Poet and musician, artist and hostess, Lady Anne Barnard lived at the heart of Georgian society. High-born yet egalitarian, she travelled to France to observe the Revolution, rejected numerous suitors, and lived independently. Her curious ways attracted gossip right into her final years when she raised an illegitimate child at her home in Berkeley Square. Written with full access to her previously unseen private papers and unpublished memoirs, Defiance shows Lady Anne to be one of the unheralded chroniclers and pioneering women of her time.