Hardcover. Red cloth binding with black title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view photographs. A nice clean copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. First Edition. Notable British Trials Series.

Elizabeth Pierrepont (née Chudleigh), Duchess of Kingston (8 March 1721 – 26 August 1788), sometimes called Countess of Bristol, was an English courtier and courtesan, known by her contemporaries for her adventurous lifestyle. She was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Chudleigh (died 1726), and was appointed maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, in 1743, probably through the good offices of her friend William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath.Having married again while her first husband was still living, in 1776 Chudleigh was found guilty of bigamy at a trial by her peers at Westminster Hall that attracted 4,000 spectators.

Chudleigh appears as a character in T. H. White’s non-fiction The Age of Scandal and Theodore Sturgeon’s historical romance I, Libertine, which began as a hoax. She appears as a non-speaking character in the play Mr Foote’s Other Leg, in which the controversy surrounding her and Foote is portrayed as central to the latter’s fall. The Duchess or Countess, said to be coarse and licentious, was ridiculed as the character Kitty Crocodile by the comedian Samuel Foote in a play A Trip to Calais, which, however, he was not allowed to produce. Chudleigh is also rumored to have inspired William Makepeace Thackeray’s character of Beatrix Esmond, Baroness Bernstein, in The History of Henry Esmond and The Virginians.