Henry Blyth

This was the true story of a Victorian scandal. The beautiful young society lady was engaged to one man and eloped with another. It caused a huge scandal and a big breach of contract suit. The story was well told although there was a lot of information that some might consider dry but I was found it very interesting. This is an interesting book for fans of historical romance novels to read as it illustrates exactly how harsh society's strictures were in that time period. It will make you look at some of the romance novels (which I love, don't get me wrong, but I like my historicals fairly true to life) on the market today with new eyes. Many of them are entirely inventions and ignore the realities of high society life in the Victorian age. Women could and did destroy their reputations with actions that today we cannot even believe were frowned on. This was an era when breach of contract was very real.… (mehr)

Like the seven rakes whose biographies make up this volume, much is promised but little is delivered. The characters appear with dark hints about their behaviour in the context of the times; they are described variously as "old women", a description which annoys me intensely and rather colours the book with a faint air of misogyny. What is a rake, anyway? In summary, generally it is a high-born male person or one who becomes wealthy and thus somehow more equal to the aristocracy, but with a self-destructive set of behaviours which in the end waste a potentially useful life. There is a strong sexual cast to the self-desctructiveness and the person seems to be British. The Earl of Rochester is a famous example.

I settled down on a wet Sunday, coffee nearby, to read what lessons there might be for modern civilisation in the rise and fall of the rakes described. Unfortunately I didn't find any, and I suspect modern life with its riots, destructive wars and catastrophic natural disasters provides far more unpleasantness than could these seven whose lives are dissected.

The book is sort of interesting, but without any big insights or indeed anything described in hushed tones which you don't see every night on the television news.… (mehr)