“You Think Me a Bold Cheat”: Mary Carleton, Counterfeit Princess

by The Public Domain Review on publicdomainreview.orgArticle

Accused of posing as foreign royalty to lure her young suitor into a bigamous marriage, Mary Carleton was the subject of dozens of pamphlets and broadsides published in the mid-17th century, including by Carleton herself. Investigating the fraudster’s life, Laura Kolb finds a self-fashioning figure…