles were far from over . . .

Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was inspired by Stoney's villainy to write The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which Stanley Kubrick turned into an Oscar-winning film. Based on exhaustive archival research, Wedlock is a thrilling and cinematic true story, ripped from the headlines of eighteenth-century England.

From the Hardcover edition.

Wendy Moore is a journalist and a writer. She has spent more than two decades specializing in health and medical themes after working as a reporter for local newspapers. Her work as a freelance journalist has appeared in a variety of newspapers and periodicals, including the Guardian, the Observer, and the British Medical Journal, and she has received numerous accolades. She earned the Diploma in the History of Medicine from the Society of Apothecaries (DHMSA) in 1999 after writing significantly on medical history and winning the Maccabaean Award for the best dissertation that year. This is her debut novel.

The Knife Man was selected Consumer Book of the Year by the Medical Journalists' Association when it was first published in the United Kingdom. Moore has two children, Sam and Susannah, and lives in South London with her partner, Peter, who is also a journalist.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307383365
ISBN 10	0307383369
Title	Wedlock
Author	Wendy Moore
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2009-03-10
Number of pages	386
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.