Charlotte Guest

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Lady CG is remembered as an amateur scholar: her editions (with translation and annotation) of Middle Welsh tales which she called the Mabinogion remained a standard text for almost a century. She was also a lifelong diarist whose surviving journals, when typed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, filled more than 10,000 pages.
Jepson, Jill. Women’s Concerns. Peter Lang, 2009.
9-10
She was also, together with her first husband and after his death, a Victorian industrialist who published on the iron industry.
Sepia reproduction of a painting of Charlotte Guest by William Walker, 1852. Her smooth, dark hair is parted in the middle and coiled over her ears; she wears a dark dress with a deep V neck and a lace collar with a bow, a lacy shawl, and a ring on each hand. To the right is a basket full of roses and other flowers. National Library of Wales.

Milestones

19 May 1812
Lady Charlotte Bertie (later Guest) was born at a seventeenth-century mansion, Uffington House near Stamford in Lincolnshire, the eldest child in her family.
Guest, Revel, and Angela V. John. Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
3
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Guest, Charlotte. Extracts from her Journal, 1833–1852. Bessborough, Vere Brabazon PonsonbyEditor , John Murray, 1950.
opposite 124
March 1822
Lady Charlotte Bertie (later Guest) began writing her first staccato one-line diary entries at the age of nine, in a blank book given her by her stepfather .
Guest, Revel, and Angela V. John. Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
3
By 17 November 1838
Lady CG published the first part of her Mabinogion project, an Arthurian romance entitled The Lady of the Fountain. On this day, newly back from abroad, she picked up a copy at Longman's .
Guest, Charlotte. Extracts from her Journal, 1833–1852. Bessborough, Vere Brabazon PonsonbyEditor , John Murray, 1950.
84
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
9 March 1843
CG recorded that she had completed all that is in my power to do towards the Mabinogion. Translating the romances and composing notes (all but the topographical ones) were finished, and only the introduction left to do.
Guest, Charlotte. Extracts from her Journal, 1833–1852. Bessborough, Vere Brabazon PonsonbyEditor , John Murray, 1950.
146
29 August 1848
CG finished and dated her introduction to her translation of The Mabinogion, published late the following year.
Guest, Charlotte. The Mabinogion. J. M. Dent; E. P. Dutton, 1906.
12
By mid-November 1849
Lady CG completed the publication in three volumes of her transcription of Middle Welsh romances with new verse translations: titled The Mabinogion, though only four of the twelve tales are properly the Mabinogi.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1149-51
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
15 January 1895
Lady CG died at Canford Manor in Dorset of congestion of the lungs.

Biography

Birth and Family

19 May 1812
Lady Charlotte Bertie (later Guest) was born at a seventeenth-century mansion, Uffington House near Stamford in Lincolnshire, the eldest child in her family.
Guest, Revel, and Angela V. John. Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
3
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Guest, Charlotte. Extracts from her Journal, 1833–1852. Bessborough, Vere Brabazon PonsonbyEditor , John Murray, 1950.
opposite 124

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