George and Emily Eden were a devoted sibling pair. Both unmarried, they were accepted as a mildly unconventional couple by friends in the dynastically conscious governing class. George (1784-1849) entered politics as a Whig to replace his elder brother, who had been groomed for success but drowned in the Thames off Westminster one January night in 1810. Four years later George inherited his father’s peerage as 2nd Baron Auckland. In 1835 he was appointed Governor-General of India, and Emily (1797-1869), although reluctant to leave her close friend, the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, went with him. A witty and perceptive writer, who later published a distinctively voiced pair of novels, Emily chronicled the Indian period, as she did her entire adult life, in letters. Allen traces the development of her closeness to George, their interlocking private and public lives and the events that impacted on them, including the Afghan disaster of January 1842 and the mixture of blame and forbearance that George attracted at home. A poignant coda describes Emily’s final twenty years as Victorian invalid, author, and observer of the political scene.

Eden's candid letters represent thousands of nineteenth-century women who dutifully accompanied their men to outposts of the British Empire.

The worst thing to happen to the season’s perfect couple: marriage When the young and gorgeous Helen Eskdale met the wealthy aristocrat Lord Teviot, everything clicked. This was a couple that was meant to be—the match of the year, if not the ages. But in the rush to the altar, there was no time for bride and groom to actually get to know each other. Now the question is: Can they keep their marriage from falling apart? The Semi-Attached Couple explores the upstairs-downstairs intrigues and comic misunderstandings central to the classic English romance with all the wit, style, and charm of a Jane Austen novel. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

"Emily Eden (1797-1869) was born into a prominent Whig family and grew up surrounded by an aristocratic inner circle of British social and political life. In 1835, her unmarried older brother, George, was appointed Governor-General of India. Unmarried herself, Emily was to be his consort during his six-year tenure. She travelled reluctantly, complaining bitterly and constantly about life in India. Between 1837 and 1840 Emily accompanied her brother 'up country' on a mission to forestall the perceived threat to British interests from Russia and Persia, both stealthily eyeing India and concocting plans to invade Afghanistan. This period produced a great surge in Emily's written and artistic output; her creativity sustained her throughout the whole time she was in India, and also provided her with a resource on which to draw for the rest of her life. Mary Ann Prior has re-traced Emily Eden's footsteps through the upper provinces and charts the immense changes that have taken place over the 170 years since, noting the constants - the continuing foreign military presence in an area that could be called the 'Balkans of Central Asia'. George Eden's policies contributed to the disastrous first Afghan war, a bloody clash of cultures that was to be a harbinger of future conflict still with us today. Emily's visual and written material from her sojourn abroad has been used as the linchpin on which to attach snippets of information about modern India. It also gave the author a chance to match unidentified paintings to the places where they were produced, to date undated ones, and to connect anonymous sitters with their true personalities."--Publisher's description.