Maria Gunning Countess of Coventry

Standard Name: Coventry, Maria Gunning,,, Countess of

Used Form: Lady Coventry

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships	Elizabeth Gunning	The beautiful Gunning sisters (later Countess of Coventry , and successively Duchess of Hamilton and of Argyll ) were EG 's aunts. Lady Coventry, however, had died before Elizabeth was born.
Literary Setting	Georgette Heyer	With this first novel Heyer established the elements that were to be the staple of her oeuvre: a swashbuckling hero, here an earl playing at being a highwayman (Jack Carstares, otherwise Earl of Wyncham); a...

Timeline

Summer 1751

The Gunning sisters arrived in London from Ireland, and created a sensation with their beauty: Maria was aged around seventeen and Elizabeth was a year younger.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.

30 September 1760

Lady Coventry (formerly the beautiful Maria Gunning) died, allegedly of the effects of white lead cosmetics.

Rizzo, Betty. “Decorums”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 149-67.

157

10 March 1768

Lord Bolingbroke divorced his wife, the former Lady Diana Spencer , for her adultery with Topham Beauclerk , though his own infidelities were well known in society.

Rizzo, Betty. “Decorums”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 149-67.

159, 156-60, 163

Texts

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