
- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The sensational true tale that inspired the major motion picture Belle starring Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Penelope Wilton, and Matthew Goode—a stunning story of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high society England and raised as a lady.
The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was sent to live with her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. Growing up in his lavish estate, Dido was raised as a sister and companion to her white cousin, Elizabeth. When a joint portrait of the girls, commissioned by Mansfield, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.
Belle includes 20 pages of black-and-white photos.
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Information
Table of contents
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 - The Girl in the Picture
- 2 - The Captain
- 3 - The Slave
- 4 - The White Stuff
- 5 - ‘Silver-Tongued Murray’
- 6 - The Adopted Daughters
- 7 - Black London
- 8 - Mansfield the Moderniser
- 9 - Enter Granville Sharp
- 10 - The Somerset Ruling
- 11 - The Merchant of Liverpool
- 12 - A Riot in Bloomsbury
- 13 - A Visitor from Boston
- 14 - The Zong Massacre
- 15 - Gregson v Gilbert
- 16 - Changes at Kenwood
- 17 - The Anti-Saccharites
- 18 - Mrs John Davinier
- Appendix: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Connection
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Also by Paula Byrne
- Back Ad
- Copyright
- About the Publisher