She was apprenticed to a London milliner and later married a linen-draper. Taking them to France, the trio lived together until Sidney dropped Lucretia, his spare, for being either "invincibly stupid, or impossibly stubborn". He named the 11-year-old Sabrina, and the second, who was 12, Lucretia. He visited foundling hospitals and adopted two young girls, one brunette and one blonde, he thought suitable for training. Having been rejected as a suitor by a friend's sister at the age of 21, Day decided to make a perfect woman for himself. Although widely hailed as a progressive, there was a less savoury corner of his life. The free-thinking Day was also a supporter of the anti-slavery movement and advocated American independence. He studied at Oxford and was heavily influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in particular by his book Emile (1761-62) which contained revolutionary ideas about the power of education. As a youth he gave away his pocket money to the poor. Born in 1748, Day was a man of independent means and modern ideas. The real-life Professor Higgins Moore will chronicle, the man who is thought to have prompted Shaw to write Pygmalion in 1913, was the philanthropist and poet Thomas Day. "The story is set in the same period as Wedlock," she said, "but this will be a different kind of book because that story was set on a big stage, with costumes and balls. Wedlock, the biography of the Countess of Strathmore, received a big sales boost when it featured on Channel 4's book club last month, but the author from South London suggests her new project will have a smaller scale. She was sent out to a nanny first and then at two she went to the foundling hospital in London and finally on to Shrewsbury." "The beginning of the book is about the foundling hospital and I have recreated Sabrina's childhood. Moore explains that although Sabrina had a different name at that age, she had been given a unique number by the hospital that was recorded on the day she was taken away and which allowed her to trace back the girl's history. "There is still a lot of work to do, but I had quite a eureka moment when I went to the foundling hospital in Shrewsbury and managed to track Sabrina down." "I have spent about a year researching the book so far," said Moore, who is negotiating a British publishing deal for How to Create the Perfect Wife this weekend and fielding calls from American firms. On the eve of the London Book Fair the author Wendy Moore, already high up the non-fiction bestsellers' lists with her book, Wedlock, has found herself the object of frenzied commercial interest as she sets out to detail the life of the young orphan who was taken out of poverty in 1769 and trained up to become the ideal partner for a gentleman.
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