The appropriately named Cora Cash almost has it all. She is the daughter of the "Golden Miller", and therefore possibly the wealthiest heiress in America, set to inherit the vast fortune amassed through the remarkable success of Cash's Finest Flour. She has also been blessed with good looks, and her beautiful face and figure are admired wherever she goes.
Desire to be a Duchess
For Cora's mother, however, money is not enough. Mrs Cash may be famous throughout Rhode Island as the most generous hostess of the most desirable parties, but what she really craves is a title, something to validate the family and lend their riches an air of respectability and class. She firmly believes her daughter deserves to be no less that a duchess, and even forces her to wear a painful steel rod strapped to her body for two hours a day so that her deportment will be perfect when she finally comes across her future husband.
In the end, Cora comes across her Duke in the most unusual of ways. A horrific accident involving Mrs Cash and a dress covered in tiny lightbulbs has led to Cora and her mother spending some time in England, where Cora has an accident of her own. A fall from her horse whilst out hunting is luckily not serious; it does, however, put her into the care of the Duke of Wareham - a man with a title but quickly diminishing funds. Before long, a blissful love match is made, and Cora prepares to settle down into her new life as a Duchess.
Great Tradition of Period Novels
Of course, life - and romantic novels - rarely runs completely smoothly. Cora must learn to fit in with the immutable rules of an important English family, where her modern American ways are not always welcomed. And always, in the back of mind remains the memory of Teddy, her first love back in America - what is he doing now, and would he perhaps have been more suitable hero for Cora's life story?
My Last Duchess is a triumphant novel, capturing all the best features of the literary traditions it draws upon; fellow novelist Wendy Holden rightly called it a "literary Greatest Hits", featuring as it does the flawed but likeable heroine of a Jane Austen novel, the intriguing culture clashes faced by an American girl in England of a Henry James, and the dreadful mother-in-laws of any period drama you care to mention.
Goodwin has hitherto been best known as an editor of poetry anthologies; it is no coincidence that My Last Duchess takes its name from a Robert Browning poem. On this evidence, however, Daisy Goodwin has a glittering and successful career as a novelist ahead of her.
My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin is published in the UK in paperback by Headline (2010), ISBN 978-0-7553-4808-4.
Elizabeth Gregory - Liz graduated from Manchester University with a BA (Hons) in English Language & Literature, and also holds an MA in Literature from the ...
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