The first biography of Anne Damer since 1908,The Life of Anne Damer: Portrait of a Regency Artist, by Jonathan Gross, draws on Damers notebooks and previously unpublished letters to explore the life and legacy of Englands first significant female sculptor. Best known for her portraits of dogs and other animals, Damer also created busts of Englands most important political heroes, sometimes within days or hours of their historical accomplishments. This in-depth biography traces her life during the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Peace of Amiens and the Hundred Days. Damer was convinced that art could have significant political influence, sending her bust of Nelson to the King of Tanjore to encourage trade with India. Her art stands at the transition between neoclassicism and romanticism and provides a wealth of insight into 19th century British sculpture. In the last twenty years, there has been a strong revival of interest in Damers life, particularly in gay and lesbian studies due to her famous relationship with author Mary Berry. This text serves as a deeper investigation of this fascinating and important figure of British art history.
The emotional ménage a trois of Anne Damer, Mary Berry, and Horace Walpole forms the heart of this new biography. Gross contends that all three individuals, had they led more conventional lives, would never have given the world the literary and artistic gifts they bestowed in the form of Strawberry Hill,Belmour, andFashionable Friends. The struggles they faced will encourage modern readers to appreciate anew the fluidity of sexual identity and passionate friendship, as well as the restraints put in place by society to control them. Anne Damers life has much to teach a new generation concerned with the complex relationship between love, art, and politics.The Life of Anne Damer will interest historians of Georgian England, and readers in the fine arts, literature, and history.

Jonathan Gross is professor of English at DePaul University.

1. Peerless Ailesbury
2. Marriage to John Damer
3. Witches Round the Cauldron
4. Disaster, Death of John Damer
5. Too Strictly Right Even to be Beloved
6.The Widows Joys: Four Satires of Anne Damer
7. The Sylph, Rehabilitation, and Damers First Trip to Italy
8. Damers Second Trip to Italy
9. Park Place and Hieroglyphic Tales
10. Theatricals at Richmond House
11. Damer and Charles Hotham
12. Menage a Trois: Walpole , the Berrys, and Anne Damer, 143
13. Departure for Lisbon
14. Damers Return to England
15. Anne Damer as Sculptor: An Overview
16. Damer as Sculptor, a Catalogue Raisonee
17. Anne Damer and Mary Berry on Literature
18. Damer in Portugal: Beckford, Byron, and Napoleon
19. Damers Return from Lisbon, A Proselyte to Painting
20. Damer and Walpole: Tis a Debt I would Always Be Paying
21. Damer and Berry: The Thread that Holds Minds Together
22. Mary Berry and Charles OHara
23. Recovery and Inheritance of Strawberry Hill
24. Fashionable Friends andBelmour
25. Death of Anne Damers Mother
26. Infallible Tokens of Affection: Damer and Princess Caroline
27. Damer and Susan FerriersMarriage
28. Anne Damer and India