She was a pioneering explorer, a travel writer writer and novelist, an earl’s daughter who reinvented herself, a woman with a drive to “be something”. So why haven’t more of us heard of Lady Dorothy Mills? Her biographer, Jane Dismore, aims to change that. When Lady Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Mills was a young girl, a female […]
No Country For a Woman by Jane Dismore
Lady Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Mills was a trailblazer, whose larger-than-life personality led her to extraordinary adventures. Born in 1889 into the Walpole family, who were eminent in political and literary spheres, Dolly defied the constraints of her upper-class upbringing by marrying a poor army captain, prompting her disinheritance. From becoming the first English woman in Timbuktu […]
Damned Souls: an aristocratic Victorian scandal
Among the late 19th-century circle of aristocratic artists and wits known as the Souls, adulterous affairs were accepted. But when a relationship between two unmarried Souls resulted in a pregnancy, the scandal that followed threatened to destroy careers and exposed the group’s conventionality. Jane Dismore’s latest book tells their story. It was not until she […]
Tangled Souls: Love and Scandal among the Victorian Aristocracy by Jane Dismore
Outrageously handsome, witty and clever, Harry Cust was reputed to be one of the great womanisers of the late Victorian era. In 1893, while a Member of Parliament, he caused public scandal by his affair with artist and poet Nina Welby Gregory. When she revealed she was pregnant, horror swept through their circle known as […]