Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hester Lynch Piozzi
-
Standard Name: Piozzi, Hester Lynch
Birth Name: Hester Lynch Salusbury
Married Name: Hester Lynch Thrale
Married Name: Hester Lynch Piozzi
Pseudonym: H: L: T.
Pseudonym: An Old Acquaintance of the Public
Pseudonym: An Old Woman
Self-constructed Name: H: L: P.
Used Form: Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale, later Hester Lynch Piozzi
, was by inclination and practice a woman of letters as well as a woman of the world. She loved recording facts and details; she was an incisive critic (of real learning) and a great entertainer. She wrote poems, translations, essays, letters, journals, memoirs, and works of scholarship, and she published both during the later eighteenth and during the earlier nineteenth century.
IK
tells with decorous energy the story of a remarkable woman. Henrietta Fordyce
(née Cummyng), whom IK
had known well in her youth, was brought up with Lady Anne Barnard
.
Hester Lynch Piozzi
became a particularly close friend of HL
within a year of their first meeting.
Lee, Sophia. “Introduction”. The Recess, edited by April Alliston, University Press of Kentucky, p. ix - lii.
xxxii-xxxiii
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Family and Intimate relationships
Harriet Lee
Hester Lynch Piozzi
was trying unsuccessfully to bring about a marriage between HL
and the widowed marchese Ludovico Trotti
, who seemed to be in love with her.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
1: 356-7, 360 and n7-9
Textual Production
Harriet Lee
HL
wrote Verses for Hester Lynch Piozzi
, who recorded them in her Thraliana.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
1: 358n10
Literary responses
Harriet Lee
The Critical Review (which thought the first volume of Canterbury Tales resembled the work of Marmontel
, but happily without his profligate principles) was enthusiastic: We expect the second volume with impatience, as we have...
Literary responses
Harriet Lee
Hester Piozzi
particularly admired the last ten lines of the prologue, which apply the imagery of bubbles and rainbows to comedy and tragedy.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
2: 333 and n19
She felt the epilogue, though playful and pretty...
Friends, Associates
Sophia Lee
Hester Lynch Piozzi
began a letter which almost admiringly describes SL
living as a recluse and refusing to admit the visitors drawn by her fame.
Lee, Sophia. “Introduction”. The Recess, edited by April Alliston, University Press of Kentucky, p. ix - lii.
xxxvii-xxxviii and n118
Friends, Associates
Sophia Lee
Their school, together with their literary careers, brought SL
and her sisters a wide circle of friends and contacts, including Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. The novelist Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins describes Sophia as surrounded...
Friends, Associates
Sophia Lee
Those present included Hester Lynch Piozzi
, Hannah More
and her sisters, Sarah Siddons
, and others. The great point at issue was the gender of the anonymous author.
Literary responses
Sophia Lee
Audiences liked the play, and the theatre's takings were good. But it was performed only four times, with one more showing at the end of the season after SL
had complained to the management. This...
Friends, Associates
Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
She was a well-known figure in London cultural circles, particularly that of the Bluestockings. Charles Burney
called her at-home evenings blue conversazioni's and Horace Walpole
called them quite Mazarine-blue. Others specifically mentioned in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mrs Martin
Indeed, as in MM
's previous novels, the narrative technique contributes largely to the reader's enjoyment. The narrator addresses the reader as dear Madam, then (without modifying this address) invites her to call the narrator...
Reception
Alice Meynell
AM
's diligent recuperation of women's literary history nonetheless marks her as a predecessor of some of Woolf's feminist concerns. They both wrote about some of the same women, including, for example, Jonathan Swift's Stella...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
EM
met and became friends with Hester Thrale (later Piozzi
).
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
255-7
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
EM
met Frances Burney
at Hester Thrale
's house, Streatham Park, near London.
Hemlow, Joyce. The History of Fanny Burney. Clarendon.
