Mary Delany

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Standard Name: Delany, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Granville
Married Name: Mary Pendarves
Married Name: Mary Delany
Pseudonym: Aspasia
Indexed Name: Mrs 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MD 's writing was unpublished in her lifetime during the eighteenth century, but letters, occasional poems, and other writings (a libretto, a romance) were as much part of her daily life as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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Wealth and Poverty Hester Mulso Chapone
She was left to comparative poverty; her uncle the bishop paid her an allowance of £20 a year. After her father's death in 1763 her financial situation somewhat improved. But when her uncle in turn...
Travel Anna Seward
A few months after attending a music festival at Manchester, AS stayed three weeks at Wellesbourne near Warwick with relations of the aged Mary Delany .
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
134-5
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Katharine Elwood
Some of the British women writers discussed in the text remain well-known, but others have slipped into obscurity. Memoirs includes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Griselda Murray , Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford , Hester Lynch Piozzi
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Bessie Rayner Parkes
The twelve women treated are as various in nationality, creed, habits of mind, and daily pursuits as can well be imagined. . . . but of every one of them it may truly be said...
Textual Production Charlotte Smith
It was small but handsome. Thomas Stothard did two of the illustrations. His design for sonnet 12 (Written on the Sea Shore.—October 1784—the month in which she crossed the Channel with her children...
Textual Production Sarah Chapone
Both Mary Pendarves (later Mary Delany) and John Wesley had read this remarkable work in manuscript the previous year. (Wesley had been reading her writing with enjoyment since at least April 1733.)
Glover, Susan Paterson, and Sarah Chapone. “Introduction”. The Hardships of the English Laws, Routledge, pp. 1-16.
11
Both Pendarves
Textual Production Sarah Chapone
SC had an important role in George Ballard 's pioneering work of women's history and women's biography. She introduced him to an even more important influence, Elizabeth Elstob ; she helped in his research; and...
Textual Production Elizabeth Montagu
EM 's correspondents over the course of her life included Dr John Gregory , Eliza Berkeley , Mary Delany , Ann Donellan , and Hester Thrale , besides the Duchess of Portland, Sarah Scott, and...
Textual Production George Paston
GP issued the first of her historical works about the eighteenth century: Mrs. Delany (Mary Granville) : A Memoir, 1700-1788, a study of the letter-writer and memoirist who was also a major artist in...
Textual Features Sarah Chapone
These concessions still leave her space for militancy. If the law exacts submission from wives it ought to exact fair treatment from husbands, or it goes further than the Bible allows. Those marriages where the...
Textual Features Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
Although Sir Joshua Reynolds supposed MBCL insufficiently skilled as an artist to manage history painting,
Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Editor Gibbs, Vicary, St Catherine Press.
8: 238
and Rose E. McCalmont in Memoirs of the Binghams, 1915, was dismissive about her artistic work, Horace Walpole
Textual Features Jan Morris
A Writer's House in Wales takes her home, Trefan Morys (originally the stables of Plas Trefan) as a focal point (or rather a summation, a metaphor, a paradigm, a microcosm, an exemplar, a multum in...
Publishing Mary Leapor
The arrangements for publication had not been entirely smooth sailing. ML was insulted when Freemantle predicted that the book might make her £10.
Rizzo, Betty. “Molly Leapor: An Anxiety for Influence”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin, Vol.
4
, pp. 313-43.
322
Freemantle was nevertheless instrumental in persuading her to publish and in...
Publishing Elizabeth Carter
The book had gone to press in June 1757.
Feminist Companion Archive.
The original press run of 1,018 copies had to be supplemented with a further 250. First of several more editions was the Dublin one of the...
Publishing Sarah Fielding
The work was dedicated to Lady Pomfret . Its 440 subscribers included many prominent people, reflecting the bluestockings' range of influence as well as SF 's local and family connections: Ralph Allen , Lord Chesterfield

Timeline

25 March 1738: The Irish harper, composer, and song-writer...

Writing climate item

25 March 1738

The Irish harper, composer, and song-writer Turlough Carolan (Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin) , died.
McGuire, James, and James Quinn, editors. Dictionary of Irish Biography. http://dib.cambridge.org/.

November 1739: The anonymous, probably female Sophia published...

Women writers item

November 1739

The anonymous, probably female Sophia published a pamphlet entitled Woman not Inferior to Man.

February 1741: Mary Pendarves (later Delany) wrote of her...

Building item

February 1741

Mary Pendarves (later Delany) wrote of her friend the Duchess of Queensberry 's court dress representing botanically exact flowers of many species, with the banks and tree-stumps they grew on.

2 May 1742: Lady Euston, formerly Lady Dorothy Boyle,...

Building item

2 May 1742

Lady Euston , formerly Lady Dorothy Boyle , died of her husband's ill-treatment within seven months of her wedding.

13 September 1742: Frances Williams wrote a letter of pure anger...

Building item

13 September 1742

Frances Williams wrote a letter of pure anger to her husband , who had hinted that she must have infected him with venereal disease when it was actually the other way round.

23 November 1752: George Ballard dated his preface to Memoirs...

Women writers item

23 November 1752

George Ballard dated his preface to Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain . . . (better known as Memoirs of Eminent Ladies); it was published that year.

1872: US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy,...

Writing climate item

1872

US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy, or Chauncey, Woolsey) published her highly popular and influential story for girls entitled What Katy Did.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.

Texts

Delany, Mary. A Catalogue of Plants Copyed from Nature in Paper Mosaick. Privately printed, 1778.
Delany, Mary. Flora Delanica. 1782.
Delany, Mary, and Sybil Connolly. Letters from Georgian Ireland. Editor Day, Angélique, Friar’s Bush Press, 1991.
Delany, Mary. Letters from Mrs. Delany (widow of Doctor Patrick Delany) to Mrs. Frances Hamilton. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820.
Delany, Mary. Marianna. 1759, p. 75.
Delany, Mary. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany. Editor Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover, R. Bentley, 1862.