An Infamous Mistress

" Courtesan. Spy. Survivor. A gripping and meticulously researched account of the swashbuckling life of one of history's most overlooked heroines." —Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five

Divorced wife, infamous mistress, prisoner in France during the French Revolution, and the reputed mother of the Prince of Wales' child, notorious courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott lived an amazing life in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London and Paris.

Strikingly tall and beautiful, later lampooned as "Dally the Tall" in newspaper gossip columns, she left her Scottish roots and convent education behind to reinvent herself in a "marriage à-la-mode," but before she was even legally an adult she was cast off and forced to survive on just her beauty and wits.

The authors of this engaging and, at times, scandalous book intersperse the story of Grace's tumultuous life with a family history that traces her ancestors from…