Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice

by Paula Byrne

Overview

The sensational true tale that inspired the major motion picture Belle starring Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Penelope Wilton, and Matthew Goode—a stunning story of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high society England and raised as a lady.  

The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was sent to live with her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. Growing up in his lavish estate, Dido was raised as a sister and companion to her white cousin, Elizabeth. When a joint portrait of the girls, commissioned by Mansfield, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.

Belle includes 20 pages of black-and-white photos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062310774
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/29/2014
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	672,573
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paula Byrne is the critically acclaimed author of five biographies, including Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, The Real Jane Austen, and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead. She lives in Oxford, England, with her husband, the academic and biographer Jonathan Bate.

Editorial Reviews

Byrne’s aim is to show how these objects, many of them reproduced in her book in lush color plates, reveal a much more cosmopolitan awareness of the world than is commonly credited to Austen.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR for THE REAL JANE AUSTEN

Vividly persuasive…. THE REAL JANE AUSTEN is excellent… particularly on the dissonant topics of theater and slavery….Byrnes section on slavery is better still, establishing links between Austen’s protagonists and contemporary figures, her pointed references and contemporary events, which highlight her supposedly oblivious fiction’s sharp views on the slave trade.” — New York Times Book Review for THE REAL JANE AUSTEN

“Byrne takes Austen seriously as a writer...[she] brings to life a woman of “wonderful exuberance and self-confidence,” of “firm opinions and strong passions.” Little wonder that every other man she meets seems to fall in love with her.” — Michael Dirda, Washington Post for THE REAL JANE AUSTEN

“Byrne brings to this brief history an eye for telling details of daily life, slaveholders’ unthinkable cruelty, and the fervent work of a few good men and women who changed their world.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Vividly persuasive…. THE REAL JANE AUSTEN is excellent… particularly on the dissonant topics of theater and slavery….Byrnes section on slavery is better still, establishing links between Austen’s protagonists and contemporary figures, her pointed references and contemporary events, which highlight her supposedly oblivious fiction’s sharp views on the slave trade.

New York Times Book Review for THE REAL JANE AUSTEN

Byrne takes Austen seriously as a writer...[she] brings to life a woman of “wonderful exuberance and self-confidence,” of “firm opinions and strong passions.” Little wonder that every other man she meets seems to fall in love with her.

Michael Dirda

Byrne’s aim is to show how these objects, many of them reproduced in her book in lush color plates, reveal a much more cosmopolitan awareness of the world than is commonly credited to Austen.

Maureen Corrigan

2014-03-29
A history of Britain's anti-slavery struggle that begins with a child. Dido Elizabeth Belle, the daughter of a slave, known as Maria, and her aristocratic British lover, Sir John Lindsay, was raised as the adopted daughter of Lindsay's uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, and his wife, Lady Mansfield. With little information available on Dido herself, Byrne (The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, 2013, etc.) places her at the center of an engrossing, and horrifying, history of the strident, combative and ultimately successful abolition movement in England. Where Dido was born and what relationship Lindsay had with her mother are unanswered questions. "The only thing we can know for sure," writes the author, "is that Captain Lindsay took a bold and unconventional step in arranging for his small daughter to be…entrusted to a family member to be brought up as a young lady." That family member was Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, the most powerful magistrate in the land, who ruled on several landmark slavery cases. About 15,000 blacks lived in London in the 18th century, some as servants, some as middle-class landowners. Despite widespread prejudice, even marriage between blacks and whites was not condemned "so long as it did not cross the class divide." But runaway slaves were still subject to capture and resold or returned to their former owners. The "trade in human flesh" flourished in Britain, where slaves were essential as labor on sugar plantations in the island colonies. Despite—or, Byrne speculates, because of—Mansfield's widely known affection for Dido, the judge proved cautious in his decisions, frustrating such ardent abolitionists as Granville Sharp, who sued for the rights of captured slaves. Ultimately, Mansfield agreed: Slavery, he wrote, "is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." Byrne brings to this brief history an eye for telling details of daily life, slaveholders' unthinkable cruelty, and the fervent work of a few good men and women who changed their world.

Kirkus Reviews