'A sweeping scintillatingly original exciting exploration of writer spy power player lover
Aphra Behn' Kate Williams historian and author of Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary Queen of
Scots 'Hilton to showcase[s] her skill for both historical and detective work and compelling
evocative writing . . . A sparkling and eye-opening account . . . compelling to read [and]
refreshingly transparent . . . Her fresh ideas could open up exciting paths for future
scholars' BBC History Magazine----A CLANDESTINE AFFAIR 'Whereas the Lady Henrietta Berkeley has
been absent from her Father's house since the 20th August last past . . . AN OUTRAGEOUS
ELOPEMENT. . . and is not yet known where she is nor whether she is alive or dead. STOLEN
LETTERS SCHEMING SERVANTS These are to give notice That whoever shall find her so that she
may be brought back to her Father the Earl of Berkeley they shall have 200 Pounds Reward'
SEX. SENSATION. CELEBRITY. This is The Scandal of the Century - and the true story of the
author Aphra Behn who used a shocking love affair to create the first English novel . . .
----In 1682 a young woman in the throes of a passionate affair flees her parents' home in
Surrey to seek a new life in London. A scandal in its own right but this is no ordinary young
woman: Lady Henrietta Berkeley is the daughter of one of England's most powerful men and her
lover is her own sister's husband. As news of this notorious adulteress spreads her flight
capture and the lawsuit that follow tear through society as the scandal of the century.To Aphra
Behn England's first professional female writer - herself condemned as a scarlet woman of
loose morals - Henrietta's trial would be more than a source of shock and intrigue: it would
inspire her to write Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister an outrageous and
bestselling political fiction and arguably the first novel in English literature.Aphra herself
is an enigma the facts about her life continually disputed. By revealing the story of these
two rebellious and ruthless women Lisa Hilton's new history offers a surprisingly original
theory on the origins of one of England's most celebrated playwrights. Against the backdrop of
seventeenth-century England with its strict traditional conventions of love duty and identity
The Scandal of the Century shows just how far both women will go to break free.---'Gloriously
mind-boggling . . . This is a lively book' Spectator
