Lady Eleanor Butler

01 January 1739 - 02 June 1829

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Cultural formation	Hester Lynch Piozzi	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	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 )...
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...
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...
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	Elizabeth Hamilton	While in Wales they visited Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby (the ladies of Llangollen) and in the Lakes they stayed with Elizabeth Smith and her family. Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818, 2 vols. 1: 152-4 Smith, Elizabeth, 1776 - 1806. Fragments, In Prose and Verse. Editor Bowdler, Henrietta Maria, Richard Cruttwell, 1811. 151 In Edinburgh in 1803...
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	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	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. qtd. in Liddiard, J. S. Anna. Kenilworth and Farley Castle: with Other Poems. Hibernia–Press Office, 1813. prelims She may perhaps have known Anna Seward
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	Elizabeth Smith	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 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...

Timeline

1782

George Romney painted a picture to illustrate (after the fact) William Hayley 'a Triumphs of Temper, 1781: Serena, reading Burney 's Evelina. The model was Honora Sneyd .

Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997.

607, 609

1 April 1789

Hester Lynch Piozzi (a propos reports about Marie Antoinette ) indignantly recorded what she presents as if it was her first encounter with lesbianism.

Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Penguin, 1973.

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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Texts

Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “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 et al. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton. Editor Bell, Eva Mary, Macmillan, 1930.