Sarah Lady Cowper

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SLC is best remembered for the diaries which she kept between 1700 and 1716 and for the eleven volumes of commonplace-books in which, from 1670 till 1700, she recorded excerpts from her voracious and highly serious reading, with some prayers and bible commentary of her own.
  • BirthName: Sarah Holled
  • Married: Cowper
  • Titled: Lady
  • Indexed: Lady Sarah Cowper
    Her biographer, Anne Kugler, uses this form of her name, but it is incorrect. Lady is joined to a first name only in the honorary titles of women whose fathers are earls or dukes (as in the case of SLC 's grand-daughter Lady Sarah Cowper, whose father had an earldom).
Photograph of a half-length painting probably of Sarah, Lady Cowper, by one of the circle of Enoch Seeman. She wears an ivory gown with a lace-filled décolleté, and a contrasting blue band at waist and sleeves. Her dark hair is piled on top of her head.

Milestones

14 February 1644

Sarah Holled (later SLC ) was born in Eastcheap (a street in the City of London), her parents' only child.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

St James's Day, 25 July 1700

SLC branched out from keeping a commonplace-book (of excerpts from her reading) to keeping a diary, a record of her own feelings, frustrations, and pious resolutions (with excerpts still interspersed). She continued as a diarist for sixteen years.
Cowper, Sarah, Countess. “Sarah Cowper’s Diary, Volume 1, 1700-1702”. Defining Gender, 1450-1910, 2007.
F29, Image 1
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

30 September 1716

SLC made her last diary entry: This is the seventh volume. 'Tis to be hoped there are some collections in them, may be useful to posterity. My phrase now is farewell For Ever.
qtd. in
Kugler, Anne. Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of Lady Sarah Cowper, 1644-1720. Stanford University Press, 2002.
191

3 February 1720

SLC died in her later seventies, at her house in Bedford Row, London.
Kugler, Anne. Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of Lady Sarah Cowper, 1644-1720. Stanford University Press, 2002.
191
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

14 February 1644

Sarah Holled (later SLC ) was born in Eastcheap (a street in the City of London), her parents' only child.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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