Belle / Perdita

Complementing her work on Jane Austen, Paula has written biographies of two remarkable women in late eighteenth-century Britain. Belle is the true story behind the award-winning movie about a girl born the daughter of an enslaved woman in the Caribbean and raised in the home of the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, Lord Mansfield, who was a key figure in the progress towards the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The e-book was a New York Times Top Ten bestseller, Perdita, a selection of the Richard & Judy Book Club and a London Sunday Times bestseller, tells the story of Mary Robinson: married and separated as a teenager, mistress of the Prince of Wales, actress said to be the most beautiful woman in England, successful poet and novelist, advocate of women’s education, exemplar of fortitude in overcoming disability. “Enthralling and perceptive,” wrote the Sunday Times, “a fine biographer has conjured up a dazzling personality and brought her, laughing, back to life.”

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