Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville

Common card · No. 289740

Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville ( LOOS-ən-GOR; née Lady Henrietta Elizabeth Cavendish; 29 August 1785 – 25 November 1862) was a British society hostess and writer. The younger daughter of Lady Georgiana Spencer and William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, she was a member of the wealthy Cavendish and Spencer families and spent her childhood with her two siblings under the care of a governess. In 1809 Harriet married Granville Leveson-Gower, a diplomat who had been her maternal aunt's lover for seventeen years. The couple's marriage was long lasting and they had five children. During intermittent periods between 1824 and 1841, Granville served as the British ambassador to France, requiring Harriet to perform a relentless array of social duties in Paris that she often found exhausting and frivolous. Harriet was a prolific writer of letters, which often humorously described the people around her. Her detailed accounts are regarded as valuable sources of information on life as an...

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