Mary Delany

-
MD 's writing was unpublished in her lifetime during the eighteenth century, but letters, occasional poems, and other writings (a libretto, a romance) were as much part of her daily life as her art works. Little except her letters survives.
Portrait of Mary Delany, by John Opie, 1782. Her face and grey hair are enclosed by a white cap; she wears a dark cloak with a hood, white linen at her neckline, and a pendant.

Milestones

14 May 1700

Mary Granville (later MD ) was born in the small village of Coulston in Wiltshire.
Hayden, Ruth. Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers. British Museum.
170, 15

4 October 1772

MD wrote to a niece that she had invented a new way of imitating flowers. So began her best-remembered work: the Hortus Siccus or Flora Delanica or paper mosaicks, a collection of pictorial representations made by pasting scraps of coloured paper.
Pavord, Anna. “Passion portraits: A stunning new exhibition reveals the delicate beauty of Mary Delany’s ’paper mosaiks’”. The Independent.
Linney, Verna. “A Passion for Art, a Passion for Botany: Mary Delany and her Floral ’Mosaiks’”. Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work, and Culture, edited by Linda V. Troost, Vol.
1
, pp. 203-35.
219, 225

15 April 1788

MD died of pneumonia at Windsor.
Hayden, Ruth. Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers. British Museum.
169-70

Biography

Birth and Family

14 May 1700

Mary Granville (later MD ) was born in the small village of Coulston in Wiltshire.
Hayden, Ruth. Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers. British Museum.
170, 15

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials. Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe