Exclusive interview with author Wendy Moore. Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
HOLLYWOOD, CA: 11/17/2010 – “Mary Eleanor Bowes was the great, great, great, great-grandmother of the current queen,” says Wedlock author Wendy Moore. “To view original letters and documents I had to visit Glamis Castle, the ancestral home of the late Queen Mother and the place where Shakespeare set Macbeth. It’s a spooky place, full of mystery and the archives are kept at the top of a spiral staircase in a turret. I wove that into the book.”
It’s 1767 and Mary Eleanor Bowes is England’s richest heiress. A published poet-playwright and accomplished botanist, a widow and mother, she impulsively marries army captain Andrew Robinson Stoney a violent and possessive Irish fortune hunter. Mary escapes and manages to regain her children and independent life. Moore traces the life of Mary’s marriage and her eventual escape from the abuse and tyranny of her second husband. The story is depressing at times, but the fact she ultimately escapes is inspiring.
Moore spent about a year and a half researching before starting writing and another year researching while writing. “As well as telling Mary Eleanor’s remarkable story I had to bone up on 18th century law, botany, crime and domestic violence. I visited Scotland seven times to view the Strathmore archives, and Durham several times to see the Bowes family papers, as well as making countless visits to the British Library.”
“The saddest thing was reading a letter from Mary Eleanor’s 12-year-old daughter when she heard she was to be reunited with her mother after being kept from her for five years,” says Moore.
Mary Eleanor Bowes played a small part in Moore’s first book, The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery, about the 18th century surgeon John Hunter.
Moore says Wedlock was chosen as one of the ten choices on the Channel 4 TV Bookclub. “I was proud that it was the only non-fiction book. It topped the bestsellers’ list in the Sunday Times and is still selling strongly today.”
Moore is currently working on her third book, another 18th century true story. “It’s about a wealthy English philanthropist who was a keen supporter of American independence and campaigned against slavery, but had a very odd attitude towards women. Unable to find his vision of perfect womanhood in real life, he took two girls from an orphanage in order to train one of them to be his ideal wife.”
Moore has lived in London for the past 30 years. She was born in Derbyshire.
Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore. Trade Paperback, 386 pages, Publisher: Three Rivers Press (February 9, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 978-0307383372 $15.00. Also available as an ebook.
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