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The Thucydides of court gossip? Steady on...

A review of Brian Unwin’s A Tale in Two Cities: Fanny Burney and Adèle, Comtesse de Boigne. Burney and Adèle are great company but let’s not overhype these 3am girls of 19th century high society

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

A Tale in Two Cities: Fanny Burney and Adèle, Comtesse de Boigne Brian Unwin

I.B. Tauris, pp.259, £20, ISBN: 9781780767840

Sir Brian Unwin leads off with some decidedly questionable assertions. He wonders why the first of his two subjects, the Comtesse de Boigne, should have been ‘ignored or un-noticed by most historians’ — curious words to apply to a woman whose words are quoted in virtually every biography or history of her period.

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