An Absent Life: Elizabeth, the "mad" Duchess of Albemarle, 1654-1734

Fragile, emotionally frozen, and barely educated, the heiress Elizabeth Cavendish (1654-1734) is kept in a gilded cage by a powerful but dissolute husband, the third richest man in England. All the artistic pleasures and luxuries of the Restoration are available to her but, increasingly unstable and unable to settle in any of their mansions, she searches in vain for affection and meaning in her life. Forced to accompany her husband to Jamaica following the discovery of an enormous treasure ...