1820-21 2vols QUEEN CAROLINE Nightingale HISTORY Illus

Leather bound with gilt titles to spines and marbled paper covered boards.

Memoirs of Queen Caroline complete in two volumes and illsutrated with frotnispieces, extra engraved title pages and further plates within.

Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (later Queen Caroline; 17 May 1768 – 7 August 1821) was the queen consort of George IV of the United Kingdom from 29 January 1820 to her death.

She married the British king's eldest son, her first cousin, on 8 April 1795 at St. James's Palace in London. Her new husband, the future George IV then Prince of Wales, regarded Caroline as unattractive and unhygienic; he also suspected that she was not a virgin when they married. He himself had already secretly married Maria Fitzherbert; however, his marriage to Fitzherbert violated the Royal Marriage Act of 1772 and thus was not legally valid.[2]

For Caroline's part, she found her husband equally unattractive, and the prince's correspondence reveals that the couple only had sexual intercourse three times during their marriage: twice during the first night, and once the second night.[2] Princess Charlotte Augusta, George's only legitimate child, was born from one of these unions on 7 January 1796. The Prince and Princess of Wales never lived together afterwards, and appeared separately in public, both becoming involved in affairs with other lovers.

It was alleged that her marriage was made uncomfortable by George IV's affair with royal courtesan Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey. However, it is more likely that Caroline had little interest in her husband, and thus little interest in who he might be involved with romantically.

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