The Social Life of a Georgian Novelist

Elizabeth Hervey and her Journals

Dianne Barre

• Publisher: Fonthill Media
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781036156367
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Literature

Vivid private journals of an 18th-century novelist capture luxury, scandal, London society gossip, politics, theatre, servants, and finances.

Stored away and forgotten for 200 years, the private journals of Elizabeth Hervey (1749–1820) vividly describe her life and times. Her teenage years were spent in luxury at Fonthill Splendens, home of her stepfather, Alderman William Beckford. She married a handsome army officer who turned out to be a gambler, and with him fled abroad to escape his creditors. Soon widowed and with two small children, she returned to England, and after a brief affair with a political radical poet, settled in London. Intelligent, independent and well-educated, Herveybecame associated with Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill set and the Bluestockings. Every day she wrote her journal, vividly describing theatre visits, family dramas, servants, friends, society gossip, politics, her visits to country houses and lengthy tours at home and abroad. As a novelist she was first published in 1788, launching a career that, while earning her a living, put strain on her relationship with her half-brother, William Beckford, author of the classic gothic novel Vathek and builder of the infamous Fonthill Abbey. Theirs was a complex relationship, marred by literary rivalry, and after a quarrel in 1798 they never met again.

Over the years Hervey’s social network widened to include Lord Byron, Richard and Maria Cosway, the Duchess of Devonshire, Eva Garrick, Lady Hamilton and Sarah Siddons. Yet just as vivid in her journals are her accounts of her household servants, her relationship with her sons, her problems with ill health (and drastic remedies) and her financial ups and downs. As a lively and entertaining window into late Georgian society, there are few sources to rival Elizabeth Hervey’s journals.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1 Mrs Hervey: The Background
• 2 1749–1792: The Pre-Journal Years, Marriage and the ‘Missing Years’
• 3 1792–1796: Tom, the Problematic Son; Portugal
• 4 1797–1798: A Country Retreat, Fonthill Abbey, the Death of Mrs Beckford and the Quarrel
• 5 1799: The Lake District Tour
• 6 1800–1803: A Published Novel and William’s Marriage
• 7 1804–1806: The Picturesque Tour of the Wye and Wales and a Seaside Holiday
• 8 1810–1814: Country House Visits, Tunbridge, and an Abortive Continental Tour
• 9 1816: The Continental Tour Achieved
• 10 1817–1820: Illness and a Tour to the South of France
• 11 Mrs Hervey as a Novelist
• 12 Mrs Hervey Decorates Her Homes
• 13 Mrs Hervey and the Regency Flower Garden
• 14 Genteel Pursuits: Art, Transparencies, Dressmaking and Embroidery
• 15 Mrs Hervey and Her Servants
• 16 Amateur Theatre: Strawberry Hill and Brandenburg House
• 17 Professional Theatre and Opera: Drury Lane and Covent Garden
• 18 Five Marriages—Not All Made in Heaven
• 19 Finances and the Jamaican Estates
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates