Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard

by Stephen Taylor

She was born in Scotland in 1772, lived at the heart of Georgian society, and yet defined herself by defiance of convention. Anne Barnard’s charisma was undeniable: she wrote the most popular Scottish ballad of her day, had her poetry praised by Walter Scott, and at the age of eighteen dazzled Dr. Johnson with her repartee.

Both a beauty and a wit, Barnard had affairs with several prominent men but ended up marrying none of them. She lived independently and traveled by herself to Paris to observe the French Revolution. Her eventual marriage, to an impoverished, much younger army officer, scandalized polite society. The couple escaped to the Cape Colony, England’s first African possession, where Barnard painted the vivid landscapes and worked on her memoirs.

Stephen Taylor has been given access to the private papers, including six volumes of unpublished memoirs. They show Lady Anne Barnard to be one of the extraordinary chroniclers of her time.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, 18th Century, Africa, Travel, Biography Memoir

391 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2016

Reviews

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

An in-depth biography of Lady Anne Barnard nee Lady Anne Lindsay.

For a woman of her time period she was eccentric and skirted traditional values and social norms. This account portrays an intelligent woman of minimal means who rose to ply the drawing rooms of the intelligentsia. Her sharp mind and quick wit more than countered her reduced financial means, and if she had been a man the world would have been her oyster. As it is, being a woman was a significant liability. Nonetheless, she managed to avoid the pitfalls and carve out a life she would be happy to live, not one the world and her circle of peers would have necessarily picked.

It got a bit gossipy, but then Georgian England lived for it, and the French Revolution did nothing to downplay the dramatic events unfolding. Add in her experiences in South Africa and the battling sides in colonialism and you can see that there were many traps. 'May you live in interesting times', yeah, it's not hard to see how this is actually a curse. But the book gives a solid overview of political events driving peoples' lives, including Lady Anne.

While I can't call this upbeat, and I'd never wish to have been in her shoes, it is intriguing to see how she managed/mismanaged all the balls including matrimony. Overall, Taylor's approach is very sympathetic and lionizes Lady Anne Barnard.

Africa took Anne back to the innocence of childhood, wandering in an elemental place almost like the girl who once rode a pig at Balcarres.

[Rachel Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written biography of an unconventional Georgian lady

Defiance is the biography of Lady Anne Barnard (1750-1825), best-known as the author of the popular ballad Auld Robin Grey. Anne was the daughter of an impoverished Scottish earl who became close friends with the young George IV and his secret wife, Mrs Fitzherbert. Anne was a prolific letter writer and kept detailed journals of her life, most notably of her time living in the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

Defiance is a well-written biography, as you would expect from a former correspondent of The Times, with plenty of contemporary quotes, largely from Anne’s letters and diaries. If you want to learn about one of the less conventional members of Georgian high society, then this biography will not disappoint.

Mrs Fitzherbert’s confidante

It was Anne’s relationship with Mrs Fitzherbert that most attracted me to the book and, for me, it was the most satisfying part of Anne’s story. I felt I learnt something more of George IV’s secret wife, and have ended up feeling that she was more to blame that their relationship didn’t last than I had hitherto believed.

A remarkable woman

There were times in the narrative that I found the style a touch too impersonal – maybe, a little journalistic and matter of fact. Perhaps this accounted for why I struggled to sympathise with Anne’s character, and didn’t feel I really knew her very well by the time I finished the book, though I think this improved when I went back to take notes.

I most warmed to Anne’s character towards the end of the book, when, as a relatively wealthy widow, she shared her home with members of both her own and her husband’s family. Perhaps her most endearing action, though probably the most daringly controversial act of her life, was giving a home to her husband’s illegitimate, mixed race daughter Christina, the daughter of an African slave, whom Anne housed and supported, even though her very existence was testimony to her husband’s infidelity.

The part that I found most hard going was the section on Anne’s life in the Cape, but this was probably personal. As my primary area of research is late Georgian England, my interest in South Africa is limited, and I was eager for Anne to get back to England.

I think it would have been helpful to include a family tree, to enable the reader to keep up with all of Anne’s relations.

A few little quibbles

One of my gripes is about titles. On one occasion, Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, is referred to as Lady Frances Jersey. Though tempting to distinguish her from her equally famous daughter-in-law Sarah by inserting her Christian name, according to the rules governing titles, this is not correct. Lady Jersey took her title from her husband – using her Christian name before her title would indicate that it was a courtesy title she used due to the rank held by her father.

