Circle of Sisters

Circle of Sisters

Judith Flanders

THE MACDONALD SISTERS–Alice, Georgiana, Agnes, and Louisa–started life in the teeming ranks of the lower-middle classes, denied the advantages of education and the expectation of social advancement. Yet as wives and mothers they would connect a famous painter, a president of the Royal Academy, a prime minister, and the uncrowned poet laureate of the Empire. Georgiana and Alice married, respectively, the pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and the arts administrator Edward Poynter; Louisa gave birth to future prime minister Stanley Baldwin, and Alice was mother to Rudyard Kipling. “A Circle of Sisters brings to life four women living at a privileged moment in history. Their progress from obscurity to imperial grandeur indicates the vitality of nineteenth-century Britain: a society abundant with possibility. From their homes in India, America, and England, the sisters formed a network that, through the triumphs and tragedies of their families and the Empire, uniquely endured.

“Judith Flanders has driven a four-horse chariot through the nineteenth century. In telling the story of the four Macdonald sisters she has brilliantly illuminated the world of Victorian England. I have enjoyed this book more than I can say” John Julius Norwich (cover)

:A delightful book. Flanders takes nothing at surface value; alongside a scholar’s appetite for research she has a novelist’s delight in inferring the human reason why things happen…A Circle of Sisters surely marks a significant movement both in the onward march of group biography and in the uderstanding of the Victorian woman” -Lynne Truss Sunday Times (London), Author of Eats Shoots and Leaves.

“A most impressive debut; a scholarly, entertaining, constantly interesting biography”-William Trevor.

“The Macdonald sisters were four remarkable women from a humble background, who rose to eminence and helped weave the web of power and influence Victorian England. Judith Flanders re-creates their inner and outer worlds with wit, sympathy, and insight.”-Hilary Mantel

This is a book for the historian, the social commentator and any person with an interest in personal ambition and achievement. It is in excellent condition, the dustcover is spotless, the pages are clean and it will be a gratifying addition to anty collector’s booksheves.