The scandalous duchess who inspired one of English literature’s greatest works A new biography tells the story of Elizabeth Chudleigh, whose charm, ambition, and conviction for bigamy inspired Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp 7 April 2021 • 8:29am Olivia Cooke As Becky Sharp in ITV’s Vanity Fair, the novel inspired by the life of the ‘Duchess Countess’, Elizabeth Chudleigh “Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden.” Here is Thackeray’s finest creation, Becky Sharp, in the first chapter of Vanity Fair – throwing Dr Johnson’s dictionary away as she leaves school. Rules, definitions, the limits of the patriarchal system are not for her. An adventuress who rampages through London society and across Europe, ambition in one hand, brandy bottle in the other, Becky is complicated, “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” (as Caroline Lamb described Byron) and yet, mesmerising. Her kind friend Amelia Sedley should be the heroine, but it is Becky who steals the attention of novelist and reader alike.