This was the case with Lady Anne Barnard. She took her title from her father and so when she married a commoner, she continued to use her courtesy title with her Christian name and her husband’s surname, indicating that the source of her title was her father and not her husband.

My second observation is about the date of Lady Anne Lindsay’s marriage to Andrew Barnard. Defiance gives the date as 30 October 1793, but the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for Lady Anne Barnard gives the date as 31 October. So, which is right? Dates can be tricky. It is sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly when someone was born or died before registration of births and deaths became compulsory in 1837. Parish registers only recorded the dates of baptisms and burials. However, marriages are easier. I decided to check as I have access to a transcription of the marriage registers of St George’s, Hanover Square. The marriage is recorded as taking place on 31 October 1793.

The last is what I have concluded is a typo that escaped the proofreader’s attention. Initially, I was a little confused by the dates for Chapter 19 – 1810-1844 – as Anne died in 1825 and it wasn’t even the last chapter. I believe the dates should read 1810-1814, as Chapter 20 covers the final years of her life – 1814-1825.

A daringly unconventional Georgian woman

In conclusion, Defiance is a readable biography of a daringly unconventional Georgian woman, full of detail about life at the Cape around 1800, and with some fresh insights into Mrs Fitzherbert’s relationship with the young George IV. Taylor makes good use of the new material from Anne's unpublished memoirs to produce a rounded biography of a little-known Georgian lady. I have given the book four stars rather than five because, for me, I found the section of the book devoted to South Africa quite hard going.

For a fuller review, see the Regency History blog: http://www.regencyhistory.net/2016/10...

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lady Anne Barnard was born of Scottish nobility just as the country was integrating into Great Britain. Through her life you see how the Empire’s opportunities and demands played out in people’s lives. Anne’s brothers were able to have careers in the church, the navy and India and Lady Anne’s mother networked in London to find suitors for her daughters. Lady Anne’s most famous creation is a song about the pressures of marrying to save a family from poverty.

While a minor noble without a budget for a wardrobe, Lady Anne still had a title which helped her make made her way in the top echelons of Georgian society. Her wit and confidence in conversation (a primary asset in drawing rooms) may have come from knowing (through her father) the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. She was musical and beautiful.

You read of Lady’s Anne’s bachelor days where she has many admirers and travels on her own. I lost count of the marriage proposals; some came from top politicians. She also had a wealthy admirer who set her up in style. There are not many happy marriages in her environment. The saddest, up close, is her sister Margaret’s.

Lady Anne’s hasty courtship and marriage shocked society. Anne has to ask her old politically powerful beaus to find him a position. His lack of a title sticks in their craw. (She has married beneath us!) The result is several years in South Africa where Anne recorded botany, brought back unusual animals, created paintings and wrote of the land and the experience; all an important documentation of the time. Anne clearly shows her metal after her husband's death as she nurtures his natural children.

Besides its portrait of Georgian society, there were, for me, a few other insights. I came to understand the background of the rumors surrounding the Duke of Wales’s, (George IV’s) (perhaps) first wife. She was a friend of Anne’s; the two single women traveled extensively together at a time when this was just not done. Also new to me was how British aristocrats enjoyed trips to France to, essentially, watch the revolution… almost like we watch documentary films. While not new, the description of the different administrations in the Cape showed the pettiness of colonial administrators.

The research and presentation are good. The reader comes to understand this eccentric person, but his book is not for everyone. You need to have interest in this period or this person to make it work for you.

[Hutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

My father-in-law gave me this book after reading an advertisement for it in the New Yorker. When he brought it over he said, "This lady sounds like someone you'd be interested in knowing about."

Lady Anne Barnard was indeed a fascinating character, but I'm not sure Stephen Taylor really brings her together in this book. The beginning starts out in familiar territory to anyone who's ever read a biography of an 18th century British woman: parents are disappointed in her for being a girl, raised in tenuous position in society, terrible childhood, etc. As she moves through her adolescence and young adulthood, Lady Anne Lindsay (her maiden name) was a bit of a coquette, and Taylor makes her out to be fairly wishy-washy about any and all of her suitors, and presents her decisions not to marry them as short-sighted. He doesn't seem to delve very deeply into her feelings despite references to a wealth of her writing including letters (which are quoted at some points) surviving. She has some success early on in the intellectual circles in her native Scotland, but Taylor glosses over these incidents in favor of her romantic entanglements.

