Improper Pursuits

A passionate tale of an eighteenth-century artist's scandalous life.

Lady Diana Spencer was born in 1735, the eldest child of the third Duke of Marlborough. She was expected to follow a traditional path through life: educated in the fashion considered suitable for a girl, and married to a man of the appropriate rank for a duke's daughter. However, Lady Di overturned convention. She left her husband, pursued a secret relationship with Topham Beauclerk, hid the birth of an illegitimate child, was divorced, remarried and eventually had to earn her living by painting. Lady Di became a highly gifted artist who painted portraits, illustrated books and plays, provided designs for Wedgwood's innovative pottery and decorated rooms with murals.

Carola Hicks provides a stirring account of her life and the world she inhabited. She sheds light on the whole artistic life of the eighteenth century and the dramatic consequences of the transgressing of boundaries. Improper Pursuits is an absorbing study of a singular life.