Elizabeth Craven's fascinating life was full of travel, love-affairs and
scandals but this biography, the first to appear for a century, is the
only one to focus on her as a writer and draw attention to the full
range of her output, which raises her stature as an author considerably.
Born into the upper class of Georgian England, she was pushed into
marriage at sixteen to Lord Craven and became a celebrated society
hostess and beauty, as well as mother to seven children. Though acutely
conscious of her relative lack of education, as a woman, she ventured
into writing poetry, stories and plays. Incompatibility and infidelities
on both sides ended her marriage and she had to move to France where,
living in seclusion, she wrote the little-known feminist work Letters to
Her Son. In the years that followed, she travelled extensively all over
Europe and turned her letters into a travelogue which is one of her
best-known works. On her return she went to live in Germany as the
companion and eventually second wife of the Margrave of Ansbach. At his
court she organised and appeared in theatricals, and wrote several more
plays of great interest, including The Modern Philosopher. In 1792 she
and the Margrave settled in England, where they were never fully
accepted by the more strait-laced pillars of society but mixed with all
the musicians and actors and the more rakish of the Regency set. Craven
continued to put on her own theatricals and write for the theatre. In
her old age, she moved to Naples where she passed her time sailing,
gardening and writing her Memoirs. Even in her final years, scandal
dogged her, and Craven made her feminist principles and criticisms of
the laws of marriage apparent through her involvement in the notorious
divorce case of Queen Caroline.