Lady Anne was certainly quick witted, and good at making herself a desired guest in society first in Scotland, and then in London. She had a deep relationship with her sister Margaret, and cares for her through a rough marriage to a con man. But really, the book drags until the section where Anne finally meets and marries Andrew Barnard in her 40s, long past the time when most women are married, and obviously too old to bear children.

Once Anne marries, and she and Andrew take off for South Africa in a plum post for Andrew, the book becomes much more interesting, and this is, I believe, because the subject is near and dear to Taylor, as he's written a book about the colony there already. Here he shows far more nuance in how Anne perceives the segregated society, the political hierarchy of the colony, and her role as a reporter to the British government about what goes on there. Taylor paints a beautiful picture of the landscape, and includes several images that Anne herself painted or drew while there.

And yet, once Anne returns to London, the book again dulls. There are many interesting threads that could have been pursued more rigorously, particularly how Anne fostered her husband's illegitimate children and some of her nieces and nephews. Most fascinating to me were the short references to a child that Andrew fathered with a slave in South Africa after he had parted from Anne for another posting there. I wish Taylor had spent more time on this.

Taylor also elides over most of Anne's writing, despite the fact that she is presented as a "woman of letters." He certainly mentions her authorship of the ballad of "Auld Robin Grey," but doesn't mention much more. I feel like this story is left half-told, and again, while Lady Anne is certainly a fascinating character, she isn't done too many favors in this treatment of her.

[Jo-anne Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lady Anne Barnard is a character who existed on the fringes of both nobility and political high society in the late 18th century. Born into a financially constrained titles family in Scotland, her family was much older than her mother and her upbringing did not afford many luxuries. Entering into Edinburgh society at 16 Anne was expected to marry for money, to support her younger siblings, but this did not happen and Anne moved to London. Juggling various suitors Anne married late and to a man socially her inferior but it appears to have been a love match. What make Anne Barnard such an engaging character is that she kept much of her correspondence over the years and published it.

I really enjoyed this book because Anne was such a relatively obscure character. She witnessed many atrocities in the French Revolution, was a friend to the Prince of Wales and assisted his secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, was a close friend to many major politicians and helped to develop diplomatic relationships in South Africa as Britain took power. All-in-all she was a fascinating woman and this biography more than does her justice. Taylor has researched his book deeply, drawing on both contemporary sources and Anne's own meticulously kept papers, and produced a lively story of a remarkable woman

[Melisende · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lives of unconventional ladies has always fascinated me - and Lady Anne Barnard was no exception. A woman who lived 1750-1825 and embarked on a series of adventures, none more outstanding than her journey to South Africa - unheard of for a woman at the time!

I was unfamiliar with Lady Barnard, and the author uses diary entries and personal letters to bring this woman to life - they say sometimes fact is more exciting than fiction - and in Anne Barnard, this is doubly so. One of the great adventuresses, who no doubt carved a path for those ladies who followed her.

For those who are a student of women in history - this is especially one for you!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A++++ bonkers. Gaspingly bonkers. Someone needs to base 20.5 books on her life (calmer sidekick and surprise black child included).

[Kristi Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Real & true love, such as he who made the sexes meant them to feel for each other, when it takes place in good hearts, whether clothed in a dark skin or fair, whether in man or woman, will always be ready to sacrifice everything for its object.”

“They remained, in Andrew’s words, ‘unfashionable enough to sleep in the same bed.’”

This is the remarkable and unconventional story of Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard who was born in Scotland in 1750 and lived until 1824. She was a poet, artist and memoir and travel writer. She was most famous for having written the ballad “Auld Robin Grey”.

Anne Lindsay was a woman who refused to marry for anything but love. She was friends and intimates with London society and politicians. She finally married when she was 38 years old to a younger man Andrew Barnard. It was definitely a love match. Although she was unable to have children, after Andrew’s death she took care of his three illegitimate ones including a young girl born from a black slave.

She traveled with her husband to South Africa and made friends with the Boers, the Hottentots and the English society in that colony. She was unnerved by the slavery issue but did own slaves in order to have help around the house.

She was a woman far ahead of her time, but also one who was constrained by her times. She painted and wrote extensive journals to let her politician friends know what was happening in South Africa during the Napoleonic wars. She was an adventure-seeker and a gracious hostess.

