Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Eleanor Butler
-
Standard Name: Butler, Lady Eleanor
Birth Name: Eleanor Butler
Styled: Lady Eleanor Butler
One of the two renowned Ladies of Llangollen, LEB
produced life-writing (diaries, letters, and some poems) during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which structured, recorded, and celebrated their shared way of life. Today the writing of her partner, Sarah Ponsonby
, is also receiving attention.
She told her sister
that noe body but your selfe could have obtain'd [this] from me, for whom my obligations has imposed me a law of never refusing any that lys in my power. You...
Friends, Associates
Melesina Trench
In England and (especially) Ireland her friends (with whom she kept up largely by correspondence) included a number of other amateur writers: Mary Leadbeater
(from 1802), Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
(the Ladies of...
Friends, Associates
Mary Tighe
MT
visited Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of Llangollen, and met Anna Seward
at their house.
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph.
126
Friends, Associates
Mary Tighe
Before she left London, MT
met there her fellow Irish poet Tom Moore
. He subsequently visited her in Dublin and complimented her in verse. She exchanged poems with Barbarina Wilmot (later Lady Dacre)
...
Friends, Associates
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Under the patronage of Lady Charleville
, she met many prominent people in the capital in 1808; on the way home to Ireland she visited, as well as Lady Stanley
and her Shrewsbury relations, the...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
The young Jane Austen
paid Emmeline the compliment of allusion in her comical History of England, 1791.Anna Seward
, on the other hand, condemned CS
for indelicacy because she had exposed her husband's...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Smith
ES
and her mother visited the Ladies of Llangollen (Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
) en route to Ireland, and Elizabeth wrote a long letter to Bowdler on this subject, which unfortunately does...
Travel
Anna Seward
AS
first visited Llangollen, home of Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
. She stayed some weeks, though by the end of September she was writing to tell them about her journey home.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books.
96-7
Friends, Associates
Anna Seward
AS
became a close friend of Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of Llangollen, whom she called the Rosalind and Celia of real life.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books.
96-7
For years they regularly exchanged gifts...
Literary responses
Anna Seward
The Critical Review responded with high praise both of AS
(The real lovers of poetry have often lamented that the Muse of Miss Seward should have been so silent)
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 17 (1796):154
Textual Production
Anna Seward
The sonnets numbered a hundred; she had been long in the habit of reading them aloud, and friends like Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
urged her pressingly to publish them.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
226
The odes, done...
Residence
Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness Lytton
She lived for some years at Llangollen in Wales, recently the home of Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness Lytton,. “Introduction”. A Blighted Life, edited by Marie Mulvey Roberts, Thoemmes, p. vi - xxxvi.
xix-xxi
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Again she had the lead review spot in the Critical, which loved the book and quoted at length.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 14 (1795): 241-55
The British Critic also praised it, but some papers regretted that...
Cultural formation
Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP
's first marriage made heterosexuality a burden to her, with constant pregnancy, bearing children who died early and painfully, and tending to her husband's venereal diseases. She recorded what would later be called homophobic...
1 April 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi (a propos reports about...
Building item
1 April 1789
Hester Lynch Piozzi
(a propos reports about Marie Antoinette
) indignantly recorded what she presents as if it was her first encounter with lesbianism.
March 1908: Mary Louisa Gordon, who had qualified as...
Building item
March 1908
Mary Louisa Gordon
, who had qualified as both a physician and a midwife and had practised medicine in London since 1900, was appointed the first female prison inspector in Britain.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Texts
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, 1930, p. vii - viii; various pages.
Butler, Lady Eleanor, and Sarah Ponsonby. Life with the Ladies of Llangollen. Editor Mavor, Elizabeth, Viking, 1984.
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton. Editor Bell, Eva Mary, Macmillan, 1930.