Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hester Lynch Piozzi
-
Standard Name: Piozzi, Hester Lynch
Birth Name: Hester Lynch Salusbury
Married Name: Hester Lynch Thrale
Married Name: Hester Lynch Piozzi
Pseudonym: H: L: T.
Pseudonym: An Old Acquaintance of the Public
Pseudonym: An Old Woman
Self-constructed Name: H: L: P.
Used Form: Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale, later Hester Lynch Piozzi
, was by inclination and practice a woman of letters as well as a woman of the world. She loved recording facts and details; she was an incisive critic (of real learning) and a great entertainer. She wrote poems, translations, essays, letters, journals, memoirs, and works of scholarship, and she published both during the later eighteenth and during the earlier nineteenth century.
Flipping casually through a ladies' fashion magazine when she was about fourteen years old, Mary had her curiosity caught by an algebraic expression in a puzzle. She was told that the variables were Algebra...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothea Du Bois
Peter Du Bois enjoyed the patronage of Bishop George Berkeley
, who was said to have emphasised his superiority to most musicians—evidence that the match was seen as mixing social classes in a manner analogous...
Family and Intimate relationships
Helen Maria Williams
HMW
. it seems, had a life partner: English businessman and fellow radical John Hurford Stone
, whom she met when she first visited Paris. He was married, but his wife had taken lovers...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Ferrier
The first important position of James Ferrier
, SF
's father, was as Writer to the Signet. Later he was appointed Principal Clerk of Session and became estate manager to the Duke of Argyll
...
Family and Intimate relationships
Harriet Lee
Hester Lynch Piozzi
was trying unsuccessfully to bring about a marriage between HL
and the widowed marchese Ludovico Trotti
, who seemed to be in love with her.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
1: 356-7, 360 and n7-9
Family and Intimate relationships
Sarah Fielding
SF
's most important sibling was her brother Henry
, first as the eldest child and later as a highly successful novelist and playwright (as well as theatre manager and lawyer). She kept house for...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Smythies
Of Susan's identified siblings (apart from those who died young) William was born in November 1722, Humphrey or Humphry in January 1724, Ann in February 1725, Elizabeth in August 1727; from the first marriage there...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Eleanor Butler
They were outraged, and at once sought legal advice from Edmund Burke
(who had experienced image problems of a not dissimilar kind).
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph.
83-4
Brideoake, Fiona. “Keep Yourself in Your Own Persons, Where You Are: The Ladies of Llangollen and Queer Self-Fashioning”. 42nd ASECS Annual Meeting.
This episode was remarkable partly because such hostility was unusual. But not...
Grant, Elizabeth. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Editor Tod, Andrew, Canongate.
1: 51-2
The daughter of a clergyman, she was descended from Norman ancestry, and she married John Peter Grant on...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Harcourt
Elizabeth Harcourt's verse comprised of one bound volume of poetry, the majority of which was transcribed by herself. She was also heavily involved in the collection of three volumes of poems by other authors (many...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ann Hatton
Hester Lynch Piozzi
observed her indignant melancholy about the discovery.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
14: 21
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Damer
The somewhat hostile witness Hester Piozzi
alleged that AD
(whom she called much suspected for liking her own Sex in a criminal way) was engaged in an affair with the leading actress Elizabeth Farren
.
The couple had three children, two girls and a boy. The eldest, a girl, died in her teens, to their great sorrow; their son, too, died before his father. The other daughter, Susannah, married in...
Fictionalization
Frances Burney
Bibliographer James Raven
notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB
's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles
, for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Friends, Associates
Frances Burney
FB
made friends in the older generation as well as her own. The whole Burney family loved and were loved by David Garrick
. Sir Joshua Reynolds
, who lived barely fifty yards away from...
Timeline
July 1773: The Westminster Magazine printed, along with...
Building item
July 1773
The Westminster Magazine printed, along with its account of Oxford University
's annual degree-giving, an article by L. P.On the Propriety of Bestowing Academical Honours on the Ladies.
January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...
Writing climate item
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison
in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
April 1782: Hester Thrale recorded in her journal a poem...
Women writers item
April 1782
Hester Thrale
recorded in her journal a poem by Anne Hunter
which seems to be the first English rendering of a Native American death song.
1 April 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi (a propos reports about...
Building item
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.
April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...
Women writers item
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward
's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
7 December 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi heard the African John...
Building item
7 December 1789
Hester Lynch Piozzi
heard the African John Frederick Bridgetower
speaking in public at Bath, to great applause, and wrote how Dr. Johnson
would have adored that Man!
January 1793: Hester Piozzi reported the indignant melancholy...
Building item
January 1793
Hester Piozzi
reported the indignant melancholy of the actress Sarah Siddons
, who had been infected with syphilis by her husband.
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
1 August 1815: The surveyor William Smith dated his first-ever...
Building item
1 August 1815
The surveyor William Smith
dated his first-ever geological map of Britain; the national Geological Society
cold-shouldered him and published its own map, five years later, which was essentially a plagiarism of his.
29 April 1852: Physician and polymath Peter Mark Roget published...
Writing climate item
29 April 1852
Physician and polymath Peter Mark Roget
published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases; it went through 25 editions in its first two decades, and remained an influential writing tool into the twenty-first century.
6 May 2009: The antiquarian book collection of the late...
Women writers item
6 May 2009
The antiquarian book collection of the late Paula Fentress Peyraud
(the largest in private hands), auctioned in New York, fetched more than $1.5 million US. Books by women between 1760 and 1830 predominated.
Texts
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. T. Cadell, 1786.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. British Synonymy. G.G. and J. Robinson, 1794.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch, editor. Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson. A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1788.
Shaw, William, and Hester Lynch Piozzi. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson. Editor Sherbo, Arthur, Oxford University Press, 1974.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1789.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Retrospection. J. Stockdale, 1801.
Johnson, Samuel, and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Chapman, Robert William, Clarendon Press, 1984.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 2002.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Thrales of Streatham Park. Editor Hyde, Mary, Harvard University Press, 1977.
