The players

When the four Sparks sisters met the Earl of Hammond, the handsome, wealthy lord who was heir to their father's estate, chaos was bound to ensue. Rescuing the four young beauties from the specter of genteel poverty, Hammond spirited them off to London, determined to find them suitable husbands among the cream of the ton. But the Sparks soon had London all ablaze with outrage: Martha writing poetry that delighted and scandalized the beau monde; Caroline mooning desperately over an unscrupulous fortune hunter; Muffin horse-whipping a lord in the park; and Irene, the dutiful eldest, enacting…