Wild Romance Summary

On a steamer passage from France to England in 1852, nineteen-year-old Theresa Longworth met William Charles Yelverton, a soldier destined to become the Viscount Avonmore. A flirtation began that soon blossomed into a clandestine, epistolary affair, ranging from the shores of England to the battlefields of the Crimean War. Five years after their first meeting they married secretly in Edinburgh, and then, at Theresa’s urging, they married again that summer in Dublin—or did they?

Separated by circumstance soon after they were wed, the two would never again live together as man and wife. When Yelverton left Theresa to marry another woman, Theresa found herself having to prove that their marriage had ever existed. Multiple trials ensued, in Ireland, England, and Scotland, and for months their scandal captivated each nation. Newspapers broadcast each detail of the proceedings, songwriters dedicated ballads to Theresa, and novelists such as Wilkie Collins borrowed the courtroom melodrama for their plots. Over the course of the very public ordeal, Theresa lost any chance of a private married life.

In this brilliant debut, Chloë Schama portrays a woman at the forefront of changes that the twentieth century would bring to women's lives everywhere. Theresa's story is both a courtroom drama full of steamy intrigue and the chronicle of how one woman made a life for herself as an unmarried author and public speaker in a society that had little space for either. Thrust into the spotlight, Theresa reincarnated herself as “Teresina Peregrina,” traversing the globe and writing about her journeys: she visited the Mormons in the American West, crossed paths with John Muir in Yosemite, and ventured into the far reaches of Asia and Africa, where she spent the last years of her life. Events beyond her control forced Theresa to become a woman of the world, when she would have settled for a world defined by her husband.

In Wild Romance, Chloë Schama unearths the inspiring tale of a woman who held onto her ideals of independence, of self-reliance, and - despite everything - of love, and who never gave up.