Rebel Heart

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When she was 21, Digby (1807-1881), a beautiful English aristocrat, shocked London society by leaving her husband and young son to pursue an Austrian diplomat with whom she was having a love affair. Digby's subsequent divorce was literally front-page news as the London Times ``cleared its traditional front page of classified advertisements to carry [the] sensational news story'' in the form of ``a verbatim report of the... divorce hearing in Parliament.'' The divorce then led to self-imposed exile on the continent, where she had many lovers (including Ludwig I of Bavaria), married two more times and bore five children, although she never lived with or formed lasting bonds with her surviving offspring. Drawing on primary research, including Digby's letters and diaries, Lovell (Straight On Till Morning) brings her unconventional subject to life in this outstanding portrait. At the age of 50, Digby embarked on her fourth and happiest marriage, to bandit Chief Sheikh Medjuel of Arabia and, adopting her husband's culture, spent part of each year with the bedouin nomads in the desert. Lovell provides vivid descriptions of tribal life as well as Digby's more lavish existence in Damascus, where she entertained Western tourists. So much for repressed Victorians. Photos. (Oct.)

Library Journal

For the few who may actually think that the lifestyles of the vain and vapid are anything new, this work is recommended reading. As a society woman of Regency England, Jane Digby (an ancestor of Pamela Harriman) would have a series of children (mostly unloved) by a series of husbands and lovers, including a number of princes and lords, her first cousin, an Albanian bandit chieftain, and an Arab sheik young enough to be her son. Her life reads like a series of romantic novels, all starring a self-centered beauty. Lovell, who wrote previously of Beryl Markham in Straight on Till Morning (LJ 9/15/87), has done an admirable job of documenting one person's rebellious life. For public libraries.-Katherine Gillen, Luke Air Force Base Lib., Ariz.

Brad Hooper

Her 1830 divorce caused a sensation, and from that time until her 1881 death, "her name was rarely out of the newspapers as she featured in one outrageous tale after another." Jane Digby was born into the English aristocracy, growing up privileged by beauty as well as birthright. And, as the reader observes in this graceful, exhaustively researched biography, Jane's dimensions of character and parameters of experience continued to grow in excess of what is ordinary. Her affair with an Austrian prince and consequent divorce from her prominent husband made it untenable for her to remain in or return to England; she then had a succession of lovers and husbands, including, by the time she was in middle age, "the love of her life," a bedouin sheikh young enough to be her son. She was larger than life, but here she is made comprehensible yet still romantic; her incredible existence is told respectfully and authentically in all its full color. For all libraries with active history and biography readerships.