Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832

The world of 18th-century, upper-class England is brought vividly to life in this biography of the Duke of Richmond's four daughters. Historian Tillyard (The Impact of Modernism) has crafted an engrossing narrative based on the voluminous correspondence of the Lennox sisters. Caroline, the eldest, who eloped at 19, wrote weekly to her younger sister Emily, who married for love at 16, settled in Ireland and bore 19 children. The two younger sisters, Louisa and Sarah, left home for arranged marriages and shared their experiences through letters. Sarah scandalized society when she abandoned her husband for a lover. But Tillyard does more here than merely document. She mostly forgoes scholarly apparatus and instead calls on fictional strategies to bridge the chronological distance between readers and the Lennoxes. And she succeeds brilliantly in this highly readable cultural history. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)