Research Catalog

Queen of the wits : a life of Laetitia Pilkington

Title: Queen of the wits : a life of Laetitia Pilkington / Norma Clarke.
Author: Clarke, Norma, 1948-
Publication: London : Faber and Faber, 2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	CT788.P66 C6 2008	Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 364 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 23 cm

Summary

A story of celebrity, sex and literature: one extraordinary woman's battle to survive in early eighteenth-century London and Dublin. Poetess, fallen woman and wit, Laetitia Pilkington spent her life as close to fame as she was near to ruin. Favoured by, among others, the newly celebrated Jonathan Swift in Ireland in the 1730s, she collected the stories and developed the brazen femininity that would be her only currency in London a decade later. Divorced by her husband after she was exposed as an adulteress, she led a life of precarious self-sufficiency. Through humour and intelligence and her skilful use of scandal, most notably in her Memoirs, she survived on the very fringes of respectability.

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies.
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-351) and index.

Contents

Part I. Ireland -- Doctor's daughter -- Curate's wife -- Dr Delany's set -- Dean Swift's little helpers -- London frolic -- Death, adultery, divorce -- Part II. England -- Lady of adventure -- Adverse fate -- Poetical businesswoman -- Looking after Jack -- Part III. Dublin again -- Celebrity memoirs -- Lord Kingsborough -- Last days -- A note on Laetitia Pilkington's early literary reception.

ISBN

9780571224289
0571224288

LCCN

2008425249

OCLC

ocn181069041
181069041
SCSB-9671431

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library