I believe her greatest achievement was taking in a young half black girl, giving her an education and leaving her a legacy so that she would never want. That girl married a local gentleman farmer and had several children with him. Anne would have been pleased.

I highly recommend this biography of Lady Anne Barnard for anyone who loves remarkable women. It has been extensively researched from her many unpublished papers.

I received this advance copy from Goodreads and I am delighted I did!

[Dienece Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the start and end of this book. Learning about growing up in Scotland and how that was different from growing up in England. One such point is that in England everyone went to church no matter what, and in Scotland it was optional.

I will note that a Victorian writer (Anthony Trollope) write that everyone went to church in the country, but it was optional in London. Not sure when that came into being. Lady Anne was Georgian, so there is about 100 years between her life and Anthony Trollope's books.

The middle part of the book covers a Scot in London. I disliked this part because the author becomes obsessed with whether or not Lady Anne was still a virgin, and his obsession really ruined the middle part for me.

The latter half of the book, she goes to South Africa with her husband in the mid to late 1790s. That part was really cool, and I wrote all kinds of notes about what she saw, political environment, popular concepts and prejudices of the day. The latter half was just so rich with detail!

[Peter Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book for everyone.I find it hard to give away books which I got in a fit of enthusiasm but later felt may not be worth the effort at my time in life.I began this thinking I would soon put it aside but how wrong was I.I found it engrossing and revealing about a relatively lowly aristocrat from Scotland who made her way in Regency England,a period of history I knew little about.She remained single despite being wooed by older richer men only to marry late in life to a poor army officer who became secretary to the governor of Cape Colony.She travelled out with him,enjoyed the life and wrote and drew copious amounts about this new addition to the Empire.It’s a fine biography but really only for lovers of English history,Regency times and perhaps lovers of Jane Austen.It’s very revealing about the life in London in the late 18th century.

[Diane Sallans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a lot of Historical Romance Fiction, especially those set in the Regency and Georgian periods, so it was interesting to read a biography of a woman who lived during those times. I just found myself re-reading the prologue - I would suggest doing that to really take in some points. Anne was a prolific writer of journals, notes and letters. Tho she burned many of her papers in her last months many survived (and I think there is probably much more available to support many studies of those times). That volume must certainly have presented a daunting task to the author of this book in determining what to include.

[Melinda M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defiance is the biography of Lady Anne Barnard (1750-1825) by Stephen Taylor. Lady Anne Barnard is a women who existed on the fringes of both nobility and political high society in the late 18th century. Lady Anne Barnard wrote many litters and kept journals. She published it. She had many adventures and traveled to different countries including South Africa. Quiet different than most ladies of her time period, her life is closer to a novel. Stephen Taylor makes wide use of her papers in writing this biography. IF you like biographies the regency time period or adventure, give this book a try.

I received a copy thru a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story of Lady Anne Barnard's life reads much like a novel would of an unusual heroine living in a similar time period. I knew nothing of Lady Anne before picking this book up, and I come away full of admiration for her. The author does a wonderful job bringing her to life using journal entries and letters. At times I felt slightly overwhelmed by all of the people named in the story, and lost track of some of them. Overall, though, an enjoyable book about an extraordinary woman.

[Roxanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book that I had gotten on goodreads as a giveaway. The writing was great and very entertaining. Taylor paints an extraordinary portrait of Lady Anne Barnard with his words. Anne Barnard had a series of unlucky relationships until she met an army officer. Despite their age difference, they married and traveled abroad. Barnard's story certainly does not end with her marriage but increases with interest to the reader. Really enjoyable.

[Tracie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truthfully, I chose this book because I share a surname with the subject! Interesting life, full of intrigue, political diversions, and lost (and lunatic!) loves. Towards the end, it got a bit tedious. However, much like my dear Miss Austen, some of Lady Anne's correspondence was destroyed; so, some holes are left about which to speculate. However, unlike Dear Jane, she was a hoarder; thus, in her many piles and files, the biographer found many tidbits.

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The life of an unconventional 18th century Scottish aristocrat detailing her early life in Scotland, position in London society as a friend of politicians and Maria Fitzherbert and her eventual marriage to a younger man and life with him in South Africa. Told using extracts from her unpublished letters and memoir it paints a portrait of an interesting woman who was a liberal for her time, though some of her attitudes would jar today. An enjoyable read.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for review elsewhere but if you love Regency England, or bohemian aristocratic women of the past, or even Jane Austen, and you're looking for a good scholarly novelistic biography, this is it. A charming, intelligent, unconventional lady's long life of glamor, scandal, adventures and plot twists.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I found this book hard going but a few chapters in I think I must have become interested in what happened to Anne and her many acquaintances.

