The Female Infidel: The Vindication of Fanny Dashwood

Rachael Fanny Antonina Dashwood was born to great wealth but illegitimate. Educated in France with princesses, and the daughters of Thomas Jefferson, she returned to England at the outbreak of the Revolution. Embroiled in a series of teenage scrapes, she eloped with handsome but dim Matthew Allen Lee and soon separated from him. In 1804 she was abducted from her London home and raped. Forced to attend a trial that failed to deliver justice her reputation was ruined. It led Thomas De Quincey to name her as the Female Infidel. There are very modern echoes in her persecution by the media, vilification by cartoonists and sufferings at the hands of stalkers. Despite all this she published her Essay on Government, praised by Wordsworth but which might have had greater success had she not already achieved notoriety.