Wedlock

This is a hard review to write because I was so emotionally involved in Mary Eleanor's plight. Like so many of her female contemporaries she spent her early years in luxury - protected, nurtured and formally educated. Unfortunately, it was exactly this kind of upbringing which would leave these girls so vulnerable and so completely unprepared for their fates.In Mary Eleanor's case this would be intellectual repression in her first marriage and abuse, poverty and at least one attempt on her life in her second. Unlike her sisters in misery, however, her case was so bad that even the courts were on her side - something virtually unheard of in Georgian society. She obtained a divorce, had her inheritance and even her children returned to her. I wish she could have known that one day her descendants would sit on the throne of England; it might have given her some comfort at least.
 
Despite the heavy contents, the book was well written and easy to read, with just the right amount of detail for the casual reader of biographies.