Anne Lindsay had a very different life from anybody I have ever heard of before. She was an unusual woman, with a heart and mostly good intentions whatever her faults.

[Helen Carolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting lady made boring by a dull and plodding author. A real yawnfest.

[Julie Barnard]

I read about 50 pages and quit. This disappointed me,but I just couldn’t get into it.

[Kat Noble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the first full biographies on Lady Anne Barnard, with new access to her memoirs, which, until recently, had been held privately by Lady Anne’s family. Taylor uses them to tell Lady Anne’s story from childhood to death while acknowledging that Lady Anne wrote these memoirs for her family to read rather than publish, so was careful not to offend them or to share gossip.

Lady Anne was a prominent member of Georgian society, a contemporary of Lady Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and a friend of the Prince of Wales. She was seen as eccentric because she was late to marry and decided to travel to the Cape of Good Hope with her husband, rather than stay home in England.

She was an avid writer and painter, and she captured her travels in South Africa in a rich resource that is still examined and championed by historians of South African history today. She was adventurous, and kind and would be a wonderful person to have met at a dinner party. She bucked conventions in many ways and was determined to live her life on her terms as far as possible.

She was a witness to the French Revolution and the last years of French royal society and recorded her observations with detail and flair. As with many women writers of the time she did not seek fame or to make money from her writing, due to seeing it as unbecoming of a lady. She did however in her youth write and release what became a famous ballad ‘Old Robin Grey’, which at the end of her life would be attributed to her thanks to the efforts of Sir Walter Scott, who was an admirer.

She did not have children of her own, but she looked after her husband’s natural children and was a supportive aunt to her nephews and nieces. She also decided to raise her husband’s daughter, Christina, who had been born to a black slave woman in South Africa and who would help her compile her memoirs. It was seen as a defiant act for Lady Anne to do this, and she cared for Christina all her life and left her a legacy, but there is no record of how Christina or her mother felt at their separation. Dido Belle, the niece of Lord Mansfield, who was born into slavery in the West Indies but taken back to England to be raised as a free gentlewoman, was a contemporary of Lady Anne’s and lived nearby. Her treatment in society at the time could reflect Christina’s. She was never fully accepted by the Lindsay family, and Lady Anne seemed to show much anxiety about how her ‘protégé’ would be judged by society because of her race.

Taylor writes a compelling and interesting life of Lady Anne. He is an experienced biographer and historian of the period; he was born in South Africa and raised in England and has based his first four books in South Africa. Lady Anne is his first biography on a woman and Georgian society, but she links into his other research in a variety of ways. He touches on other events in the period that he has written about in this book, and it would be interesting to read his other books on the period as they interlink.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful story of the life of Lady Anne Barnard. I had always been fascinated by the stories told concerning the life of Lady Anne. Since arriving in Cape Town years ago, there have been many scraps of information about the Lady which I have read or heard. I have visited the pool in Kirstenbosch Gardens on many occasions, where supposedly she bathed naked; and heard several related tales of her climb up Table Mountain. However, she remained a distant and enigmatic figure from the history of the Cape. This book has coloured-in the vague visual sketch I had formed of the Lady. The author's research was thorough, using some of the entries from Anne's personal journal and other recorded material from her lifetime. She appears from the pages as an intelligent, liberal, free-spirited, if eccentric soul; constrained only by her gender and the conventions of the age into which she was born. I had not realized how much political influence she exerted, nor how many very influential persons she numbered among her close friends. Her relationships with Fritz and the Prince of Wales I found particularly interesting having grown-up in Brighton, where the Prince spent much of his leisure time.
The fact that Lady Anne obviously retained a love of the Cape and a deep interest in the flora, fauna and people of the area endeared her to me. Her adoption of a child from the Cape demonstrated her loving, forgiving nature. She came across as a courageous, warm personality, who had the strength to defy conventions on many occasions.
An enthralling read. Highly recommended.

[Betty]

I’m leaving this unrated as I just can’t decide the appropriate way to go. Basically I don’t think even David McCullough could have made a compelling story out of the thin material the author had to work with. I suspect historical fiction would have been a better use of the story. That said, I have an interest in the lives of obscure women in history so I was perfectly happy reading it.