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.
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...
Dedications
J. S. Anna Liddiard
JSAL
published at DublinKenilworth and Farley Castle: with other Poems, dedicated to two famous Irishwomen, Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of Llangollen.
Liddiard, J. S. Anna. Kenilworth and Farley Castle: with Other Poems. Hibernia–Press Office, 1813.
prelims
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Among EOB
's literary friends, Elizabeth Hamilton
was special. When Benger mentions Hamilton's delight in fostering unprotected talent, especially female talent, she is probably thinking of her own. She prints letters which are almost certainly...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Lister
The Leeds Mercury then published a spoof marriage announcement between Ann Walker and Captain Tom Lister of Shibden Hall.AL
thought this merely funny (unlike Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Elizabeth Mavor
, biographer of Butler
and Ponsonby
, classes as romantic attachments HMB
's friendships with both of them, with Smith
, and with Margaret Davies
. Bowdler was, says Mavor, inclined to adopt...
Family and Intimate relationships
Frances Power Cobbe
Lloyd was the daughter of the squire of Rhagatt in Merionethshire, Wales; a maiden aunt in the family had been a friend of the Ladies of Llangollen (Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
)...
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, 1997.
96-7
For years they regularly exchanged gifts...
Friends, Associates
Mary Matilda Betham
As well as meeting at Llangollen with Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
(who later talked with high praise of her),
Betham, Ernest, editor. A House of Letters. Jarrold and Sons, 1905.
69, 70
MMB
acquired a wide acquaintance in London. She became a close friend...
Friends, Associates
J. S. Anna Liddiard
She wrote that Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of Llangollen, treated her with very kind and flattering attention when she visited them.
Liddiard, J. S. Anna. Kenilworth and Farley Castle: with Other Poems. Hibernia–Press Office, 1813.
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...
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, 1971.
126
Friends, Associates
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Frances Burney
preferred HMB
, as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller
of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
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
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
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...
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 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, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Texts
Butler, Lady Eleanor, Sarah Ponsonby, and Caroline Hamilton. “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, Sarah Ponsonby, and Caroline Hamilton. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton. Editor Bell, Eva Mary, Macmillan, 1930.
