In 1714 Delarivier Manley was threatened with the publication of a biography so malign and damning that rather than being victimised she decided to go one better and produce her own biography. What she created was The Adventures of Rivella, a novel disguised as a biography based closely on her life told by a fictional admirer, Sir Charles Lovemore, to his friend the Chevalier d’Aumont pretending to be ‘Done into English from the French.’ The story is told one fine evening in Somerset House garden overlooking the Thames but it is so delicious and enflaming to d’Aumont that Sir Charles sends away his servants and has the gates locked before he begins. Manley carries off this fictional performance with aplomb: ‘Her virtues are her own, her vices occasioned by her misfortunes; and yet as I have often heard her say, if she had been a man, she had been without fault.’ This is her story ... well perhaps.