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A former journalist and broadcaster, Sarah Gristwood is the author of two historical biographies. Her first, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen (Bantam 2003) reached the Sunday Times bestsellers’ list; her second, Perdita: Royal Mistress, Writer, Romantic (Bantam 2005) was selected as Radio 4 Book of the Week. In 1988 she wrote Recording Angels: The Secret World of Women’s Diaries (Harrap), which will be published by Bantam in 2006 in a revised and extended edition (working title: In This Book).
The subjects of her two biographies have each a colourful story. Lady Arbella Stuart was expected to inherit the throne of her kinswoman, Queen Elizabeth I. Raised a virtual prisoner by her grandmother Bess of Hardwick, she made a dramatic bid for life, liberty and perhaps the crown – and left a host of extraordinary letters which are used to the full in Sarah Gristwood’s book.
Mary Robinson - widely known as “Perdita” - began her career as actress, royal mistress, and inhabitant of a debtors’ prison She ended it, just two decades later, as a best-selling novelist, Romantic poet, and early feminist thinker of note. As Coleridge wrote after her death in 1800: “I never knew a human Being with so full a mind – bad, good & indifferent, I grant you, but full, & overflowing.” Again, you could hardly have a better recipe for the subject of a biography.
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