Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Delany
-
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's writing was unpublished in her lifetime during the eighteenth century, but letters, occasional poems, and other writings (a libretto, a romance) were as much part of her daily life as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.
Fraser, Maxwell. “Jane Williams (Ysgafell) 1806-1885”. Brycheiniog, Vol.
7
, pp. 95-114.
102
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Augusta Hall
Leisure and Society
Ann Thicknesse
Thomas Gainsborough
, a family friend, painted her as an unmarried woman in an eye-catching pose in 1760. This portrait has become famous and is often reproduced. Gainsborough decided against exhibiting it publicly, but Mary Delany
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...
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
Publishing
Sarah, Lady Pennington
She appended her signature in the same form as before, S. Pennington, to her preface. The subscribers are a highly impressive collection in terms of social status; few writers subscribed and those, like Lord Chesterfield
LP
's friendship with Constantia Grierson
had begun before her marriage. Both she and her husband were friends and protegées of Swift
, and she met and entertained the future Mary Delany
on the latter's...
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...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Amelia Opie
This was John Opie's second marriage; his first wife had deserted him and their marriage had been dissolved by act of parliament. The second marriage remained childless. John Opie had been enjoying professional success in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte O'Conor Eccles
COCE
opens by making two points which might seem at variance with each other: the fascination which the past holds for later generations, and their ignorance of its discomforts and inconvenience. In a note she...
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...
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke
in Bristol the previous September...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
The leading figures in the movement were Montagu herself (who spent freely in hospitality, and who was later dubbed the Queen of the Bluestockings or Queen of the Blues) and Carter
(the most intellectually...
Timeline
25 March 1738: The Irish harper, composer, and song-writer...
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,...
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.
