Memoirs of a young Greek lady, Madame Pauline Adélaïde Alexandre Panam, against His Serene Highness the reigning Prince of Saxe-Cobourg. Translated by W. H. Ireland, Member of the Atheneum of Sciences and Arts in Paris

About this book

4to. pp. xvi, 205. Signatures: [A]-[B]4 C-N8 O7. Original boards, rebacked. Illustrated with a frontispiece engraved portrait of Pauline Panam and her son with a facsimile of Panam’s signature at the bottom and with an engraved portrait of Ernest of Saxe-Coburg. Both engravings are by Phillips, from the original French print. Front endpaper signed “A Panno [?] Brict [?] July 4th 1834.” Handwritten on end flyleaf: “England’s future dynasty!!” Penciled annotations throughout. After prolonged negotiations, the young Parisian Pauline Panam (1789-1842) published her memoirs to denounce her former lover and the father of her son, Ernest, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and brother of Leopold, widow of the English crown princess Charlotte. Panam, or her ghostwriters, corraborated her story with letters, at least some of which were fabricated. The memoirs were simultaneously published in French and English by Sherwood, Jones, and Company on August 29 1823. Separately, the radical pressman John Fairburn enlisted the Shakespeare forger William Henry Ireland (1775-1835) to translate and preface the memoirs, which he launched one month later, on September 24. This work is an example of the many scandalous memoirs produced or published throughout the 1820s by the English radical press, see also Bib# 4103252/Fr# 529 in this collection. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.