Publisher's Synopsis
Lady Dorothy Fanny Nevill (1826-1913) was an English writer, hostess, horticulturist and plant collector. The daughter of Horatio Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, she received no formal education but was tutored by a governess in French, Italian, Greek and Latin. In 1846 she was embroiled in a scandal when caught in a summerhouse with notorious rake, George Smythe MP, heir to a peerage. Newspaper gossip alleged that he got her pregnant and then refused to marry her, and she was hastily married off to an elderly cousin, Reginald Henry Nevill, 20 years her senior. The couple had six children, four of whom survived beyond childhood. Following her marriage Lady Dorothy travelled extensively and cultivated a large circle of literary and artisitic friends, and a few politicians, including Richard Cobden, James McNeill Whistler and Disraeli, although she was never received by Queen Victoria. In 1851 the Nevills acquired a large Sussex property and Lady Dorothy turned the estate garden into a horticultural landmark, and through her plants she became acquainted with William and Jospeh Hooker at Kew, and supplied Charles Darwin with rare plants. She also kept exotic birds and mammals, farmed silkworms, and maintained a museum of her collections. She wrote a number of volumes of memoirs, and this selection from her notebooks, edited by her son Ralph Nevill, was first published in 1907. With two portraits of the author.
