Lexington Books
Pages: 326
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-7391-6765-6 • Hardback • November 2013 • $129.00 • (£99.00)
978-0-7391-6767-0 • eBook • November 2013 • $122.50 • (£95.00)
Jonathan Gross is professor of English at DePaul University.
1. “Peerless Ailesbury”
2. Marriage to John Damer
3. ”Witches ‘Round the Cauldron”
4. Disaster, Death of John Damer
5. ”Too Strictly Right Even to be Beloved”
6.The “Widow’s Joys”: Four Satires of Anne Damer
7. The Sylph, Rehabilitation, and Damer’s First Trip to Italy
8. Damer’s Second Trip to Italy
9. Park Place and Hieroglyphic Tales
10. Theatricals at Richmond House
11. Damer and Charles Hotham
12. Menage a Trois: Walpole , the Berrys, and Anne Damer, 143
13. Departure for Lisbon
14. Damer’s Return to England
15. Anne Damer as Sculptor: An Overview
16. Damer as Sculptor, a Catalogue Raisonee
17. Anne Damer and Mary Berry on Literature
18. Damer in Portugal: Beckford, Byron, and Napoleon
19. Damer’s Return from Lisbon, “A Proselyte to Painting”
20. Damer and Walpole: “Tis a Debt I would Always Be Paying”
21. Damer and Berry: “The Thread that Holds Minds Together”
22. Mary Berry and Charles O’Hara
23. Recovery and Inheritance of Strawberry Hill
24. Fashionable Friends and Belmour
25. Death of Anne Damer’s Mother
26. “Infallible Tokens of Affection”: Damer and Princess Caroline
27. Damer and Susan Ferrier’s Marriage
28. Anne Damer and India
Jonathan Gross has done us all a great service by telling—for the first time in the modern era of scholarship—the detailed story of Anne Damer's long and productive life as a feminist actress, writer, and sculptor. He reminds us how integrally she was involved in the lives of important figures of her era, from Horace Walpole to Napoleon, and shows how her trail-blazing spirit of adventure influenced and took fire from the careers of other liberated women, from the Duchess of Devonshire to Mrs. Siddons. Damer emerges from these pages as a warmhearted and loyal friend who found love in her relationship with long-time companion Mary Berry. She also remains that rare thing: an accomplished female sculptor of the 18th and 19th centuries.
— Paul Douglass, San Jose State University
Jonathan Gross has written the first full biography of a little known but important figure on the gothic/romantic cusp: Anne Damer, niece of Horace Walpole and talented artist in her own right. Based on archival research, letters, and journals which have never been seen before, and extensive forays into Scotland, Gross has managed to reconstruct the life and times of this fascinating woman. Scholars of the Gothic and women's artistic production will particularly find this book an essential addition to their research.
— Diane Hoeveler, Marquette University
This biography for the first time uncovers the hidden career and life of Anne Damer, the superb sculptor and lesbian hostess of the British Regency period. Jonathan Gross pays full and arresting attention to Damer's artistic and literary works (including her novel Belmour), her notable relationship with the historian Mary Berry, the houses she lived in, the places she visited, and her impact on the other women writers of her day. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the bluestocking world of Romantic-era Britain.
— Anne Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles