After an elaborate courtship, Laetitia Van Lewen
married Matthew Pilkington
.
Pilkington, Laetitia. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. Editor Elias, A. C., Jr, University of Georgia Press, 1997, 2 vols.
1: 14-17, 20-1; 2: 378
Family and Intimate relationships
Laetitia Pilkington
LP
's husband
disowned her after catching her with Robert Adair
(a young surgeon who later achieved immortality as the hero of a popular ballad) in her bedroom late at night.
Pilkington, Laetitia. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. Editor Elias, A. C., Jr, University of Georgia Press, 1997, 2 vols.
1: 88; 2: 474-6
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates
Mary Barber
MB
was a close friend of Constantia Grierson
. Her friendship with Jonathan Swift
endured many vicissitudes; that with Laetitia Pilkington
did not survive her apparently siding with Pilkington's husband
when the couple fell out...
Intertextuality and Influence
Laetitia Pilkington
MP's work was controversial from the beginning. It became the topic of newspaper paragraphs and of pamphlets. Several answers to it seem to have been written by Matthew Pilkington
, and one answer to him...
Other Life Event
Mary Barber
MB
was arrested and taken into custody, on Matthew Pilkington
's information, in connection with publishing a seditious poem by Swift
.
McLaverty, James. “Lawton Gilliver: Pope’s Bookseller”. Studies in Bibliography, Vol.
32
, 1979, pp. 101-24.
119
Textual Production
Mary Barber
Somebody signing Swift
's name, possibly MB
herself, addressed to Queen Caroline
a letter fulsomely praising Barber's writings and requesting patronage.
The name of Matthew Pilkington
, though not yet put forward, seems a natural...
Textual Production
Laetitia Pilkington
Her adult apprenticeship was less auspicious. Early in her marriage she antagonised her husband
by outshining him when Swift
set them to compete at translating odes by Horace
. Shortly before her departure, alone, for...
Textual Production
Laetitia Pilkington
She had already contributed a prologue for the one-act ballad opera A Cure for a Scold, which was written by James Worsdale
and revised by her husband
, and published this year.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.