Her husband, William Lamb, would later become Lord Melbourne, one of Queen’s Victoria’s favourite prime ministers. Caroline counted Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as her aunt and Lord Byron as her lover. No surprise, then, that Antonia Fraser’s sparkling biography, Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit, is a zig-zagging Shakespearean drama, played out in the highest echelons of fashionable Georgian society. The episode encapsulates the life of this fiery, free-spirited novelist, whose hallmark was the “defiance of conventions”. A note was left for her family: “Forget my existence all of you”. She hid in a chemist’s shop, jumped on a Hackney coach and headed for Portsmouth, selling her rings to fund the trip. A 26-year-old woman, flustered and wide-eyed, sprinted the length of Pall Mall. At midday on August 12 1812, Londoners were greeted with a peculiar spectacle.
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