First Edition An Irish Peer on the Continent 1801-03 by Catherine Wilmot, 1920

Age:
1920
Material:
paper
Dimensions:
22 x 15cm
Shipping:
Standard Parcel
Price:
£ 40
Published a century after her death, Catherine Wilmot’s diaries provide a unique portrayal of the Napoleonic period. The diaries were edited by Thomas Sadleir and published by Williams and Norgate, London in 1920.
Catherine Wilmot (c.1773 –1824) was invited to accompany the party of Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, and his wife on a grand tour of the continent. Her letters from the time survive, in France from November 1801 to October 1802, and in Italy until July 1803. The Mount Cashells entertained lavishly, especially during the first nine months in Paris, and through them she met Napoleon Bonaparte, and made friends with the Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman. She also met the French diplomat and politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and the Irish republican Robert Emmet. She recounted her meeting in Rome with the English aristocrat Frederick Augustus Hervey, and her audience with the Pope, Pius VII. Wilmot returned to London from Italy in October 1803, via Germany and Denmark, after England and France resumed hostilities.
The cloth cover is fraying slightly at the spine and the boards have battered corners, but the pages themselves are in good, clean and tight condition. There is a bookseller‘s plate from Greene‘s Library, Dublin on the endpaper.