LADY ANNE BARNARD
The Court and Colonial Service under George III and the Regency

MADELEINE MASSON

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD., LONDON
1948

First edition.
Known to posterity as the author of the ballad "Auld Robin Gray", the name of Lady Anne Barnard wears much of the conventional lustre of the period. She was the friend and confidante of the Prince Regent, she knew intimately Pitt, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Lord Melville, Doctor Johnson, Fanny Burney and the countless other personages whose lives have so painstakingly been chronicled by a succession of biographers; she went to routs, ridottos and balls with the fashionable London of her day and she travelled in France at the time of the Revolution. Her name is to be found in the memoirs and belles-lettres of scores of her contemporaries, and she herself contributed imposing volumes to their number.

Yet Lady Anne Lindsay was more than a mere typical product of her period. She could be counted among the few who escaped the magic circle.

When Lady Anne, now married to Andrew Barnard, set foot in South Africa, she forfeited her right to the glamour of her times. Her contemporaries knew little and cared less for this distant refreshment station; but if biographers have forgotten her in the glitter of the century, history will remember her for the bold step that she took.

During her four years at the Cape of Good Hope, she chronicled every detail of her life and experiences in a Journal and letters which give a perfect picture of the settlement and the time. Her approach was essentially humanistic — she opened her heart and her house to the Dutch settlers. She never forgot them, nor they her. In her was fused the ideal of the political concept of which she was one of the first shining instruments. (From the Foreword)

22 x 14 cm. 354 pp + illustrated plates.

Very good condition. Gift inscription on the front free endpaper. Page edges age toned.