Kirjahaku

Rachael Fanny Antonina Dashwood was born to great wealth but illegitimate. Educated in France with princesses, and the daughters of Thomas Jefferson, she returned to England at the outbreak of the Revolution. Embroiled in a series of teenage scrapes, she eloped with handsome but dim Matthew Allen Lee and soon separated from him. In 1804 she was abducted from her London home and raped. Forced to attend a trial that failed to deliver justice her reputation was ruined. It led Thomas De Quincey to name her as the 'Female Infidel'. There are very modern echoes in her persecution by the media, vilification by cartoonists and sufferings at the hands of stalkers. Despite all this she published her Essay on Government, praised by Wordsworth but which might have had greater success had she not already achieved notoriety.

Set among the sugar plantations of Jamaica and the balls and masquerades of Georgian London the story is told by the Lee family in their own words. In 1749 thirteen year-old Robert Cooper Lee sailed to Jamaica taking a parcel of ribbons for sale. When his family was left all but penniless, Robert and his brothers forged new lives in Jamaica, fathered children with women who were the descendants of slaves and supported their sister left behind in England. Robert returned to London with his family in 1771. A prominent attorney, respected throughout Jamaica and among the West Indian lobby in London, he had built a fortune that enabled his children to mix with royalty. This remarkable collection of letters tells a story of triumph against adversity, of a family that suffered sickness, bankruptcy, sudden death, a clandestine marriage and an elopement. Through it all the bonds of family endured.