George Ballard

Back in England in her second widowhood, MD was a frequent visitor to her lifelong, very close friend the Duchess of Portland . The duchess, an amateur scientist of unusual talent and achievement, brought MD

George Ballard honoured MD with the dedication of the second volume of his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 1752, calling her the truest judge and brightest pattern of female accomplishments. She...

SC was a great networker. Having met George Ballard , a local man (perhaps because her sister was a patient of his mother, who was a midwife), she introduced him to Elizabeth Elstob and to...

SC used letters to introduce John Wesley to the works of Mary Astell —just as, later, she used letters to raise the consciousness of George Ballard .

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.) Both Pendarves

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...

SC 's friend and printer Richardson saw her project in a different and far more simple light than she did: as the administering by a good woman of an antidote to the Poison shed by...

EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...

About the same year MA seems to have earnestly solicited some Learned Ladies of her Acquaintance to contribute their assistance towards Compiling a Book of Natural Philosophy. Apparently she divided the subject up and...

On the monument to ALS in Acton church, her widower called her a Darlinge of the Nine.George Ballard mentioned her, but then until the late-twentieth century she was virtually forgotten. In recent...