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Emma; or, The Unfortunate Attachment

A Sentimental Novel

Jonathan David Gross, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Publication Year: 2004

Published anonymously in 1773 and attributed to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, this epistolary novel explores the “unfortunate attachment” of Emma Eggerton to William Walpole. Forbidden by her father to marry the man she loves, Emma resigns herself to marrying Walpole, her father’s autocratic choice of a husband. The novel’s other unfortunate attachment concerns Colonel Sutton, who falls prey to the “low” machinations of the confirmed flirt Harriet Courtney. Like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Georgiana’s Emma explores the dangers of first impressions and arranged marriages, but does so from the vantage point of a woman who would suffer the long-term consequences of both. Originally published when the author was only sixteen, and long out of print, Emma anticipates many of the major events of Georgiana’s own life, and taken together with her second novel, The Sylph, it offers significant insights into the outlook of aristocratic women in the late eighteenth century. An Introduction by Jonathan David Gross sets the novel in the context of its time and explores the questions surrounding its authorship.

Published by: State University of New York Press

Emma; or, The Unfortunate Attachment: A Sentimental Novel

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Contents

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pp. vii-

Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-x

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Preface

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pp. xi-xiv

LADY GEORGIANA SPENCER WAS a patron of the arts, a writer, a musician, and an amateur scientist. Art historians know her as the subject of eighteenth-century portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds that feature her sometimes outlandish innovations in fashion, hairstyle, and taste. Thrown into what she later described as the “vortex of dissipation” at a young age, Lady Georgiana used her charisma to aid the cause of the Whigs. Her...

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Introduction

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pp. 1-39

WHEN GEORGIANA SPENCER MARRIED the duke of Devonshire on June 4, 1774,1 she fulfilled her mother’s greatest hope and fear. “My dread is that she will be snatched from me before her age and experience make her by any means fit for the serious duties of a wife, a mother, or the mistress of a family,” her mother wrote in January 1774 (Masters 12). Despite her belief that she was facilitating a love-match, Lady Spencer’s...

Note on the Text

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pp. 41-43

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE LADY CAMDEN

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pp. 44-

List of Subscribers

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pp. 45-47

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Emma Vol. One

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pp. 53-110

Your absence, my dear Fanny, like that of the sun, has robbed our little village of all its charms. I traverse, in vain hopes of discovering, since you have left it, some of those beauties which heretofore presented themselves to me in every step I took: but when I have tired myself with walking, I sit down convinced how fruitless my search has been; for every charm, alas! has fled with you; and the...

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Emma Vol. Two

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pp. 111-178

When we act properly, my dearest Emma, we do not require the applause of others to make us happy; a more certain voice than that of shouting multitudes speaks to us: we feel the satisfaction of having performed our duty, and that compensates for all the pain we have endured in bringing ourselves to do it.—You will agree to this, and I make no doubt are ready to confess to me, that your present felicity exceeds in greatness all your past woes.—Who would desire to...

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Emma Vol. Three

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pp. 179-254

Despondence, my dearest Emma, is an addition to the misfortunes which Heaven has sent you; such an one as makes the others heavier, and calls down fresh ones on you, from incurring more wrath. You may tell me, I talk of comfort, who have never lost an husband; but if I did not know that submission was required of the afflicted sinner, I would by my lamentations drown yours; so deeply am I interested in my friend. But despair is repugnant to every...

Appendix 1: Collation of 1773 and 1784 Editions

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pp. 255-280

Appendix 2: Collation of 1773 and 1787 Editions

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pp. 281-296

Appendix 3: Poems by Lady Georgiana; with one poem by David Garrick

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pp. 297-299

Notes

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pp. 301-314

Index

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pp. 315-322


E-ISBN-13: 9780791484807
Print-ISBN-13: 9780791461457
Print-ISBN-10: 0791461459

Page Count: 336
Illustrations: 4 figures
Publication Year: 2004

Research Areas

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Subject Headings

  • Runaway husbands -- Fiction.
  • Satire. -- lcsh.
  • Arranged marriage -- Fiction.
  • Married women -- Fiction.
  • Epistolary fiction. -- gsafd.
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