Devoted, The.
Inscribed To Her Daughter, in a Presentation Binding
[Bury, Lady Charlotte]. The Devoted. By the authoress of “The Disinherited,” “Flirtation,” &c. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley…Successor to Henry Colburn, 1836.
3 vols., 8vo.; purple cloth spines, faded to tan; marbled boards; lightly rubbed; light general wear to extremities; a remarkable survival, untouched by restorative hands. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; errata slip in the front, two pages of publisher’s ads in the rear (including Ladore by “the Author of ‘Frankenstein,’ &c.”). Sadleir 472 (his set chipped and worn, with v. III p. 1 a single inset, though ours appears to be integral.)
A presentation copy, in a unmarked binding likely given to Bury by the publishers for presentation, inscribed on the half-title of volume one: To Lady Gordon Cumming / with Mamas / affectionate love / The Authoress / Charlotte Maria Bury. Maria—Elizabeth Maria Campbell Cumming—was Bury’s daughter by her first marriage to her cousin, Colonel J. Campbell. She became Lady Gordon Cumming when she married Sir William Gordon Cumming, the second Baronet of Altyre.
Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Bury, daughter of the 5th Duke of Argyll and Elizabeth Gunning, sister of the 6th and 7th Dukes of Argyll, and half-sister of two Dukes of Hamilton, was a famous beauty and more closely connected to the high Scottish aristocracy than any other woman writer of her era. Bury’s first husband—Colonel J. Campbell—died in 1796; she remarried Reverend Edward John Bury in 1818. Bury was also a member of the “Bluestockings,” a women’s literary club in London that was known for their taste for their intellectual pursuits.
Bury was also categorized as one of England’s “silver fork” novelists—a group of writers in the 1820s-1840s who focused on the exploits and characteristics of London’s fashionable set, which also included Catherine Gore, Lady Blessington, and their male counterpart, Benjamin Disraeli. Bury’s novels enjoyed popular success, but nothing whetted the appetites of her readers as much as her published diaries from her time as lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline of Scotland: Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting and Memoirs of the Time of George IV (1838). She is the author of a dozen other books, including, Conduct is Fate (1822); The Disinherited and the Ensnared (1814); Flirtation (1828); and Separation: a novel (1830).
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