Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (b. 1757) first published The Sylph anonymously in 1779. She was a close friend of Marie Antoinette and an ancestor of Diana Spencer. Jonathan Gross is a professor and the director of the DePaul University Humanities Center. He is the author of Byron: The Erotic Liberal, Byron's ""Corbeau Blanc"": The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne, and Emma, or the Unfortunate Attachment, and Thomas Jefferson's Scrapbooks: Poems of Family, Nation, and Romantic Love.
"Once praised as ingenious and condemned as obscene, The Sylph is,
in fact, a fascinating insider's view of the life of the British
ruling class, penned by one of the most gifted and troubled women
of the eighteenth century." --Paula R. Feldman, C. Wallace Martin
Professor of English, University of South Carolina
"This scholarly edition of The Sylph provides fresh insights into
the lives of aristocratic women in the 1770s. The novel by one of
the most fashionable women of her age is both a window on
upper-class social mores and a roman à clef drawing on the
Duchess's own gambling addiction and unconventional domestic
arrangements." --Janet Todd, Herbert J.C. Grierson Professor of
English Literature, University of Aberdeen
"[A] witty, accomplished portrait of Georgian society, written from
the unique perspective of its biggest trendsetter." --Booklist
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