Set in eighteenth-century London, this quasi-fantasy tale "is part fact, part legend, and part imagination,"
"We are told of a lady of fashion whose portrait is painted by a young unknown artist, with her little negro slave at her knee. . . . [It is] a tale of love and jealousy, of a proud woman humiliated by her passions, of a poor man torn between rival beauties, of a pathetically innocent blackamoor made the sport of whim and fancy.
Set in eighteenth-century London, this quasi-fantasy tale "is part fact, part legend, and part imagination,"
"We are told of a lady of fashion whose portrait is painted by a young unknown artist, with her little negro slave at her knee. . . . [It is] a tale of love and jealousy, of a proud woman humiliated by her passions, of a poor man torn between rival beauties, of a pathetically innocent blackamoor made the sport of whim and fancy.