Female Artifice; or, Charles F-x Outwitted. The second edition.

ANONYMOUS.

Edité par Printed for J. Ridley, in St James's Street. 1774, 1774

iv, 12pp. 4to. Titlepage & final page rather dusted. Disbound. ESTC T143605, Senate House; Duke University, Newberry, California. In 1773 a person calling herself the Honourable Elizabeth Harriet Grieve was committed to Newgate to await her trial for defrauding various people by pretending to secure government posts for them. She claimed to be the first cousin to the prime minister, Lord North, and even bribed his servants to allow her to park her coach outside his door to add plausibility to her story. She befriended Charles James Fox, who was in desperate financial circumstances as a result of gambling debts, and created a fictional heiress, a Miss Phipps, with a fortune of £90,000 from the West Indies, who was desirous of a matrimonial connection. Delay followed delay in her arrival, and she even told Fox that Miss Phipps preferred men with light coloured hair, so he must powder his eyebrows. At her trial in October 1774 Mrs Grieve was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to be transported for seven years and sailed to America on the Thornton convict ship. This is the earliest full account of the scandal, published in February 1774, and promising 'no flowers of invention, no embellishments of poetical fancy'. The following month, in the Westminster Gazette, 'An Heroic and Elegiac Epistle' responded directly in the form of a letter from Mrs Grieve protesting against the fictionalisation of her character. Ref: Clarke, R.J. The Dishonest Adventures of Sarah Wilson. 2019. N° de réf. du vendeur 91615

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Female Artifice; or, Charles F-x Outwitted. ...
Éditeur : Printed for J. Ridley, in St James's Street. 1774
Date d'édition : 1774